Nomad Capitalist: How to Reclaim Your Freedom with Offshore Bank Accounts, Dual Citizenship, Foreign Companies, and Overseas Investments

by Andrew Henderson

The most common cause of up-and-coming markets, however, is purely organic growth. Quite simply, the population of the world is growing, particularly in emerging countries where populations tend to be younger. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to discover these countries.

Cambodia is just one of many frontier markets where conditions are right for an adventurous entrepreneur to come in and create a successful business on the ground. You literally have the entire world to work with.

I find so much more excitement in a place like Mexico where things are developing and growing instead of a place where they are developed and stagnant.

Emerging market countries include places like Brazil, Russia, India, China, Chile, Malaysia, Eastern Europe, Turkey, South Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, and others.

If you want a wide-open playing field as a global entrepreneur, I suggest you look to frontier markets.

From a less profit-minded perspective, the first benefit of frontier market entrepreneurship is the knowledge that you are contributing to the growth and development of other countries. The reasons these countries are open and accessible to foreign entrepreneurs is because they would love to have your contribution. That is why they have policies that encourage you to come there.

At the end of the day, solving simple, everyday problems in simple ways is what entrepreneurship is all about. I just so happen to believe that it is a lot easier to not only get started and to do business but also to be successful in emerging and frontier economies.

The model that many expat entrepreneurs and digital nomads have followed has been to move to Southeast Asia, enjoy the low costs of living and freedom from US income taxes, and make money selling a productized service or other offering to Americans back home over the internet. This strategy has often included following the Four Hour Workweek model of outsourcing your technical work to people in India, the Philippines or another less developed country.

Low Per Capita GDP: Countries with low per capita GDP have room to grow, but the best combination to look for is a country with low per capita GDP where both institutions and the workforce are undergoing a transformation.

High Population Growth: This leads to an ample working-age population, which can give a powerful boost to GDP under the right conditions.

Health: Good health is essential for growth and productivity. Data on life expectancy can give you a general idea of the overall health of a population.

Urbanization: Larger cities can increase productivity in frontier economies because they encourage economies of scale in production and distribution.

Widespread Tech Usage: Knowing basic statistics like the number of mobile phone subscribers in a country is vital to future success.

Ease of Doing Business: This is a crucial factor to take into consideration when determining which markets will not only be open to your business but also make life easier when it comes to setting up and running your business.

the likes of Vietnam and Indonesia are not adventurous enough for you, Laos is the final frontier market I would recommend considering in Southeast Asia. Just like in Cambodia, the middle class is growing. The mountainous terrain of Laos makes it seem a world apart, as if it were a country that has never been exposed to the outside world,

The country of Georgia is the kind of place where everything is easy. If you have a big enough idea, they are open to hearing it, there is very little bureaucracy, everyone you deal with in the government and elsewhere is young, and it is easy to get land. Everything is easy. The fees are low, taxes are just 15% and the government is open and eager to make things happen.

Malaysia has a program where, if you have a business that pays enough tax, they will give you a residence permit.

One place you may have never considered is Colombia. Anyone looking to start a business there can get the added benefit of a second residency in Colombia with as little as $20,000 in capital that you can spend immediately on your company. You can get the residency without hiring locals, but you have to show that something is going on in order to qualify and the easiest way to show that many times is to hire someone. If you have been planning on starting a company or were already planning on investing $20k in your current company, you can deposit that money into a Colombian bank account and then use it to build your business there and qualify for residency.

When I go to a new country, I start by hiring a great lawyer. I overpay them. They then introduce me to other people that I need to connect with – real estate agents, developers, government officials, the ‘who’s who’ of the local entrepreneurship scene. My lawyer then helps me figure out how to place job ads and does stuff that even a lawyer usually would not do. He or she becomes my point man. From there, my lawyer might hire an assistant and together they go out and bring in people with properties and companies. They ferret out the bad ideas and then I talk to the best of the best. It is as simple as that.

Companisto, for example, allows you to invest as little as five euros into start-ups and growth companies throughout Europe.

If you want to trade stocks in Mongolia, you will need to personally visit the country and set up a brokerage account. It is the same deal with real estate. Doing market research in a foreign language, finding contractors in a place where services do not usually meet international standards, or simply finding a grocer to buy the food you want while you are there are all challenges that most people do not want to deal with. That is why there is an opportunity for people like us who are willing to go through with it.

After years of doing this, I prefer the risks of frontier markets and all things offshore in comparison to the risk of becoming entrenched in systems that no longer work. I would rather be at the forefront of the new economy than following the herd.

There is nothing as crucial as being on the ground when it comes to doing business in a frontier market. The best and often only way to learn about the opportunities in any given country is not from reading blogs or calling lawyers but from boots-on-the-ground intelligence.

My friend started his business riding around on his motorbike looking for deals that were not available publicly. He learned the Khmer language for ‘for sale’ and would write down the phone numbers from the signs he would find. Then, he hired an assistant to call the phone numbers. It was not glamorous at all. It was not the sort of work you learned about in the ivory tower of a business school, but it was exactly what needed to be done. Once he found a property, payment was made in cash and fingerprints were taken at the local town hall (which is like a hut) to seal the deal. More often than not, frontier markets will require this level of hands-on work.

One step you can take to both improve your chance of success and reduce the amount of work you must do on the ground is to network and find a foreign business partner. I have always focused on creating a strong network of locals who know the ins-and-outs of deal making in their specific market. Local associates substantially decrease your risk of being ‘ripped off’ and increase your chances of finding the best deals. If you want to hire someone for help, plan on overpaying a little bit. It will make a world of difference, especially if you are employing the help of an English language person working on the ground.

Frontier market investing is not for everyone. There are two types of people who are suited to this type of high-risk investing: someone with a large amount of risk capital or a young person who has nothing to lose.

you should probably just have someone handle it for you, to be honest. My recommendation: look into investment funds.

Figure out what level of risk (and adventure) you are willing to take on before deciding to invest in frontier markets and then go for it. Just know that by the time this stuff is no longer considered risky by the rest of the world, it will be too late to invest.

Despite my early efforts to tell my lawyers and assistants to ‘be more aggressive’ on certain deals, they knew better than I did and worked within the local culture. They knew how the deals could be made successfully. And they always came through for me. For example, I once saved nearly 30% on a property in Georgia by not only having one of my assistants call to negotiate the deal in Georgian but also by having my lawyer call and make a much more serious presentation. The deal was seamless and I saved a five-figure sum as a result of entrusting the process to professionals who understood the local culture.

For example, while it is the main method used in the West, turning to the internet to research real estate for sale in foreign countries is usually a terrible way to find potential properties in many emerging and frontier markets.

The second and more difficult issue was that the listings of interest had been sold four years earlier. Yes, my employee and I were speaking in our patchwork Spanish to a real estate agent who had not updated their website in four years.

Ecuador may not have been the easiest country to navigate for real estate, but it made for a great place to invest in a developing real estate market at entry-level prices. If you are willing to deal with issues like this that you will not likely run into at home, you will open yourself up to possibilities that are not even available where you are from.

Merida as a potential new international base. Kathy and Nate loved the area, they were enchanted by the city and felt that the whole region was a truly hidden gem of Mexico. Merida has free Wi-Fi on its main streets, everything is being renovated, and the beauty of the city is unparalleled.

More importantly, are you going to sacrifice half a million dollars in taxes more than you would like to pay just so you can eat cheap strawberries?

As long as we believe being ‘the greatest country in the world’ is a birthright, we’ll keep coasting on the achievements of earlier generations, and we’ll keep losing the moral high ground.”

Georgia, for example, is the first country in the world to be putting its real estate on the blockchain.

You want to find countries that are a bit self-conscious like that because they are more responsive to opportunities to change and improve. In a sense, you need to be the same way when it comes to your personal mindset toward growth.

the Filipino culture of micro-management. For the most part, there is no such thing as autonomy when tasks are handed out to workers in the Philippines. Bosses sit on employees at every turn. And that means employees have been trained to wait for assignments every step of the way.

made me realize that no amount of glamour or wealth or adventure is worth a life whose chief accomplishment is the collection of hotel statuses, airline miles, or meaningless countries on a list.

In other words, before making the Nomad Capitalist lifestyle a cause you promote, it has to be a cause you live. Once you apply it in your life, you will find the peace to allow others to live theirs. Not everyone will share your vision or even agree with what you do; that is for them to decide.

This is why I argue for a carefully curated network of friends while living this unique lifestyle; it is important to have people who understand your lifestyle but also to ensure that you do not fall into the trap of only hanging out with expats who insult the local culture in a dogmatic way, or angry grudge-bearing libertarians who only complain about the system instead of constantly improving.

As a Nomad Capitalist, nothing you do should be average. That does not mean everything has to be expensive. As my friend and marketing guru Matt Dubiel says, “Avoid the middle.” If you own a car, get the beat-up truck or the purring new BMW. Do not get stuck in the middle. When you live the Nomad Capitalist lifestyle, you can choose from tasty pad thai in Hua Hin, Thailand for $1, or Sichuan lobster medallion at Hutong in Hong Kong for $250.

my suggestion is to stay at nicer hotels or Airbnbs that you will not want to leave. Working from cafes and other digital nomad hangouts has a tendency to make you feel rushed in many situations, and bouncing from one Starbucks to another is not exactly productive. Test it out and see if you can notice the difference. Being a Nomad Capitalist is all about high performance – the old ‘work hard, play hard’ – and if you are earning the kind of money where the tax savings can add up to real money, you can afford to stay at a place with a few extra thread count.

One of my favorite tactics comes from the motivational speaker Joel Weldon who suggests that you shout out “I won’t pay it!” when a service provider gives you a price. Bewildered, the provider might offer to take 10% off the price, but Joel will suggest going the other direction. His philosophy is to never negotiate on price and, instead, even offer to pay more to make sure that your case is treated with the best care possible. In the offshore world, this is great advice.

simple principle: “Don’t say ‘yes’… either ‘hell yeah!’ or ‘no’.”

An excellent motivational technique involves swapping the words ‘I might’ or ‘I’m thinking about’ with ‘I will’ or ‘I won’t;’ similarly, replace ‘but’ with ‘and.’ There are so many options and possibilities in this world, but focusing on the ones you really need is critical to getting what is important done.

I have often theorized that most people are not really busy, but still claim to be so to avoid commitment while allocating plenty of time for television viewing and what they actually want to do. When you go where you’re treated best, however, you will be faced with more options for what you co...

There is great power in not making excuses and telling people ‘yes’ or ‘no’ promptly. So much so that it has helped me get the greatest results when I put myself on a clock.

And even taking action is not enough. You have to take the right action. Living the Nomad Capitalist lifestyle will present you with more opportunities than ever before and you will need to get good at screening out the ones that do not serve your specific end goals.

Whenever you feel the urge to complain about your circumstances, realize that by living the Nomad Capitalist lifestyle you are among the most free people in the history of the world. You are leaving behind the things that do not serve you, and that is something to be happy about.