University of Virginia’s Maximillian Brichta explains that digital nomads aren’t just remote workers—they’re educators, coaches, solopreneurs, and community builders who use their skills to create autonomy and a more meaningful life. In this video, we break down what digital nomads actually do for work, how they think about freedom beyond location, and why their “knowledge economy” approach often looks like answering the question, “How do I do it?” for others. You’ll also hear what drives people to make the leap, how they navigate real-life tradeoffs, and why community and fulfillment are so central to the nomad experience.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
We’re going to welcome back to the program Maximilian Brichta of the University of Virginia. Maximilian, it’s great to see you.
Thanks for joining us in the program this morning.
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Yeah, great to see you too.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And you just came back from Mexico City. I want to share some thoughts about your trip there and all the great people and the great sites that you met and you saw.
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Sure. I’ve been going to Mexico City for the last three years over summer, and this is my fourth time there. And each time that I went there, I was recognizing that this is a super international place.
There’s a lot of people around my age who I’m seeing in coffee shops and clubs and just around the city in general. And I recognized that there was this sort of expansive digital nomad presence there. And my research broadly focuses on changes in the digital economy.
And it started to become a question for me. Could I turn this into research? And what would that look like?
So I spent my summer in Mexico City this year doing a preliminary study, interviewing people who are digital nomads or adjacent. Some were some of them were locals, and I was asking them about how the neighborhood is changing and so forth. And so I’d be happy to talk a little bit more about what I saw.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah. So let’s talk about that. Let’s define a digital nomad.
I think I know what it is. You mentioned expats. I’m assuming they’re American expats, but you also talked about some locals in Mexico.
Just for the audience and myself, how would you define a digital nomad?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
I think a simple way to cut it is that digital nomads are folks who work remotely and are location independent. So because they have a remote job, they could go anywhere, maybe not necessarily anywhere in the world, but anywhere within a constricted range, depending on their work. That could be a time zone, that could be a broader geographical location, but they have some flexibility of where they’re at inside of it.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Are there specific age ranges? You mentioned there are people around your age. I don’t know exactly how old you are, but you definitely are probably younger than me.
Are digital nomads typically people on the younger age range, or could they be people my age or older that they decide to take a second job or another job?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Yeah, for sure. Two of the people who I interviewed out of my first crop of 12 were in their 60s. But generally speaking, it’s folks who are in their late 20s, early 30s, up through the early 40s.
I would say just off my limited sample, anywhere from 25 to 45 was the zone.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah. So when you say 60, that to me is young, because it’s right around the corner from me. So I’m going to say that’s young, but no, I completely understand.
Can you tell us a little bit about, for the people that you met, obviously they’re of different age ranges, but maybe trending towards 25 to 40 years old. Is this digital job their first and only job, or did they have like a more corporate-y job originally, and then decided to transition to this digital nomad role?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
It’s usually the latter. And that’s one of the key findings that’s emerging at the moment. A lot of, I think what is going on for these folks is that they have had a previous career, and they were dissatisfied with it in a number of ways.
They worked in tech for a while, or they are continuing to work in tech, but they’re finding some sort of independence and trying to create their own thing on the side that they could ultimately have full autonomy over. But yeah, some of them, for instance, I met this woman at a coworking session, and she didn’t even have a job yet. She had just quit her job and sold her house, sold all of her things, and moved all of her stuff there, and is now looking for a job and trying to set up some businesses there in the local economy so that she could survive.
So there were people all along the scale of they’ve been doing it for 10 years, and they’ve been all over the place, or this is their first venture out into doing it. And a lot of it is that push back against corporate life and the conventional economic lifestyle that we’re told is the way to go.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Personally, I like that. And it’s similar to my story, although I’m, as you know, here in the United States, I didn’t make that big leap. But are there certain characteristics of these individuals that you’ve talked to, forgetting age and gender, are they, I mean, it’s ballsy to, as you described that woman, I’m thinking, wow, that’s pretty ballsy to sell all your things and to leave your country, and then to go to Mexico.
And look, I mean, Mexico, it’s not like Mexico is that far from the United States. I mean, I’m sure they have healthcare and all the, you know, they have food and all the other things that you would want. But that’s a big step.
So do these people share certain characteristics, maybe among themselves?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Yeah, for sure. So a lot of them were from the US. But I would say a lot of them were also from Canada as well.
North American. There were a couple of Europeans who I spoke to as well. And I know that there’s a lot more out there that I didn’t get to speak to who are from Europe.
But generally speaking, it’s North Americans in Mexico City. But one of the things that really cropped up for me in these interviews, was that they were all looking for something more fulfilling. And this really kind of ties back to the corporate lifestyle, you know, they felt like they didn’t have as much autonomy before, or they were bound to a location where they weren’t able to establish community, or there wasn’t the same sort of entrepreneurial spirit and impetus to find other people who are like you to build community with, as there is in Mexico City, and I’m sure a lot of other digital nomad hubs as well. But people go there, not necessarily to integrate into the culture, but to integrate into this more international cosmopolitan culture, where it’s very easy to make friends, to share your interests with other people, to have a robust social life that’s a lot more flexible.
And with people from all over the world who are going to challenge the ways that you think and really pull yourself out of the sort of parochial mindset that you might have had back home.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I always remember Steve Jobs used to say, the system can only produce the system. And, you know, the founder of Apple, and I always thought that was very interesting. And I took that, I really took that to heart.
You know, in terms of the types of work that these individuals doing, you mentioned, some were former tech workers, maybe they worked in Silicon Valley, maybe they were programmers, whatever. What types of jobs are these individuals? So they come to, they gravitate towards this hub, these digital nomadic hubs, and one of which is in Mexico City.
What types of roles, what types of work are they doing?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
What I’ve started to see with half or potentially even more than half of the ones who I talked to, what they were already doing, or what they were trending towards is becoming what I refer to as like a doula, like a midwife of bringing people into this lifestyle, they have found their own, you know, improvement and well being and flexibility and freedom and autonomy and social life and so forth. And I mean, one of the main questions that people ask me when I tell them I’m researching digital nomadism is like, how do I do it? And they’re answering that question.
And some of them are monetizing the answers to that question. So for instance, there was a woman from Russia who was not only giving English language classes to people so that it becomes more accessible to travel around the globe at all, but helping them figure out where to get credit cards that are in different jurisdictions so that they could actually travel around and have a sustainable life outside of Russia. Or there were people who were more in like a life coach sort of position where they were encouraging people like, yes, you could do this.
Here are all of the basics of where you can go and how you could pull it off. And then I mean, there was even a retired mother, a very young retired mother, I believe 36, veteran of the services that’s living off of her disability. But she became this person in the neighborhood that new mothers in the neighborhood would come to and ask for help.
And she’s on all of the WhatsApp groups and other networks helping people just adjust to it. So yeah, people tend towards this role of becoming the educator, this sort of knowledge worker where you could actually monetize or at least become known for and start to build a community around your personal experience in doing the thing.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Is there any sense, you know, one of the things or I guess one of the benefits of working in a more corporate job is employee benefits, you know, for the most part in groups of 100, you know, employers of 100 lives or more, you can get health insurance, you can get retirement. Is there any, did that kind of filter into the conversations? Like, I understand kind of transitioning to become a digital nomad, they were just affected with the corporate world.
But what about, you know, these people sound like they’re young, they’re probably going to live, candidly, they’re going to live to like 100. They’re going to need money. Did they did they talk at all about some of the benefits, like healthcare and retirement savings?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Some, some did bring that up. It wasn’t a question that I asked specifically. But the ones that I do remember were discussing how, if you become a solopreneur, and if you’re striking out on your own and making this money, you have to learn how to treat yourself as a business and you have to learn how to put money away.
And frankly, it can be very difficult, especially when you are living in this place where it becomes a sort of playground for people where there’s just so much social life and so much cultural enrichment to be had where money tends to flow out of the accounts very quickly. Another woman who I spoke with, she didn’t have a job at the time, either. And she wasn’t even really looking for one.
She was just doing some blogging on the side about digital nomadism, and really just taking up hobbies and was kind of in this, you know, healing, I guess time in her life after working a job that she didn’t like for nine years. And she described it as her first retirement, you know, suggesting that once she can’t live off of her investments anymore and her dividends and selling some of her assets, then she would eventually have to pick up and find another job. So that was the interesting part about it is, while folks are doing this, they’re grappling with the implications of how sustainable it’s going to be.
A lot of it doesn’t, as far as I can tell, look past the next couple years, and for some people, the next couple months. And so I’m glad that you tuned me into that question, because it’s something that I want to know of how they see this working out in the long run, when it really becomes how could I do something good for myself now and figure it out down the line.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
But I think there are a lot of people, just to that point, I’ll just put this out there, that I think that, in my own personal opinion, is that there are people that are my age or older that maybe transitioned to do other things, or maybe their job was eliminated. I wanted to, next up, you know, talk about artificial intelligence and how maybe that’s kind of flowing into this. But let me just kind of tie this off, that I think that gets your reaction to this, that I think people realize that life is not, you work for 40 years and retire, and then you’re done.
That life can be different chapters. And whether you’re my age, whether you’re your age, whether you’re someone else’s age, you just go through different chapters. So this thing may work out for a couple years, and then you do something else, because you built this bag of skills.
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, just to, I can leave the AI question.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, let’s talk about that. Because I think that’s so, it’s so, it’s infused in every part of everything we do now.
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it’s, when you’re trying to figure out how to live a completely different lifestyle on your own, and you’re trying to figure out, you know, local laws, and how you could make stuff work with your money, and how to optimize your job, or even come up with a business in the first place, it’s factoring in quite a bit. One of the most striking instances of that for me was, there is an app, a platform down there called Mates.
And this is sort of a social networking, a social event platform that is developed by somebody who’s from Canada, an expat from from Canada. And he showed me the process of how he was coming up with this platform, and using AI for a lot of it. It didn’t start with completely coding it with AI, but he was showing me how he was growing this network, and automating a lot of the messages, and so forth, in ways that, you know, he’s not a computer programmer at all, but AI, especially in the place where it’s at right now with coding, allows you to create completely new platforms that are hyper specific to what your business is.
And so he is in the process of scaling this business to potentially become sustainable for him and his partner over the long run. I have another friend who was a digital nomad, who has a small business of making custom cups. And last time that I was hanging out with him, he was showing me how he vibe coded a program completely for that business where it would scrape emails, so that he could do cold reach outs to cafes to sell these cups, and another platform to allow his customers to put a, like a mock design on one of the cups, which, you know, saves him tons and tons of time.
So just seeing these couple of instances showed me, and I know a lot more people are doing it, showed me that there is a sense that a lot more is possible, and that people can either optimize their businesses, they could create businesses, or they could come up, well, yeah, I mean, they could use it as an iterative tool to come up with a business that’s going to work for them, and the lifestyle that they want to continue.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I think it’s so, I think it’s in its infancy. It’s like evolving in terms of artificial intelligence. But it lends itself very well, in my opinion, to being a digital nomad.
Maximilian, we’re going to have to leave it there. Really great research. And look, we’ll bring you back again next month.
Thanks so much for joining us. We’ll have you back again very soon.