INTRO: This is part two of my interview with Daniel Thompson. If you have not yet listened to part one, I highly recommend you go back and do that first because it provides some really important context for this episode. If you have already listened part one, then please enjoy the conclusion of my interview with Daniel Thompson.
Matt Bowles: So, before we talk about the evolution and the other destinations, I want to ask for your tips and recommendations for Belize. You have spent a lot of time there now. You’ve lived there. You’ve also hosted all of these remote workers and digital nomads and facilitated their experience in Belize. So, based on all of that, for people that have not yet been to Belize, what are some of your top recommendations for Belize?
Daniel Thompson: If you’re at all interested in diving, please do it. It’s really good. Insanely blue water. And because there’s no commercial fishing, just fishing locally, it’s actually really bountiful there, which is awesome. In terms of locations, I think San Pedro is not that nice and overrated. That’s where everyone goes. So don’t go there. Would go to Caye Caulker, which is the cool island. It’s like the hippie beach town island vibes. Really cool. And then I would come down to the south to Placencia, where I lived, where we run our trips. And there you can do trips into the Maya mountains along the Hummingbird Highway, which are really beautiful. And you can also go in and see the ATM cave, which are ancient Mayan burial ground caves, which are close to the Guatemalan border. Really amazing. And then Punta Gorda in the south is also really beautiful. I would just say just don’t just go to San Pedro and nothing else. That would be my one piece of advice.
Matt Bowles: All right, so let’s talk about the evolution in global expansion of NOMA. When you decided to start moving beyond Belize, what was your initial thought? What was some of the destinations that you selected and what went into the choices of those places?
Daniel Thompson: Take us on the evolution journey. Initially it was like, we just got out the black book and we’re like, where do we know people that we can trust? And I was like, well, Buenos Aires, that’s an obvious one. Kenya, I have some good friends. I think we did Morocco, because I’d been there and I knew there was a good pricing, good service in Marrakesh. And the Riads are really unique. And the whole style of a Riad, I think, is a really great experience and fairly unique. I mean, it’s, you know, there are a lot of buildings in other countries that replicate that, but that’s where it came from. And then what can we feasibly deliver? And we put them on sale and a couple of them, Buenos Aires sold out straight away. We were like, great, let’s put on another one. We put a massive deposit down on another one and it didn’t sell. It was a complete failure. I remember being, oh, God. Like all of the positive stuff, we should have just not done that second one. The eyes got widened and we made a judgment call that was incorrect. But that’s all-learning curves. I mean, this is it. And then after that, most of the destinations that have come on have been either alumni or us being, hey, we should do a trip to this place.
Matt Bowles: Well, you’ve got some unbelievable destinations on your website for the upcoming year that people can go and check out some of these different locations. I want to ask you about some of these regions. I mean, you’ve certainly still got the Central American countries. You’ve got Guatemala and Belize and that kind of stuff. And then South America, you’ve got Argentina and Brazil and Lima, Peru and all of that. But you are now all over the world. You are doing a couple destinations in South Asia. In Sri Lanka and in the Himalayas in India. Can you talk about those experiences in those regions?
Daniel Thompson: Yeah, that’s all Sarah. Shout out to Sarah. Because a lot of those trips actually came over from Hacker Paradise. The Himalaya one is something that came over from Hacker Paradise. And the guy who runs that is really cool, what he’s doing. He’s pioneering that level of service and style over there. It’s really cool. I mean, that’s a breathtaking trip. I think that it’s out there for a lot of people. I mean, obviously, Buenos Aires is like a safe bet, you know, that’s probably the reason why you went there as well. It’s like stepping stones, but you want to offer something for everyone on their journey and they’re in different moments.
Matt Bowles: Yeah, I love it, man. And you’ve got a number of places on the continent of Africa as well. You’ve got Cape Town, which is a super popular digital nomad destination, but you’re also doing Windhoek in Namibia. You’re doing the island of Cabo Verde. Can you share a little bit about some of the thought that went into selecting the African destinations?
Daniel Thompson: So, we had an alumni that went to Namibia and was like, this is a must. You have to do it. And she actually put together, here is the stuff you need, and was like, yeah, yeah, you’re right. And I love it when that happens. So, if anyone wants to do that, please. Because sometimes that’s where these origin stories of these trips are. Just someone went there before and was, yes, more people will like this. You know what I mean? And then the other is Gonçalo Hall.
Matt Bowles: I just actually hung out with Gonçalo in Rio nice last month. He’s been on the podcast. So, yeah, I’ve known Gonçalo for many years.
Daniel Thompson: Awesome. So, he and I speak regularly, and it was one of his recommendations that we took up and then ultimately went down the pathway. So, you got to listen to the people with the ears on the ground, man. And he’s definitely one of them.
Matt Bowles: Well, I also noticed that you have some unbelievable island locations and epic spots like Boracay in the Philippines and Koh Lanta in Thailand, and you’ve got the Canary Islands in Europe, which are basically down off the coast of Morocco. I spent a bunch of time over there as well. So, it really seems like there’s a lot of very different types of experiences. Both if you’re the type of person that wants big city, you’ve got those. If you’re the type of person that wants beach and island life, you’ve got that. And then whatever kind of culture you want. Oh. One of the destinations that made me smile was Seoul, Korea, because that was one of the places that I went with Hacker Paradise and hung out with Sarah for five weeks in Seoul back in 2018. And I have pictures of us from that trip. I periodically, I wish Sarah a Happy New Year or something. I’ll send her a picture of me and her from Korea, either from Seoul or from our long weekend to Busan that we went to. And so, the fact that you’re still doing that also just warned by her, because that is a magical city.
Daniel Thompson: Yeah, well, again, shout out to Sarah, because when she came in, obviously, you know, we’ve been working together a year and now, but there’s so much to be learned from her and the Hacker Paradise community and the trips that they’ve run. And Asia was never an area that we had done almost anything in. We were very much located to south and Central America. And so, it’s kind of nice marrying of worlds.
Matt Bowles: Can you share specifically what people will get on a NOMA Trip? What does the price include? And then what will an experience be like in any of these destinations? If somebody books, say, a month-long experience?
Daniel Thompson: If anyone doesn’t understand what we do, essentially, remote work can be super liberating, but often quite lonely. And so, when looking at the ability to take advantage of that location independence, often there aren’t people in the same space as you at the same time as you are. So, communities like us come together and essentially take care of the community aspect, but also take care of the logistics aspect. And I think there is slightly different between Hacker Paradise and NOMA. And what we’ve tried to do is kind of merge a bit of the two. So, one of the things that’s really important for NOMA and something that I think is like, where 90% of the scams happen is like at the airport. So simple things that we include are airport pickups, for example, when I’m looking at building a trip, I want to take away the friction and I want to take away the fear, especially for the new people. And then I want to overlay a really nice sense of community and also a bit of realization that travel is scary, it’s unpredictable, shit’s probably going to go wrong. And when it does, you have people around you to support you and help you through that.
Initially, I think we were a lot more on the lines of, you know, we’ll take care of everything. But actually, that’s not what it’s about. That’s what I’ve come to realize. It’s about going through this new, sometimes crazy, sometimes scary experience together. And we have the knowledge, we have a local counterpart, we’re able to help you, but it’s about going through this new experience together. So that’s the kind of ethos and then bare bones what you get, you get your accommodation, you get entrance to a coworker that may be on site, that may be a third party co work. There’s generally always places for you to work within your accommodation as well. So, you can spend some time in there or you can go and do a coworker opportunity. We generally offer, depending on the location, some sort of added activity oftentimes in the island location yoga, but we’ve come to realize is things like yoga in the cities doesn’t work quite as well. People’s mentality is slightly different. And so, in the cities we’re looking at doing more things like language learning and things like that.
We also continue to do the one community lunch or dinner with the community twice a trip. So once if it’s a three week, twice if it’s a four-week trip and then we offer some Apple pickups as I said and then you get a couple of extras like you get a loaded data sim so you can be connected wherever you need to be. And then outside of that, what we try and do, which aren’t necessarily added monetary values but definitely add value, are a bunch of curated free community building fun things to do. And that may be a potluck or that may be a walking tour depending on the location. And then the other thing that happens is once or twice in a trip we’ll put together a unique, maybe one overnight stay-esque trip that everyone can opt into which is normally at an extra cost. So, for example in Kenya it’s slightly longer. It’s probably one of the biggest ones we do where we’ll do a three-day safari that will be an add on for example, but it could be just like if you’re in Barcelona it’s just a trip to the Costa Brava for example, which is just a night. And in Buenos Aires we’ve done weekend trips to Mendoza quite regularly which are weekend to the wine area of Argentina. So that’s kind of in a nutshell what you get. But if we do our job well, what you walk away with ideally is some friends for life that you can do this with. I would say that’s if we do our job well, that’s what you should get.
Matt Bowles: Listen, I am more than a decade into my nomad journey. And I still love patronizing these work travel programs. Like, for me, I explain to people, I’m like, this is not just a beginner thing. Like some people, if they’re trying to get off the ground and start the nomad lifestyle, like, it’s a helpful first step. But I’m like, I’ve been doing this for a decade and I still patronize these communities because I love to be able to show up in a city and have an immediate community of people that are there waiting and excited to meet me and get to know me and explore the city with me and hang out. And especially that group of people that has showed up there is from all over the world. So, I’m meeting not just local folks in the city that I went to, but I’m meeting other people from all around the world, from all different cultures that are all there for the same reason that I am. And that’s another really cool, interesting international connection.
And to your point, I mean, Sarah just introduced us and I’ve known her for almost a decade now. And there’s so many other people from those Hacker Paradise trips. One of the people who was one of the programs leads on my very first Hacker Paradise trip ever, which was in Da Nang, Vietnam. Danny Dirks, shout out to her. She and I connected there on that trip. And then she no longer works for Hacker Paradise, but she and I have traveled the world together. She’s been on the podcast. She and I went to Ghana in December of 2022. We went to the music festivals there. They do the Afro Future and have the Afrobeat festivals and stuff like that. And she came with me to the Portuguese Wine country for my birthday a couple years ago and we rented a villa. These people, to your point, I mean, these are like friends for life that you will meet on these trips. And then even if it’s completely outside with the context of where you met, you’re just going to go and travel the world together and do epic stuff and all that. So, it’s been an incredible experience for me and a decade into it. It’s not something that I “outgrow” or, yeah, I could just go rent my Airbnb in the same city, but I wouldn’t have this epic community.
Daniel Thompson: Exactly, man. I think that people use these trips for different purposes and they both align and they help each other. It’s good to have a couple of people who’ve done it a lot and are coming for the community, and it’s good to have some new people in there because it’s new blood and it reinvigorates you. I think those are both really honest and valid ways to experience these trips.
Matt Bowles: Daniel, can you talk about the intentionality in building the NOMA community and prioritizing the community as being a racially and culturally diverse community? Will Black folks and other BIPOC travelers feel comfortable on a NOMA Trip? How have you thought about that question and built the community?
Daniel Thompson: I grew up in London, so I think I got a good first start in living and being immersed in a multicultural society throughout my life. Worked in spaces that have been very welcoming. Music has always been a place that’s been welcoming club culture has always been come one, come all. And I think as that’s progressed, the next piece of it is, hey, we need to also make sure that it’s represented in the way that we promote the brand so that when people see marketing, they go, oh, I could be there, right? Like, because that’s like, in essence, regardless of your skin color, Can I make you feel like this is the thing you want to do? This is what’s going to be the right next step?
Matt Bowles: Can you also talk about how NOMA has prioritized creating a safe and welcoming space for queer folks and trans folks, and maybe even talk a little bit about your vetting process in general as people are interested in coming on a trip? What is that vetting process to make sure they’re the right fit and have the right values for the community?
Daniel Thompson: For sure. So, we’re always thinking about this. What’s our code of conduct? What do we want to have people follow? How are we going to try and create a safe space? I talked a lot about safe spaces. I think it’s something I’ve done throughout my whole life is create safe spaces for people to come together in the physical space. And I used to do it over music, and I do it in travel. I think, like the vetting, you know, I say jokingly, it’s really simple. You need to have a remote work job, and you need to not be an asshole or, you know, you need to be a good person. If I’m being nicer, I’d say that. And I think I want to be a place that everyone feels welcome to come and start on this new journey. Know it’s already scary enough doing this. You don’t need any other extra pressure. So, I want to take away the fear and the friction. That’s what I always say.
And I think that’s creating that safe space. I think in the vetting process. There are things around making sure that if someone may not be on, they might think they want to go to one trip, but they actually need to go to another. I think it’s important knowing where they are in their journey and what they’re ready for and putting them to the place to set them up for success. Mismatched expectations are something that’s really common in general and something that you always need to measure for. The vetting process is generally a phone call. It’s a phone call to get to know you. I used to do a lot of them. I’m now not doing that many, but I’ve just taken on the family ones because that’s a baby of mine. The family trips. I’m going to be taking all of those sales calls.
Matt Bowles: Well, let’s talk a little bit about that family addition. I just recently interviewed Courtney Orgias on the podcast who gave Noma a shout out because she and her husband Justin and their kids participated in, I think, the very first ever NOMA family edition. And she had amazing things to say about it. But I’m curious if you can share a little bit about the family edition, but also the other sort of niche special editions. I know you’re doing a single edition and then you’re doing an alumni only edition. Can you talk about why you chose to do some of those niches?
Daniel Thompson: The alumni one is simple. People who’ve done multiple trips, we value them, we want to give them something special. They also want to be around people who have done that because there’s a lot of alignment and every time we’ve done them, they’ve been smashed and people want to recreate those. There’s also the odd time where just one trip is an absolute banger and all of those people just want to meet again in another place. Will then be like, hey, there’s 12 of you or whatever. Can we put it out to the alumni and tell them this is happening? Okay, there’s these 12 people. Does anyone else want to tag along? And that normally works as well.
So that’s why the alumni one has happened. And then with the singles one, it’s more just like naturally, a lot of people on these trips are single and I think if we can do something special around that, that could be really cool getting those people together. And a lot of it was like, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in the dating world in this space, but I think the fundamentals are still the same. It’s tough getting out there and doing it. And if you’re in a group, you can go to a bar, you can have fun, and come back, talk about it. We have a couple alumni that are dating coaches, and that’s really where the idea originally came from, is they were like, you should just get a bunch of people together, and if they end up hooking up, great. But actually, it’s more about them being single, talking about being single, working on that and going out and wherever they are and having fun. You know what I mean?
Matt Bowles: Yeah, for sure. And then the family additions, I have to imagine, in part, that’s a servicing your own needs as a family in terms of what do you and your wife and your son need and what would be great. But can you share a little bit about how that has been evolving?
Daniel Thompson: I wish there was a company that was there when I needed them, because there wasn’t. So, I’m way down the rabbit hole now. The product that we’re making for Noma Family is the product I wish I had in that moment, which is a stepping stone. I think that a lot of families want to live this life. They may have lived this life previously, and they’re kind of like, how do I do it? They don’t do it because they don’t have the structure. And essentially, the traditional way that this would work would be parents. We work in the office. Kids would go to school, they’d come back, they’d go to a summer camp, whatever. The parents aren’t home anyway because they’re at the office, so it doesn’t matter. So, the kid just gone from the school to the summer camp.
And so, with the remote work families, it’s this dynamic that’s actually really tough to solve. You’ve got the kids are at school, the parents are home working in the home office. Kids come home for summer holiday. Fuck. The office is now a playground. That’s a problem. Right. And so, then they send the kids off to a camp. And I was just like, why don’t I just do the trips that we do and do a Montessori summer camp and just kind of just go like this? So, it was. Again, it’s not rocket science. I just saw these two separate things being done differently and was like, let’s just bring them together. What do you get? Well, you get those ad hoc moments that you can spend with your kid because they’re not away at summer camp. You can come check in on them in the pool moment if you want, and play with them. And then you’ve got the same thing with the Community, which is just other families in the same position as you going through the same thing. So yeah, the product was born out of that, really was going. What would I have really liked in that moment? And yeah, month long in Roatan, Honduras, on an island. It’s a resort with these luxury villas, 18-hole golf course, paddle tennis, you’ve got an inflatable bouncy castle, three or four pools, schools. It’s really cool, man. And it’s in this special economic zone called Prospera, which is also a really interesting project Future city. You can get a fully digital nomad tax opportunity there.
Obviously for Americans it’s a bit more difficult because they follow you around the world with the taxes. But for the majority of other places in the world, you could opt out of taxes in your home country if you’re not living there anymore and you could pay in Prosper. It’s very similar to what Paraguay is doing. Those are the two kind of places that are doing the most interesting things for the visa stuff. But anyway, my plan is to get 25 families together to come for a month and we’ll go on sale in about, I’d say probably February 1st. Got some alumni that have already snagged some villas. But it’s going to be fun, man. I just got into golf so I’m really excited about it. I’m going back there shortly in March and it’s got a lot of pathways and places where you can interact and the kids can run and play and it’s all interconnected and I’m imagining a lot of like, oh, let’s do dinner at their house tonight. The villas are all in essentially a two-minute walking distance. So, I think it’s going to be really cool. And then obviously the island is paradise. You’re on the reef. It’s got everything that you would want from a tropical destination.
Matt Bowles: So, for listeners that would like to try a NOMA experience, either a family experience, a singles experience, or one of these many other ones that we’ve talked about. From Lima, Peru to Seoul, Korea to Sri Lanka to Boracay in the Philippines or any of the other ones. How can they learn more, see the destinations and can you offer Maverick show listeners a special discount?
Daniel Thompson: We can do a discount. The discount code is Maverick200 and that gets you $200 off any of the trips in 2026. You first got to go through a vetting call, speak to one of our lovely people and then they’ll guide you through it. But you just mentioned that code and yeah, be really cool for you to come check it out, whether you’ve been doing it for years or just getting started.
Matt Bowles: All right, we’re going to link that up in the show notes, folks. Both the link where you can go see all the different destinations, the different trips, and then the discount code as well.
Daniel, I’m curious to ask you about some of the ethical considerations that you think about in terms of running a travel business and moving from being a travel lure into a travel business owner. The first one I think I want to ask you about is when you’re bringing groups of people to locations in the global south, particularly where the tourism industry has historically been steeped in colonialism and extraction and some of those dynamics, how do you think through the ethics of structuring those trips to add as much value as possible and do as little harm as possible.
Daniel Thompson: When you look at travel, I think slowing down is probably one of the first things you should do. Consciously getting to know that place and maybe giving back, even in a light touch format, actually being present. I always kind of try and say it’s like steering away from passport stamp collecting and taking the Instagram photos and actually spending some time in a place. I always said long term games are long term people, right. So, what we’ve got is a lot of flow one way, and that’s how it’s been for many years. And so, we know that there’s a potential to bring value, both money into the economy, but also skills the other way. And what we’re really bad at is catching those people when they’re in these countries and actually delivering some value outside of some dollars. So, in the place that I’ve worked the longest, which is Belize, where I’ve actually run a social impact program and we’re going through a seed raise right now and we’re going to raise some capital and hopefully with that capital, specifically with an aligned investor or patron.
I really want to roll out this across all the other locations because I think it’s one of those things that it’s not a business, it’s something else, it’s a part of that. And it needs money and it needs dedication and that comes with time. So, you know, you can’t do it straight away. But I’ve been able to prove it in Belize with our social input. I got a grant from an Ethereum Dao called on Chain Monkey and they gave us three Ethereum and we were able to run 12 beach cleanups in a year. And we’ve been now for about three years, running every Thursday afternoon for about four hours in the local town. Sometimes we miss a week when our leads aren’t there. But generally, we’ve been there for about four years now, and it’s just a safe space to come for kids. Sometimes we have five, sometimes we have 30, and it’s all sports, arts and crafts and some sort of healthy snack. But I think that how I want it to be set up is I want to keep doing these trips because I think they’re really valuable. Instead of doing less trips, I want to do more with the people that are here and have infrastructure set up for those people so that we can start to set up alumni mentor mentees, setups where if someone’s getting into photography and we have someone in our alumni, a photographer, we can put them together and maybe there’s a chance that kid from Belize can end up in NYU at an internship. That would be sick, right?
And again, all this takes a lot of money, bro. That’s the problem with all these things. These are not easy things to do, but it is possible and you can do it. You start and you just, you know, day by day. And as we get bigger and maybe someone listening to this might go, yes, I’ll be a philanthropist patron and I’ll come in and fund this. But the other thing that I’m working that isn’t 100 ready yet, but I think is going to be really interesting is we work with a lot of startup or coworker hubs in places around the world. And generally, those hubs are focal points for locals to come and like, hey, I want to be an entrepreneur. I’ve watched some YouTube videos. Where am I going to go in the close proximity geographically to me, where I can meet some fellow startup people, right? And so, one of the really cool, cool things that’s happening in this movement that I’m a part of called the Network Society movement, is a place called Frontier Tower. And they’re in San Francisco.
And what they’ve done is they have bought an old abandoned office building and they have turned it into what they’re calling a vertical village where you can essentially go pay a membership and you’ve got a co work, you’ve got VC funds, you’ve got a maker’s lab, you’ve got an area to learn about AI and you’ve got a wellness area and a gym, and essentially, you’ve everything you need in this tower with a bunch of other kind of startup founders. And they have a co live that’s really cheap and they’re in San Francisco, which is the tech hub of the world. So, they’re essentially offering this opportunity, low barrier to entry, for startup founders to come to San Francisco. So, what I’m working with them on is connecting them and us being the middle ground between them and all of these co-work spots and startup hubs around the world and kind of have that flow because that’s how you make change.
Matt Bowles: With regard to the rise of remote work and digital nomadism and all of that, we are also seeing around the world adverse dynamics related to transnational gentrification. In some of these digital nomad hubs, we’re seeing the effects of over tourism in certain cities around the world. So, when you look around globally and you see some of those dynamics and some of the impact on local communities and some of the responses from local communities to that, how do you think about navigating those dynamics as the owner of NOMA?
Daniel Thompson: I think the example that’s most present that we should maybe use as in this conversation is probably Portugal in the sense of that they were really struggling. They aligned with digital nomads to try and bring them to the country. They did it so successfully that it rose prices. And then this gentrification process happened, right, Similar to maybe Mexico City is another one that’s getting a lot of heat. Medellin maybe is another one that’s getting a lot of heat. I do believe that the pop up as a concept, the pop-up process is really important. I think going to new places, there’s always going to be places on the up. And so, I think the idea of pop ups is so beautiful. But we are thinking a lot about permanent. And I wrote this article about how I see that digital nomading is rather than the industry or the movement, it’s actually a step or a stage in a larger movement. I’ve laid it out. This is open sources. I would love everyone’s opinion on it.
And it’s not a dogma in any way, shape or form, but you’ve got basically sedentary life, which is what we’ve lived where we lived in one place, which is like stage one. And then you’ve got remote ready, which is that big change we spoke about, which is being able to work remote, make money on the Internet and have that freedom. Then stage three, I think is the type of person who starts their journey, you can call them like the workationer. They’re like just getting into it, they’re doing this movement, but then really still full time in wherever they live. And then the next step is digital Nomading, in my opinion. And that’s that maximum expansion phase where you’re traveling a lot and that could last. I mean, for people like yourself, it’s still there, it’s lasting as far as now has taken you. And then the next step, which is where I would sit or into the next one, is something that a friend of mine coined and I really love it, which is multi local.
Multi local as you feel at home in more than two places. So, you’ve got that localness, but you’re multi, right. And I think this is really important to the whole tourism neocolonialism because the problem with that is you always go back. Because I actually think if you could, I could put roots down and add value in those places and do the things and it might change it and do them in a way that doesn’t end in the problems that you’ve seen in those other places. And then after the multi local, it’s family first. Honestly, that’s the word I’m the least happy with. But I use the word family because all those stages up until then have been singular in the sense of me on my journey and then at some point, be it with a long-term partner or some animals or a lover and kids, whatever that looks like for you, there is a decision to come together as a community and spend time together more permanently as a community.
And I think it’s going to end in essentially a full circle to what we used to do as being nomads in the old sense is these multi-generational societies. I actually think the village has it correct. It’s just now we can overlay the Internet on top so we can redisperse and have multiple places that run under the same level and service that we like. And we can kind of go around to those places and we can essentially have a setup for all generations to live in those places. So, it’s kind of like a play on the eco village, but it’s a little bit more for where I think we might end up.
Matt Bowles: So, in the current stage of your journey and your lifestyle, how do you and your family think about the concept of home?
Daniel Thompson: Every time during the two years that I looked after the house in Buenos Aires that was in Once that had nine bedrooms, every time someone left, we would put on the song by the Talking Heads, which is called this Must be the Place and it talks about home is where I want to be. Pick me up when you are down. I think the concept of home doesn’t have to be a physical, permanent space. I think it’s a lot more about what it gives you. And I think that it can be a place that is yours or you can share it, then it can be there forever. But I don’t necessarily think it has to be one. And I’m actually pretty much 100 sure that the way this is going to go in the next 10 years is you’re going to pay a subscription to someone to a community and you’re going to have access to 20, 30 places that are permanent villages. You are on like a higher level, like a moral or ethics standpoint, aligned. They may be all very different and have very different thought processes and stuff. And you’ll be able to jump in and out of those and have the same setup for you as a solo traveler or for me as a family member or for a startup founder or for a single mother.
And I think that there’s going to just, just be this infrastructure for people to travel and learn. And I think if we get it right, we’re going to solve the problem that it has been presented in Portugal and all these places with property going through the roof is that if we’re able to redisperse into biggish communities. I think why a lot of eco villages fail is because they’re like 150 to 300 people. That’s quite closed. So, Dunbar’s Law is 150 people is the amount of people supposedly your brain can have a proper relationship with. So that’s why when you’re living in a city and you just have 150 people in your apartment block, your brain can’t compute that many relationships. So, they just become numbers. And that’s why horrible things can happen in cities where people treat people atrociously because they have less disassociation.
But at the same time, what a lot of people don’t want, and the biggest failure of these eco villages and all these things is that it’s, it’s stagnant because it’s not enough people to be a minimum viable society, in my opinion. And so, you’ve got the possibility of taking rural land and populating it relatively quickly with communities between 4 and 10,000 people, let’s say. And they’re all close to each other so they can share larger utilities but not need to have the level of chaos that are 2,3 million per and plus city has. And so, if you can do that, you will be able to create affordable housing for people who are locals in that area, while also bringing a bunch of foreigners and doing What I think people want, which is more jobs, more prosperity, right. Like, I think we understand why Portugal initially was, oh, I want to bring digital nomads because we’re struggling as an economy and we want to inject into it.
Matt Bowles: How do you think an itinerant travel lifestyle affects your son’s sense of belonging, culture and identity?
Daniel Thompson: I don’t wear shoes in my house anymore. I think it’s crazy that I did that for so long. That’s disgusting. Why did we do that? Yet, it took me to go to Asia to figure that out and now that’s a hard law in my house. That’s a great example for me of, like, how you can take bits of every culture and perhaps then instill that in your culture. If you go back a long time, the need to stick together. Tribalism had a massive value because you need unknown. There’s a lot more crazy things happening, people killing. You go to the next town over, right? Or tribe. The next tribe over. So, I think tendency to be shying away from someone different is logical, but if we can break through that, I think it’s beneficial. So, for him, it’s like he loves tacos and hot weather and Mexican, and he thinks himself is already he says, I’m Mexican, but he’s from Uruguay and he’s English. So, I’m imagining if he gets it right, we have the upside of actually being able to just go with a clean slate. Like, what is the best way to do this? If we look at all the countries and all the different things, what’s the best way to do this? Rather than just doing it this way, because we’ve always done it that way. And then half the time when you go through that, it’s like it was done that way because some random conqueror came over and just said, that’s the way you got to do it and it’s not the right way to do it. You know what I mean?
Matt Bowles: Let me ask you one more question, Daniel, and then we’ll wrap this up and move into The Lightning Round. Given all of the travel that you have done over the course of your life, why are you still so passionate about continuing to travel? What does travel mean to you today?
Daniel Thompson: There’s always a possibility of having that feeling of not knowing anything and having never been somewhere because you’re never going to go to everywhere. That’s cool. On my way to Honduras, the first time, beginning of this year, Honduras implemented a visa for the United Kingdom. Like, when you’ve got to get like three weeks, four weeks before I’m so used to not having to do that with my British passport. I got there to Guatemala City, and they were like, you’re not getting on? And I was like, oh, three weeks to get the visa. That’s not going to happen. I was going for a conference, have a New Zealand passport, but it was back in Merida. I was like, man, what am I going to do? And I just had a meltdown. And then I came back up, and I was like, I’m going to do what you got to do. It’s. You’ve got to walk that way, and the world will figure it out for you, and you just go that way. And the feeling of just letting it roll, that is it for me. That’s that moment of just. And you know what happened? I went to this bar, met these cool people. I started chatting this guy, I tell him my story. He was like, I know the owner of Tag Airlines. If you get the passport dropped off at the airport, I’ll get it flown over. And I got my passport, got to go to the thing. I’m like, dude, like, this is it. You know what I mean?
Matt Bowles: Amazing. Well, I think that’s the perfect place to end the main portion of this interview at this point Daniel, are you ready to move in to The Lightning Round?
Daniel Thompson: I’ll do my best.
Matt Bowles: Let’s do it. All right. What is one book that you would recommend that people should read?
Daniel Thompson: Shantaram because it’s travel specific. That’s one of my favorites.
Matt Bowles: All right. If you could have dinner with any person who’s currently alive today that you’ve never met, just you and that person for an evening of dinner and conversation, who would you choose?
Daniel Thompson: I would like to meet Dave Chappelle. Honestly, I think he would probably be someone who I would sit down with and, you know, just laugh. I feel like he’d just be hilarious musicians, like, you know, I keep thinking, like, Anthony Kiedis, his stories. I read his biography, and his life was crazy, and I think he would have a lot of stories to tell.
Matt Bowles: All right, what is one travel hack that you use that you can recommend?
Daniel Thompson: I mean, it’s very current to my lifestyle right now, but I spent an extra $100 on a super foldable pram for Lucci that folds and is considered a personal item, not a carry on. That is priceless, my friend, because you can stick it under his seat and his legs don’t even go down there yet, so it’s perfect. So, you know, obviously moving with a young kid is tough, so having the pram and having it be able to fold into a personal item and have that not count as a carry on worth the extra 100 bucks.
Matt Bowles: All right, 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 Daniel?
Daniel Thompson: It’s mostly an illusion and no one knows what they’re doing. So don’t worry so much about not knowing what you’re doing. I think is probably what I would say because I used to think everyone had it sorted and that is just like not true at all.
Matt Bowles: All right, of all the places that you’ve now traveled, what are three of your favorite destinations you would most recommend other people should definitely check out.
Daniel Thompson: Buenos Aires. Rio? Thing is with Rio is you have to be prepared. It can be unsafe. It’s not 101. You need to get your training wheels off and then go Rio or just prepare, right? You just need to prepare to be aware. But Rio, if you do it right. I’m a big football fan. So, the beach and the city and playing on the water and that sunset, there’s nothing like that in the world. Final one, Cape Town, man.
Matt Bowles: Daniel, what are your top three bucket list destinations? Places you have not yet been highest on your list you’d most love to see?
Daniel Thompson: I mean, I want to do a good stint in India. I haven’t done that yet. That’s one of the big ones on the bucket list, you know. So, we were very close to doing a trip to China to pop up village network society pop up village that’s happening in the Alibaba campus in mainland China from sheer just like I don’t know what I’m going to experience. That one felt like, wow. I think I would want to go there just to take myself out of my comfort zone, see what that would be like. And then almost went to Venezuela, man, and I couldn’t because at that moment it was getting so. But like I have so many Venezuelan friends and that place is paradise. So yeah, man, maybe one day if it’s able to makes me think of Cuba as well. That’s another place that I would love to go and I haven’t been.
Matt Bowles: All right, Daniel, at this point, I want you to let folks know how they can find you, follow you on social media, learn more about Noma Collective, jump on one of your upcoming trips. How do you want people to come into your world?
Daniel Thompson: Thanks, man. The website is noma-collective.com. You can go on there and click on one of the Get Started or Apply now buttons and then you’ll speak to one of our team and that’s the best way and they’ll help you guide whatever trip you want. You can have a look on the website, but I encourage you to just get on a call and have a chat with them. And then if you want to follow us on Instagram at nomacollectivehq. And then if you want to hear my musings on X, I’m on there as well. That’s the only one I’m directly in charge of and that’s just at noma_collective. So, yeah, any one of those.
Matt Bowles: All right, we are going to link all of that up in the show notes. Folks can just go to one place at themaverickshow.com go to the show notes for this episode. There you’ll find direct links to everything we have discussed in this episode, including the NOMA Collective website where you can check out all the different destinations that are coming up. Learn more about the trips and your discount code: Maverick200 to get $200 off your first NOMA Collective trip. All that is going to be in the show notes. Daniel, this was amazing, brother. Thank you for coming on the show.
Daniel Thompson: Yeah, man, it was a pleasure. Let me know, man. Let’s meet up in person and then, yeah, whenever you want me back, man, I’ll come and have a chat.
Matt Bowles: Let’s absolutely hang out in person. All right, good night, everybody.
