Henderson opens the final chapter from a muddy car ride in Montenegro. He is furniture shopping for his new beach apartment in Kotor Bay with a general contractor named Anka. They are debating white sofas. He jokes about reckless tourists. She offers him a mint. For a second he wonders if she is making a move. She is not. She is just extremely good at her job.
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.
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!”
Henderson is walking through Siem Reap, Cambodia. He is not heading to Angkor Wat like every other tourist. He is going to the Sofitel Hotel to hear the story of a French expat who became a millionaire selling cakes.
“Where did your mother go into labor?”
That is how Pete Sisco, an internet business owner and long-time nomad, greeted Henderson on a Skype call from Hanoi. It was his little libertarian calling card. A cheeky way to remind people that their entire identity, taxes, passport privileges, and life trajectory got decided by one random event. Where your mom happened to be when you showed up.
“Come to Cuenca, where flowers bloom from your toilet water!”
That joke comes from Henderson’s mastermind group over breakfast in Medellin, Colombia. They were laughing about retirement newsletters that overhype cheap countries with ridiculous copywriting. You know the type. “Live on a tropical beach for $623 a month!” Meanwhile Costa Rica, Belize, and Panama have already been burned through by the newsletter crowd. Ecuador was next.
“Do I have to become a goat herder?”
That is how Henderson opens this chapter. His old college buddy Bryan asks this question while driving him from the Cape Town airport. Bryan has been watching Henderson post Facebook updates from El Salvador, Albania, Singapore. And he wants in. But he also has three kids, a wife, and an IT business with sixteen employees in South Africa.
Picture this. A packed conference room in Las Vegas. People who paid two thousand dollars each to hear one guy tell them they do not have to live where they were born.