Nomad Capitalist Chapter 15: The Nomad Mindset - 8 Ways to Activate the Life of Your Dreams

Henderson is standing on a stage in Cancun, Mexico. It is January 2016. He is at his own conference called Passport to Freedom. And he is telling the audience he is done. No more conferences.

Why? Because too many people kept coming back every year, listened to speeches, got excited, went home, and did nothing. One woman attended three conferences before she even asked how to open an offshore bank account. A process that takes a few days. She waited two years to ask the question.

Knowledge without action is meaningless. Henderson says this is the core problem. People confuse learning about something with actually doing it. Reading about second passports is not the same as getting one. Attending conferences is not the same as taking action.

This chapter is about the eight mindset shifts Henderson believes you need before any of the practical stuff matters. And honestly? This might be the most useful chapter in the entire book. Because strategies without mindset are just information. And information without execution is just entertainment.

1. Have a Growth Mindset

Henderson references a book about fixed versus growth mindset. The idea is simple. In a fixed mindset, you think your intelligence and talent are set in stone. You spend your time proving how smart you are instead of getting smarter.

In the nomad world, this shows up as people who brag about knowing things that regular people do not know. “They’re sheep! They’re drinking the Kool-aid!” Henderson has heard this at offshore conferences. People who feel superior because they figured out that taxes are too high and there are alternatives. Good for them. But feeling smarter than everyone else does not actually lower your tax bill.

Henderson makes an important point here. Other people’s opinions do not matter. His own parents talked about going where you are treated best his whole life but never left the United States. That was their choice. And their choice does not make Henderson’s lifestyle any less valid.

The trap is needing other people to agree with you. If you spend your energy convincing friends to stop investing in their local real estate “bubble,” you are wasting time you could spend building your own life. Let them be. Focus on yourself.

I have seen this in the tech world too. Engineers who spend more time arguing about which programming language is “the best” than actually writing code. The growth mindset says: stop defending your position and start improving it.

Henderson also warns against hanging out only with bitter expats who complain about local culture or angry people who only talk about how broken the system is. Curate your circle carefully. Find people who are actually doing things, not just talking about them.

2. Have an Abundance Mindset

Henderson calls the Nomad Capitalist lifestyle “Four Hour Workweek 2.0.” If Tim Ferriss taught you to build a location-independent business, Henderson teaches you what to do next. You do not need an offshore company for your first side hustle. You need one when your business grows enough that the $47,000 tax bill makes you want to scream.

The key idea here is to stop being cheap where it counts. Henderson loves travel hacking and geoarbitrage. He still flinches at $800-a-night hotels in Vancouver and $37 hamburgers in Monaco. But when it comes to your actual offshore strategy, cutting corners will cost you more.

He tells a story about cheap offshore company providers in the Seychelles. They charge under $1,000. They tell you the company is tax-free. And it is, in the Seychelles. But it might not be in your country. They do not know your country’s laws. They do not care. You get what you pay for.

Even worse, cheap providers are often the gateway to scams. Henderson mentions a case where guys offered passports through an “inside connection” in Eastern Europe. The connection disappeared. They panicked and had someone forge papers to get their clients passports illegally. Clients thought they were getting a bargain. They were getting a criminal record.

Henderson quotes motivational speaker Joel Weldon who says when a service provider gives you a price, instead of negotiating down, offer to pay more. Make sure your case gets the best possible attention. In the offshore world, this is not crazy advice. It is survival advice.

I have learned the same lesson in IT over twenty years. The cheapest contractor is almost never the cheapest option. The rework, the bugs, the missed deadlines. It all adds up to more than what the good contractor would have charged.

3. Be Decisive

Derek Sivers sold CD Baby for $17 million and lives by one rule: “Don’t say yes. Either hell yeah or no.”

Henderson applies this to the nomad lifestyle. When he visits a country to evaluate a residency program, he tries to make a decision the same day. Meet the lawyer. Ask the questions. Decide before leaving the office. For real estate, he gives himself 24 hours maximum.

This works because he does real preparation before the meeting. He does not show up cold. The opportunity has to be a potential “hell yes” before he even takes the first step. If deep down he knows it is not worth his time, he does not pretend to research it.

The problem with indecision is that it disguises itself as productivity. Reading another article about offshore companies feels like progress. It is not. If you have been “researching” for six months and have not made a single phone call, you are not being thorough. You are being afraid.

Henderson admits he once told a lawyer he would “get back to him soon” and then did not follow up for six years. Six years. That is what indecision looks like stretched over time.

When the Nomad Capitalist lifestyle opens up thousands of cities in hundreds of countries as potential options, you need to be good at saying no. Otherwise you will drown in possibilities and execute on none of them.

4. Avoid Complaining

Short and powerful section. Henderson says some aspects of going international will be annoying. Setting up an offshore company requires more paperwork than filing a one-page LLC form in the US. Some things will take longer than you expect. Some processes will confuse you.

If you complain about every small hassle, you will be miserable. And the whole point was to be less miserable.

His advice: trust the professionals. They know the local systems. Let them do their work. And whenever you feel like complaining, remember that by living this lifestyle you are among the freest people in the history of the world. That should help put a slow bank transfer in perspective.

5. Do Not Follow the Herd

Going where you are treated best means living on your own terms. Not copying the digital nomad crowd in Chiang Mai just because everyone else is there. Not renting a specific apartment to impress people who do not matter. Not falling into the groupthink of any community, even the nomad community.

Henderson makes a funny observation. He lived in Malaysia as a perpetual tourist. Nobody could pressure him into buying a car because he was “just visiting.” He was free from local cultural norms without breaking any rules. That is the beauty of not belonging to any single culture. Nobody can tell you what you are supposed to do.

He contrasts this with his Danish friend’s story. Law and accounting partners in Denmark earning $300,000 a year but totally broke. Every penny goes to the right house on the right street, the Range Rover in the driveway, the private schools. All to keep up appearances. Henderson and his friend discussed this over three-euro wine on cobblestone streets in Croatia. Far from the showmanship.

The Nomad Capitalist lifestyle means choosing whether you want a $200-a-month apartment or a $5,000-a-month penthouse. Both are valid. Neither requires anyone’s approval.

6. Have Thick Skin

People will call you names. “Tax evader.” “Traitor.” Television shows depict offshore banking as something criminals do. Politicians use words like “tax haven” because they know it makes voters angry.

Henderson is direct. You cannot trust mainstream media to accurately report on offshore business. Most people think having a bank account in Singapore makes you a criminal. That is not true, but good luck explaining it at a dinner party.

His advice: do not waste time trying to convince people. You are not going to change the world. You have a big enough job changing yourself. Keep your affairs private. Know that what you are doing is legal. And develop thick skin for the people who will never understand.

The Swedish train story is perfect. Henderson joked to a conductor that with all the taxes they pay, trains should never be late. The conductor replied that things had gotten worse since taxes were cut to 55%. Fifty-five percent. And this person thought it was not enough. You cannot argue with that level of belief. Just smile and move on.

7. Be Trusting

When Henderson bought his first property in Georgia, the seller wanted cash. Actual physical US dollar bills. $22,000 in an envelope. He walked five minutes through Tbilisi with what he imagined looked like an elephant on his chest, convinced a ninja was going to appear. No ninja appeared. The deal closed perfectly.

The fear was entirely in his head. And that is usually where fear lives.

Henderson says the digital nomad community has a “cheap” problem. People ask total strangers on Facebook groups for tax advice to avoid a $500 phone call to an accountant. This is a false economy. The cheap offshore company you set up yourself might cost you ten times more when it turns out to be set up wrong.

Trust the people you are paying. Invest in quality. Distrust keeps you from getting things done and traps you in old patterns. This does not mean being naive. It means doing your research, hiring good professionals, and then letting them do their job.

I agree with this completely. In my experience, the people who constantly second-guess their own experts never move forward. They stay stuck in an endless loop of “but what if” until the opportunity passes.

8. Feel the Pain

This last one is the most interesting. Henderson says pain is the real motivator. Not knowledge. Not excitement. Pain.

He tells a story about an American guy who came for help. After listing all his frustrations with US taxes and government, Henderson asked: “Are you ready to feel more pain to make the pain go away?” The guy said absolutely not. And that told Henderson everything he needed to know. The guy was not actually in enough pain to change. He just liked complaining.

Henderson compares it to a massage. If you have a knot in your shoulder, the massage that fixes it will hurt more than the knot itself. You trade passive, dull pain for active, intense pain that actually solves the problem. Most people avoid the massage and keep the knot.

He gives a business example. An employee was underperforming for two months. Henderson had a suspicion something was wrong but did not investigate. When he finally did, he discovered the employee had cost the business $60,000 in lost deals by not following training. The dull suspicion was easier to live with than the pain of investigating and firing someone. Until the $60,000 number made the pain impossible to ignore.

Taxes work the same way. Henderson once screamed at a tax lawyer who wanted $15,000 to help him restructure. $15,000 felt painful. But then he paid three months of taxes that exceeded what the lawyer would have charged. The cheap option was actually the expensive one.

His formula: find the pain, lean into it, and use it to change. If you cannot articulate exactly what you would do with $100,000 in tax savings, you probably will not do anything to save it. But if you know that $100,000 invested in Facebook ads would generate $300,000 in revenue, suddenly the pain of paying those taxes becomes unbearable. And that is when you act.

Key Takeaway

Henderson closes the chapter by saying mindset is more important than strategy. He has seen it over and over. The people who succeed at the Nomad Capitalist lifestyle are not the ones who know the most. They are the ones who think the right way.

Growth mindset over fixed. Abundance over scarcity. Decisiveness over endless research. Thick skin over people-pleasing. Trust over paranoia. Pain over comfort.

You do not need to travel to start working on your mindset. You can begin right now, wherever you are. But if you are struggling to get started, it is probably because one of these eight mindset points is blocking you. Figure out which one and work through it.

The strategies in the rest of this book are tools. But tools without the right mindset are just expensive decorations. Henderson learned this the hard way, spending years making phone calls, reading articles, and doing research while clinging to his pennies and never actually executing. Once he fixed his mindset, everything else followed.

From my own experience, I would add one thing. The hardest part is not knowing what to do. It is admitting that the reason you have not done it yet is not because of external obstacles. It is because of something inside your own head. Fix that first. The rest is just paperwork.

Book: Nomad Capitalist by Andrew Henderson | ISBN: 9798461831486

Previous: Chapter 14 - Conquering Dogma Next: Chapter 16 - How to Get Started

Part of the Nomad Capitalist series