Nomad Capitalist Chapter 14: Conquering Dogma - The Pigeons Do Not Speak English

Henderson is sitting in Wroclaw, Poland. It is Easter week. The city is empty because all the students went home to their villages. He finds a kebab shop, sits outside in the cold wind, and starts eating his shawarma. Two pigeons attack his food. He yells at them in English. “Go away, pigeons!”

An old man in a fedora walks by and says calmly: “The pigeons here don’t speak English.”

That one sentence is the entire chapter in six words. Why would pigeons in Poland understand English? Why would anyone in Poland operate the way Americans do? Why do we assume the whole world works like our home country?

This is chapter fourteen. And it might be the most important chapter in the entire book.

The Bubble We All Live In

Here is what Henderson is really talking about. Cultural isolation. You can fly to the other side of the planet, but if your brain stays home, you learned nothing. You are just a tourist with a laptop.

We all do this. We expect everyone to speak English. We expect shops to be open on holidays. We expect customer service to be fast and polite. We expect real estate websites to be updated in real time. None of this is guaranteed outside of your home country. And honestly? It is not always guaranteed inside your home country either.

Henderson says the first thing that changed for him when he left the US was his relationship with cars. In America, Canada, or Australia, not owning a car makes you look strange. People judge you. But when he moved to Kuala Lumpur, his local friends asked if he was buying a car, and he realized he had not even thought about it. Cars are depreciating assets. They need maintenance. They cost insurance. Who needs that when you can take an Uber for two dollars?

This is a small example but it shows something big. When you leave your home environment, you start to question things you never questioned before. Not because someone told you to. Because the new environment makes the old habits look silly.

I relate to this a lot. Growing up in the former Soviet Union, we had our own dogmas. Then the system collapsed and suddenly everything we were told was the “right way” turned out to be one of many possible ways. Moving to a new country does the same thing to your brain. It shakes loose all the assumptions you did not even know you had.

Adapting Your Approach

Henderson tells a great story about a guy named Jack from London. Jack flew to Tbilisi, Georgia to buy rental properties. At the first meeting with a seller asking $50,000, Jack opens with $39,000. Just like that. Cold. Aggressive. Like he is on a reality TV negotiation show.

In Georgia, that is not how it works. People take business personally. Lowball offers from strangers insult them. Henderson says he is just as aggressive as Jack by nature, but he learned something important. Let the locals handle local negotiations. His Georgian lawyer and translator saved him nearly 30% on a property, not by being aggressive, but by working within the culture. They knew how to talk, when to call, and how to present the offer seriously.

There is another story about Ecuador. Henderson’s friend was looking for land. They found a real estate website with nice listings. Called the company. Nobody spoke English. And the listings had been sold four years ago. The website had not been updated since then.

You could get angry and walk away. Or you could see the opportunity. If nobody speaks English and the website is outdated, that means the prices are not inflated for foreign buyers. The market is untouched by international competition. That is exactly where the deals are.

This is a pattern I have noticed in my own career in IT. The best opportunities are often in places that look messy from the outside. The clean, well-organized markets have already been optimized by everyone else. The messy ones still have room.

Becoming a Global Citizen

Henderson meets Kathy and Nate in Mexico. They are from Colorado and came to check out Merida. Nate is ready to move immediately. Kathy has concerns. What about the kids’ school? What about friends? What about her hairdresser Kim? Where will she find organic kale?

Henderson is honest. He did not know how to respond to the kale question. And I do not blame him.

But here is his point. You cannot wait until everything is perfectly figured out before you make a move. You will never find a place where your exact hairdresser exists, your exact grocery store is replicated, and your exact social circle is waiting for you. That is not how life works. You test things. You try new hairdressers. You discover that mango is better than kale anyway.

The same goes for British people who speak English everywhere they go, even in Brazil where nobody understands them. Henderson says that is okay when you start out. The point is not to be perfect from day one. The point is to change as you go. You will find your way.

I think this is important to hear. A lot of people never start because they are afraid of not being good at it. Good at what? Living? You figure it out. Nobody is born knowing how to live in a foreign country. You learn by doing it.

The Strawberry Problem

Henderson’s friend moved to Malaysia and discovered that strawberries cost 1,000% more than in Europe. Her friends would visit and she would send them to buy strawberries just to see their faces.

But Malaysia has papaya, dragon fruit, jackfruit, coconut, pineapple. You lose strawberries and gain twenty tropical fruits you never tried. Is that a bad trade?

And here is the math that matters. If you are saving $500,000 in taxes by living in Malaysia, you can afford the expensive strawberries. But you could also just eat the dragon fruit and stop worrying about it.

This is what dogma looks like in everyday life. We cling to small familiar comforts and use them as reasons not to make big beneficial changes. I have done it myself. “But I like my local coffee shop.” Meanwhile the tax savings could buy you a coffee plantation.

Business Dogma

Henderson extends this to business. Vietnam, he says, is actually very open to foreigners. More open than China or Japan, where tight family networks make it nearly impossible for outsiders to break in. Vietnamese businesses often prefer working with foreigners.

But you still cannot do business in Vietnam the way you do it in London. If you open a shop, you will need to pay respect to local authorities. It will not be expensive, but it is part of the game. Accept it and move on.

He also talks about hiring virtual assistants in the Philippines. Many entrepreneurs complain that their Filipino VAs are not proactive. They wait for instructions at every step. Henderson says that is not laziness. It is culture. In the Philippines, bosses micro-manage everything. Workers are trained to wait for direction. If you give a Filipino VA a vague task and expect them to figure it out themselves, you are applying your culture to their work style. It will not work.

This hit close to home for me. In IT I have worked with teams from many countries. The ones who assumed everyone works like Americans always had the most problems. The ones who adapted to the local work culture got better results with less frustration.

More Reasons to Stay

Henderson wraps up with something personal. He talks about the movie “Up in the Air” with George Clooney. When he first watched it years ago, the character who flew 350,000 miles a year and spent 322 days in hotels inspired him. That was the life he wanted.

Years later he rewatched it. This time he saw something different. A life whose biggest accomplishment is collecting hotel statuses and airline miles is empty. But Henderson says his own nomad life turned out different from Clooney’s character. Along the way he built real friendships. He found places that feel like home. He grew as a person because other cultures taught him things his own culture never could.

The western media still shows “third world countries” as dusty roads with begging children. Henderson saw a TV drama where a character threatened to send someone to Bucharest, Romania as punishment. Romania. A member of the European Union. A country with fast internet, beautiful architecture, and a thriving tech scene. The ignorance would be funny if it was not so damaging.

But you can use that ignorance to your advantage. While everyone fights for venture capital funding back home, you can tap into emerging markets that nobody is looking at. Less competition. More opportunity. Faster growth.

Key Takeaway

The whole chapter comes down to one idea. The way things are done in your country is not the only way. It is not even the best way most of the time. It is just the way you are used to.

If you can let go of that, everything else becomes easier. Negotiating in Georgia. Finding real estate in Ecuador. Eating dragon fruit instead of strawberries. Hiring people from different cultures. Living without a car. All of it.

Henderson says the pigeons do not speak English. But neither does most of the world. And that is not a problem. That is an opportunity. The question is whether you are willing to stop shouting in English at Polish pigeons and start learning how things actually work in the places where you want to be.

You do not have to be perfect at it. You just have to start.

Book: Nomad Capitalist by Andrew Henderson | ISBN: 9798461831486

Previous: Chapter 13 - Frontier Markets Next: Chapter 15 - The Nomad Mindset

Part of the Nomad Capitalist series