In today's episode of The Speakers Life I talk with Kevin Cottam, speaker on the nomadic lifestyle.

• What speakers can learn from Harley Davidson branding
• Non-verbal communication
• Speaking in the round
• Understanding your performance space
• Expanding and contracting
• Entertainer vs Performer
• Fredrik Haren
• Signposts
• Finding your inner theme
• Writing 'The Nomadic Mindset' book
• Finding the stories
• What does being nomadic mean?
• The movement of the mind
• The power of the circle
• Freedom and flexibility
• Starving the body
• The Berber's of Morrocco
• Three cups of tea
• From service to hospitality
• Simplicity and agility
• Nomadic, builder, settler
• Seeing the opportunities
• The gig economy
• Cognitive flexibility
• https://www.thenomadicmindset.com

Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript

Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.

Hey, there is James Taylor. I'm delighted today to have on the Speakers Life, Kevin Cottam. Kevin is a speaker, and author who writes and things and talks all about the idea of the nomadic mindset. We learn a lot more about that today and how that relates to us as speakers. But he didn't start out as a speaker, he actually started out as a figure skater in his native Canada. And we're going to learn about that how you go from being a figure skater into the world of professional speaking. But today, what he's able to do is he travels all around the world, talking and talking to different types of nomads. And it's my real pleasure to have him on our show today. So welcome, Kevin.

It's always a great time to spend with James. Thank you very much. So share with us what's going on in your life just now. Well, what's going on in my life right now is is the book the nomadic mindset never settle for too long is having its live launch in Singapore tomorrow, which I'm very excited about in the in the group thing about it is a fun place. In actual fact, it's going to be a partnership between the wise which is a relocation company, and Chapman CG, which is that executive search company for, for HR professionals only. And it's going to be held at the Harley Davidson show. Wow, that's a classic brand. I mean, amazing. I mean, and I even added I did some research, you know, who rides Harley's? Why do they ride Harley's What is it, and it's really, they are truly nomadic, the ones that go out there. And I was very interested to see some of the qualities and understanding about the freedom and the carefree ness, the community, the ability to just travel and also but most of all, just, you know, the freedom of which is the end the independence, which I think is extremely important. And I think, for all of us as speakers, this is one thing that we may sometimes forget about is this Nomad ism, which is within us, and that we need to constantly bring that forth for our creativity. And I know that you do that an awful lot through all of the work you do. And you've got your tentacles in so many different places. And, and I love that about you because there's like there's no borders with you. And I think that that's it's such a refreshing space to be in. And that's where we speak is without borders, maybe that needs to be a new nonprofit that we started to go. So take us way back. Wait, where did I think I mentioned that you're from Canada, originally. And you started out in the world of figure skating? So how does a figure skater become a professional speaker Tell us about that journey?

Well, I mean, I was involved in Figure Skating at a very high level. And I used to choreograph basically with them, and I would coach them along the way to become better performers. Right. And that was really the important thing. And it was also about extracting, you know, like fighter does extract to their inner theme is that I was trying to extract this creativity within figure skaters to make them the best look that they could be at that time. And I think that, so going into speaking was a more of a natural transition, because I went from speaking to filmmaker as a, as a filmmaker, a short dance filmmaker, I was also a dancer. So there was all a variety of different aspects of entertainment. And, but it was all nonverbal, most of my life. So now it was like, Oh, my God, I got to use my voice. And I got to speak in a different way instead of just my physicality, which I think is a very, very different piece. So that's how I sort of transitioned and I, I knew that there was more to life than simply figure skating and I left figure skating and around 2003 however, I did my last show for holiday a nice in 2008, eight. So I think of of a skating rink, you know, that's a big canvas to be working on. You know, you love space, in terms of in terms of speakers, you know, we speak in different sizes of rooms, sometimes it's really small and intimate. The time is a huge arena, that's an arena the other day in Istanbul, and you have to use your your physical energy has to change in the room the way you project. And so what was what were some of the things that you learned from that kind of nonverbal side of being able to communicate on a, in a pretty big space, when you're talking about often thousands of people. I mean, first of all, you have to recognize that if you're in a big space, like a stadium, that generally it is it circling around, just like in the old historical days of the Coliseum, everything is in the circle in the round.

And when you are in the circle in the round, there is obviously a different audience all the time. And so you need to be able to pinpoint where certain people are, where the judges are, where the TV cameras are, you need to have this real focus. So you're actually looking at a pretty low level a lot of the time, and instead of actually looking up and, and when you do end up looking up a lot of the time and expanding outwards, it becomes a real challenge for a lot of the skaters. And so it's about, it's about really understanding space. And I think that's one of the things that is very difficult for speakers is they don't understand space, they don't know how to fill the body, the body fills the space. And how do I do that on a proscenium stage, which is most of the time, what speakers are on. And I think that that is you narrowing your focus, instead of expanding and narrowing expanding and expanding and narrowing. And I think that that is one of the things that I also learned from nomadic cultures, is this whole concept of being very expensive, but being able to narrow in and make decisions. And I think that this is also relates back to your space that you're in, because no man is live a lot of the time in these very wide expansive places. So that, again, is something for us as speakers to relate to as to how to how to minimize and also to maximize, in very, very fast way. And I think that that's what also entertainers are having to do on an ongoing basis is, you know, the play stadiums. And, and I, we've talked a lot, and you've talked a lot about presence in the past, and there's a difference between an entertainer and a performer. Right. And I think that this is extremely important is that there are certain entertainers, like I would say that, for example, Tina Turner is a performer. And, and Madonna is an entertainer. And a lot of the entertainers, they need a lot of backup, they need a lot of other stuff around them to make the whole thing and entertainment. Whereas for if you ever experienced Tina Turner, is her presence is so powerful if you can sitting in a 60,000 seat to perform a stadium, and she can come on stage and you're like blown away, and but you may be sitting in the back. And that's that powerful energy. And that, as you have talked about also comes from that authenticity. Yeah, if I came from that real inner self, and as you talk about, I'm reminded of a concert I saw many years ago with with Tony Bennett, in the Royal Albert Hall in London, and came out on stage, you know, right before I came on was probably five and a half thousand 6000 people there.

You know, and it's, you know, the come over the beginning, there's an energy, but then one point. So that's the kind of expanding part. And then some point in the set. It all went like this. And it was just him and the mic and the piano player. And it felt like you in a really small little jazz club. And it was just you and him. And he was he was speaking to you, I thought was an incredible skill as a performer to be able to create a connection and communicate in that type of way. So you can be big when you need to be. But then you can also bring people in and you can contract in that way. I love I love. I love the idea of that idea about the entertainer performer. Because I've seen I've seen Tony Bennett's Raiders technical writer and it's not very complex. bottles of water I think some towels and the pianos I think it's actually very simple. So I think he's in that probably that performer camp, you're talking here?

Because I think you know, like today, I mean, a lot of the time, you know, we're all asked to be okay, let's if you gotta entertain. And you know, I feel sometimes when I say that, when I hear that it's like, Okay, I'm a stand up comedian or something like that, or I'm a monkey or, you know, you're asking the entertainer, I would prefer to move towards the idea of a performer. And I think that that I think we as speakers. That's a hard transition. And I'm not really sure how it happens, because it really comes from the inside. Yeah. And I think that that is really one of the most challenging things. So for example, I mean, when you see people like Dame Maggie Smith, or you see the great, you know, some of the old great stars, you know, and you just think how do they do that? And the people that can play a game what we're talking about here, people that can can move from theater to camera, so it's like why to very narrow right is how do you do that? It's a very different skill. Absolutely. say they're able to do this based so you talk about this idea of nomadic mindset. So first of all, let's Where did this idea of of being interested in nomads and nomadic lifestyle nomadic mindset, where did this originate from? Tell us that that that inception of the journey

is great. I love telling this part because you know, Frederick Heron very well. And, you know, so I think a lot of it is about signposts. And so what I share with you is this is about signposts. And it's about looking at signposts and finding when they come into your life or appear in your life. And you think, you know, maybe that's useful at some point, and maybe it's not. However, what's happened was, and I guess, 2017, I realized when I went home to Canada at one point, and winter, it was go back to Adam, November 28. And I know December 28. And it was cold this one year. And I thought, I live in Singapore part time and I thought, why am I coming back here at this time of year? There was no reason before there was a reason because of my mother. But she passed away for two years, but I can continue to do the same old same old bread. Anyway, I decided I'm a global nomads, so I don't need to do this anymore. And that's when I started to think about this is a brand. So then I had I got a mentorship with with Frederick. And when I go back to Singapore, Frederick said to me, and I had my first session with Frederick case, which was do the inner theme, right is to extract that anything from it. And he got curious, what is a global Nomad? And so he asked me a lot of questions. You know, what is it? How does it feel? What would you do if you're a global Nomad, etc. And then he would do his entomology and, you know, to look at many ways about what is the word? What is no man? What does it mean? And through the conversation, and he said, Well, you know, you need to write a book if you're going to be credible. And you need to if you're going to be a great speaker, a successful speaker that you need to have a platform. So is it what's the platform? It's around the Nomad. Isn't it? Nice. And yeah, it is. It's called the nomadic mindset. And he went, Wow, that's a great idea. I said, I've never heard of that. I've never really thought about it. I've never heard anybody speak. And he said, that's your platform. That's your theme. So I thought, Okay, so what's that theme? And so then he said, Okay, now you need to research to write the book. Oh. And he said, Yeah, you need to talk to at least 100 executives and different sized companies. And then you need to spend time with at least three nomadic cultures around the world. And I went, oh. So now this has become a real problem in my mind into my heart, like, Oh, no, what about how I gonna do this? And so anyway, I said, Can I just do the Nomad stuff by just anthropologically going to the, you know, the online and just checking out? He said, No, no. You have to go and live with them, you have to go and eat with them, you have to go in and listen to them, you have to go and observe them, you have to spend time with them on their daily, you just have to be that why because this is the experience. And these are stories that will enrich not only the findings that you have when you combine executive, and also the qualities of nominates, but now you will have a body of work.

So that's how it came about. So I set off the journey went off and practice one for what he does that a number of speakers he's done in a theme, helping them pretty car and finding those themes. And the reason I've heard him talk a number of the speakers as well about why you should go and do what you've just done, which is going to interview all those people go and live that way really go you know, go deep, go deep. And and he said, if you don't do that the danger is you become which is like talking about music, you become like a cover band. Yeah, you're covering other people's songs, your UK, many other people stories, instead of being an original last second, David Barry, or, you know, someone else telling these stories. I'm you know, I sat there one night with this tribe in Mongolia. And I asked him What does being romantic mean to you? And and then you tell that story or working with that co what is what does that mean to you? These are your stories. Now other people are going to now come and use your stories, and they're going to repeat your stories. Originally, I think I think that's when you know, you've you've kind of arrived when you hear third party, your story is getting repeated.

You know, okay, that's why it says like, you know, they're doing your cover story, right? So, I give the nomadic mindset. And, you know, you what, how does that relate to speakers, though? this audience? You know, speakers up here that we have to do we travel, obviously, as speakers. But is there a deeper sense of this, this link between magic and being a professional speaker? Well, first of all, I think that we have to look at what does nomadic mean. And I think that most people think that nomadic means to move from place to place to find new pastures. That's a physical geographical movement. So here comes the stories, right, so I'm sitting in Mongolia lounge, and there's a woman who Frederick is also there with me. And he says, You need to ask her a couple of questions. And so I asked her, What is the meaning of Nomad, and she is the head of the branding Council of Mongolia. And she said, Well, as I said, most people think of it as moving from place to place to find new pastures. And she said, no, no. She paused. And she looked, she said, No, it means the movement of the mind,

the movement of the mind, the movement of the mind. And so if this is the movement of the mind, then what it how does that? How What's that got to do with speakers, speakers, as speakers, we have to keep our mind moving. We have to keep our ideas moving, we cannot stick with one story and just beat it to death. And change just a few words. And whichever we need to find new stories, as we've all talked about, but that's being nomadic. And that's been moving the mind around moving, how can I contextualize this in a different way? How can I see it from the audience's point of view in a very different way? Who am I truly talking to? And how can I be one with them. And it's about if you are a nomadic, in this feeling you are about community, community is very strong for nomads, and it's about getting yourself into the community. And it's also about embracing the circle. So like you said, about this circle here, on the painting, it's nomads, as you know, will sit in circles, that is called in certain parts of the world, that's called a modulus. And they sit in a circle on the ground, there's nothing in between you, there's no tables, there's nothing. And this goes back historically, because that's the power of the circle, the energy that goes around it. And that as a speaker, we need to see even if we're on the proscenium is that we need to see this as a complete circle in front of us. So when we're part of that embrace of the circle, it's like people putting the arms around you, that's what everybody's doing, and you're in it. So this is part of the nomadic thinking, as we come back to, as you said, about skating is about that circle in the room. It's an embrace of the circle. So that's a piece that I think that we can relate to, as it's what we need for speakers for actual performance. And, but it's there's no madness, of being able to be flexible, the freedom to speak on different platforms to be freedom to speak in different with different people in subjects. And also, it is this adaptability and flexibility to be able to move. For example, within a speech, you know how sometimes we get lost. And we have to go, that's a signpost for us to go there. It's not like, but it's a signpost is it? Ah, let's go around that and see what we can discover.

And I actually sometimes I even make a point. If I feel I'm getting a little bit too complacent in speeches, I will actually put send myself down dark alleys on purpose. In order to just raised heart rate a little bit closer, I'm getting out of this, I have no idea. Because it feels it feels it feels more live, then the audience It feels like for them, it's always going to feel Wow, this, you know, we didn't we didn't expect that. I didn't expect that as a speaker. So you're creating that, that sense of community, I guess, as well. And there's a there's an interplay there. So when we think about nomads, the thing I think about a lot of nomads is obviously a sense of freedom, freedom of the mind, you talk about this idea of agility, and I think it's especially interesting just now, where you having a lot of millennials, who are deciding not to buy traditional houses, and they buy things like tiny houses, living, you know, living in a different way. I think this we're starting to see this as a trend that's going on. But there is that thing, whether you know, I know from my family background into more than that Gypsy side of things, Roman ships he's in you have the boat caravans of Gypsy, so there's something that travels around, or whether you have you Mongolia, imagine it'd be the 10th, or the Middle East, you're gonna have to tense. So we do need a certain amount of things, which provide a holiness, a sense that will no matter where we're traveling, there has that when it comes to speakers of using anything in terms of speakers that what is that tent that they're carrying around for either physically or mentally those things which allow them to have some sense of comfort, and familiarity, even though everything else is very, very different.

I think that you know, I don't know about yourself, but I often will take things that are familiar with me in my kit, or bag and like you have done, and so that I know, those are familiar pieces for me. But I also like to think I like to be able to explore and to take things which are not. So I love to be able to explore a hotel room, or a hotel and complete and define what, what is what is new, what is something that I can maybe put into my speech, if I'm in this hotel, what can I then think about as a new piece. Because you know what's important, and with any entertainer or any performer is that you have to find something new in every performance so that it doesn't become stagnant. So it's about working on something new, it's about maybe a new story, it's maybe a new twist a new word, or whichever, but it's about finding something new. So that feels fresh all the time. So I think that there's things that you carry with you. And you don't want a lot. So yes, the nomads carry things with them. Big, but they don't carry a lot simply because they know they have to move. They don't want a lot of possessions, they only want things that are useful and used. They don't want to things instead of pretty things or whichever, you know, they don't necessarily have that or if there is something which is a spiritual placing, for example, they are in most of the yurts, they because they're Buddhist in Mongolia, they will have a section which is like their spiritual prayers and their their trinkets and there are everything that goes along with that. What they do, they're able to pack up in 20 minutes, tear everything down in 20 minutes and build in 20 minutes. So there's a lightness that come there's

a light. And with that lightness, if we carry too many things with us, like a you know, like the our equipment and things like that that's carrying heavy stuff. It's carrying things, we need to be light as speakers like to be ready physically, mentally and spiritually, to be on stage as a complete lightness. If that is doing yoga is doing vocal, it's doing exercises eating like it what is what is it, it's about keeping that body like, for example, when I was a dancer, is that I had a hard time digesting meat. Now, I don't know how this has got to do with speaking but it's about the lightness that you want to have when you're performing is it there's no point in having a heavy meal before you go on. If I knew that I had a hard time digesting meat. And so I became a vegetarian. And through that I was able to then digest very quickly. And I believe that in fact, you want to as a body, you want to starve it a bit before you get on stage. Drink water, but starve your body. And I say starve it because you are then opening up to lightness and you're opening up to more freedom. And you're opening up to possibilities. And that's very nomadic. Yes. Think, I think, what do you do?

Yeah, I'm exactly the same, I don't eat before, before I speak. I usually am drinking quite a lot of water in advance of it. Because I know it also not so much in terms of inside the man's bed in terms of the body and the body. I know it takes about two hours for that water to be fully you go into the cells and everything. So I'm drinking quite a lot of water. The only thing I'll occasionally have before I go on stage is maybe a banana or something very, very late. But when I come offstage, you know, yeah, you because I think you're you've been using all the energy on stage. And you might not have eaten, and you come offstage. And I think there is. And so actually, I've seen a number of conference organizers recently that really understood speakers. And I did one recently, where as soon as we came offstage, it was actually in, in Bogota, Colombia, coming off stage, and they actually had some massage therapists there as well. And that I mean, because you obviously you're using your body, I find most people will hold tension somewhere in their body. Anyone speaking. So that could be in your hands, it could be your neck in the back and neck, legs, wherever it is. That is great. I love absolutely love that to be able to have something like that. And then I've seen another friend of mine was speaker. He worked with a client recently. And they said, they asked him in advance, but we can advance. What do you love? What's your kind of food you really love? And we're going to make sure that when you come off stage after you've done meeting people, we're going to have that there for nothing. That's awesome. That's really nice. That's that's going from service to hospitality. This is it, which is I know is a big thing in a lot of nomadic cultures, this idea of hospitality, as well. So what can we be doing as speakers to be taking some of that idea of hospitality being welcoming and and how we work that with our clients and our audiences?

is a great question. And I think that it's really leads very strongly into the the understanding of what the manga what the Berbers do in Morocco, is that you've all heard of mint tea, right? And the tea Sam and Moroccan tea seminar where they do this dance up and down to pour it into this little shot glass. But do people don't know that there's a real history behind that and the meaning. And it really is, you have to have three cups of tea. And the whole idea of three cups of tea there's a sir horror and proverb which says the first cup is as bitter as death. The second is as mild as life. And the third is as light as loud as a beautiful proverb. And that can be anything in our lives. However, the first cup of tea is very important. And you start the conversations and you start to and it's all about extracting information, sharing information. And then you go through the second cup of tea, and then you go through the third cup of tea, but you want to prolong the tea as much as possible, because you're gaining for them. It's about gaining safety for the road is gaining, who are your alliances? Who are what is the information that you're gathering and sharing? And why are you here, and you do it completely in the round without tables so that you are there is nothing between you. And I think that the important thing about this is that it's understandable when you move around from different in the in the Sahara to different homes, and to different places, which you might be a tent, or it might be concrete, one room, whatever it might be, is that their tradition is they must welcome you. And they don't know who you are, but they must welcome you. And this whole thing of the three cups of tea is an extremely important and never is the same as British right is having their tea ceremony. It's about the social aspect of habit, we are too much into the speed of transactional information, get that tea over with coffee over that drink over, you know, get on with the next part of business. No, this is about getting this is about developing relationships. This is all about relationship.

And there is there is different in terms of the cultures as well. And going on there I met the first when I first moved to America, to the US. And obviously things are much more transactional there is Get to the point. And and I know that they say in Asia, that that it's not like that as much. But I think that's not true. I think there's parts of Asia, which are very quite transactional. And other parts which are a little bit little bit slower, as well. And for me, that was always a case of like just trying to figure out which Who am I am I interacting with here? Am I interacting with a very North American more transactional style of culture, clash in the UK is quite a lot like that now as well. Yeah, my working with him, for example, in Middle East or Japan will have long periods of just conversation warming, things up seeing building that trust before you even get into and I think we can fall foul of sometimes of not recognizing it. If you're a nomad, moving into a new place and you field with a new culture you haven't interact with not recognizing that difference and trying to figure out, you know, where do we where do we go with this?

Yeah, I think that, you know, your original question was really how do we deal with that with the, you know, clients or even I, you can actually look at it as an audience. And so when you're performing in actual fact is, what are the three cups of tea that I'm having with my audience? And how am I not necessarily gaming or gathering information, but you are in a very sort of energetic way you're gathering information as you feel the room? Because you're that you have these pulsations. Right. And I think that from not only that, but how you are sharing the information, how is it that you're giving it to them, and I think that it's and that's what's going to hold the for the 45 minutes or the tour 30 minutes or 20 minutes, whatever you're doing is remembering these common little nomadic traits is about we are sharing, we are gathering information we are serving, and we are there as one, not just as many people but as one. And how to translate the topic that you're now known for this nomadic mindset into what we call a fundable speech or a fundable keynote, where a corporate client will say, actually, this is right, have you have you had to tweak the messaging and and think about how they relate to that CEO who has a billion dollar company and has all these stresses and the shareholders are giving them hassle and MMOs new product launch? How do you relate the nomadic mindset to that type of audience?

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I not sure that I've hit it just yet. However, I suspect that because this is relatively new in the last year. So I'm playing around tweaking with it, I have so much content, and so many different directions that I can go with a nomadic mindset, that it's about, you know, being simple like nomads, instead of putting way too much into it. And I would say that, you know, I'm playing still with what works and what doesn't work. I'm mixing a variety of story and metaphor of the nomadic journeys, and with also with what is in the real world, and what needs to be done. So there's a very practical piece in one of my speeches, because in the book, I actually don't just talk about the nomadic mindset. But I talked about three mindsets that live within all of us, and one is nomadic one is builder, and when a settler. And I think that these are extremely important for executives to understand that in one way, we have all those winners, we have a dominance of one more than another, remembering that we have a variety of different individuals within our company, but they have different mindsets. And they have, and they may have the same men similar skills, but the mindset is what puts it into action, those skills. And so you need to have people in the right places at the right time for the right evolution of your organization. And then you can also look at mindset, these mindsets from a trend of evolutionary, of an organization where they in a mind nomadic women, they build their women, the settler, and they become dinosaur, because they did not transition back to becoming nomadic in their thinking pattern, and their strategies and visions. So I'm playing around with a lot of the different story. And so for example, tomorrow on Thursday, I'm starting to use start off with the desert. And, and I think that what is also very important here is is that I talked about the desert, and then I saw I transition from there into isn't a beautiful place that I taught really, it can be people can see it from different forms. And this is about mindset. And then I talked about this fellow, say exactly, and I say exactly says that nomads see everything is an opportunity.

So consequently, then I say okay, everything is an opportunity, even the desert is an opportunity to them. And then I move it back to well, you know, it was an opportunity for you to come today but accept the invitation come to Harley, the Harley and try out a Harley. But also to learn something new. This is a this is about finding that nomadic ness in what is an opportunity. So I twist, I'm trying to twist things around. And I think I think the topic you speak on as well. There also is a lot of I can see a lot of correlations there around where we're going in terms of few your work with agility. simplicity, you mentioned there as well, the use of tools. And we're having a whole bunch of different types of tools. Now artificial intelligence, all these kind of different tools are still fundamentally there, their tools to allow us to do different things, obviously, we're seeing a huge rise in the gig economy. teams. So all these things as you talk about some of these things in in this nomadic mindset, I actually there's a lot of, there's a lot of interesting commonalities of what's going on just now in the in the broader world, what we can, we can apply. So you've got the book coming out.

It's already out actually great. It's, it's online, it says, and it's out in the bookstores in Singapore now, which is great. And tomorrow will be the live launch, I just want to talk a little bit, just go back to what you were just saying about the Giga home and the change in the data, you know, digital transformation, etc. In this particular form. And we talked about digital nomads today. And I think that there's a very important factor that one of the people that I interviewed it is Carolyn Hendricks from sabbatical in, in Estonia. And she says, you know, we have to get rid of the old agreements that are created politically, and also, institutionally within organizations, there's a lot of old agreements of how we see things, how we do things, how we say, No, this is in this channel, this is in this box, this is in this box. And that is what today is about. Because we're moving fast. And we're using the digital, we're moving out of those old agreements. And we need to think that as speakers as well as we need to move out of the old agreements we have made with ourselves, and also how we see speaking, is it's I think that we need to start looking at it from a much more broader perspective. And because you know, how we get channeled into, this is the way things are. And, you know, when we look at the younger speakers of today, they didn't have those borders, and we need to get rid of the borders. And I don't end the mental borders as well as the physical borders, which of course everybody hates, but then you know, you as a gypsy coming back from that.

Gypsies hate borders, everybody, you know, so if there is none. So I think that you know, what you're talking about there as extremely valuable as today is this nomadic mindset, we need to we can look at it from a perspective of what's happening in the gig economy, digital economy, everything, as you're talking about. And but the other thing that I think that we need to think about James and and that is, I think those are long for speakers, but also, what I've been talking with digital transformation is and that is that is this concept of interconnectivity is that we talk an awful lot about Ave any connection, we need connection, yeah, we need connection with the people in whichever. But this is, this is only of small piece, when you see and spend time with nomads, and if you think back actually in your in, in your inner cellular DNA of your Gypsy knows is that there's an interconnectedness with not only yourself, but others animals and universe, spirit, you name, it is all interconnected. And when you watch nomads in the world, in their own land, it's just complete walking of interconnectivity, they know everything that's going on, they can tap into it. Now, as I talked to people in the engineers, and whichever and digital transformation is that they're not interconnected enough, it's still siloed. And this is going to be a danger. And this is a danger. I believe, for all of us. When we move into these. It's like, I see an app. Okay, but why isn't that app completely? Why is it just this app? And why is it not interconnected with another, another and another of another? And so we need to have these interconnections? I think that's where we need to go is thinking that way.

And I think that's that's maybe a wandering around that that optimism, Holly Davison's perfect example. Where in terms of the values, values I would imagine of Harley Davidson is around freedom. That is gonna be around freedom. But at the same time, they have very strong community. And they I mean, they have their badges and, and even the partners of the Harley Davidson riders, they have their own language festivals. So I think that the idea of freedom, it doesn't have to be an ego individualistic thing. And I think that's really one of the things you have the nomadic side and how the game is, and actually, you can get an increasing level of freedom when you are actually part of a community. So is it isn't is, what was that expression as the phrase that, you know, the ability to hold two contrasting ideas in the mind the same time. And I think a lot of time we're talking about freedom is to have as an individualistic type of thing any of the can be that's that's one way of looking at it. But I think in a lot of those kind of communities is the balancing those two different things.

Yeah. And I think that's what comes into today the skill of what's called cognitive flexibility. And I think that that's extremely important there. I could go on about a test study that was done with the him bu in Namibia, and also Westerners. And which was very interesting to study and to study kind of goes like this, that they were given equally the same questions. And what came out first of all, was the Himba were much more cognitively flexible than the Westerner. And so then they went back and they said, okay, but, you know, the the Westerners, you're able to take sidesteps, you're allowed to look around your life to expand your thinking pattern here. So only when they were told that they were allowed to do that, then they came up, pretty much equal. So what is that saying? You know, it saying a lot about our educational system is the way we think that we're thinking, Okay, linear. Know, this is the wrong way, as far as I'm concerned, that is that circle is we need to think circular.

Absolutely. So the book is now where's the best place people to go to learn more about the book? And also that you you're speaking to what you're doing just now? Yeah, I mean, the best place is at my website, which is www dot the nomadic mindset.com. And then as close as you know, there's the hash tag, the nomadic mindset. And then it most of the stuff is there online and on the website at this point in time, and it's growing as we go along. And I think that, you know, just following me on LinkedIn, and or Facebook, I have a fake nomadic mindset, facebook, facebook page, as well. And I think that, you know, just following in that particular, and I'm really open to chat chatting with people in as much as possible about this, because I have to say that I believe this is a movement. And this is the movement that I want to share. Because I think that is I think the world and we have speakers and a lot of people have become very narrow in our thinking, even though think we think we're very expansive. But I think we need to be able to much more expensive. And so we need to have that flow back and forth. And so that's why I want to create this as a movement of expansion.

Well, it's been a joy seeing obviously, your speakers you member as well as the joy seeing how your career starting to flourish with the book. And you've really you found your, your thing, your founder, amazing. And so now it's just a case of like building now you can be on stage, I'm sure. All over the world traveling all over the world sharing this message is a great message. So Kevin, thank you so much for coming on today. For all the links here on the show notes. If we will go and check out Kevin, check out the book, get a copy of the book as well. I wish you all the best wherever you are in the world. Hopefully we'll get a chance to share stage together at some point in the future. I want to share a stage with you so we can talk about Nomadism. And thank you very much, James, this has been a brilliant time. I mean, you're a great host, and you're a great guy. So I mean, thank you very much for your wisdom because you really have you have helped me in a considerable amount. And I think that you know, it's going to happen in the future that I can learn a lot more from you. And so I like that trade in the new year. Thank you very much.

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