Lydia: Hello and welcome to the Business and Pleasure Podcast, the show that discusses what it's really like to be a digital nomad. We talk about the ups and the downs, the lessons learned, and the big discussion about whether you can really have it all. Today on the show we have Nate Ritter. Nate is a startup advisor and customer focused fractional C T O, who is currently traveling around Europe with his family.

And we've actually also worked together in the past, which was a lot of fun. So thanks so much for. Joining us for one of the first episodes, Nate.

Nate: It's my pleasure. I'm glad to be one of the first. It's, it's fun. I get to set the tone

Lydia: yeah, exactly. This is what it's gonna be like going forward. Brilliant.

Thank you so much for joining us and let's jump straight into it. Let's take you back to the very beginning. Can you tell us what you were doing before you became a digital nomad and why did your digital nomad journey begin?

Nate: Yeah. So I would say, I mean, that's a difficult question because we've kind of always been leading in this direction, like for, I'd say 30 years. But you know, before actually taking the leap, I was a chief technology officer with a couple companies, one out of Austin, Texas, hotel brokerage company, and then another one out of San Diego, which was a FinTech firm.

And so both of those were in-house. The pandemic kind of changed a little bit of, of each of those, but, so we did go remote, but, for the most, that was kind of what I did for, I'd say the last, like six or seven years. And then prior to that, I worked remote for a technology company, and then as a engineer.

And then prior to that I ran my own agency, uh, out of San Diego for about 10 years. Ended up being a seven figure web development agency and we did scalable web applications from zero to one for, visionary, founders who. Kind of bootstrapped or just got funded. And so that was kind of my experience with, with that.

And then it's about 25 years worth of, technology and, kind of like online, in the online space. And so hence the ending up as the cto. And, and that was kind of the last, bit before we went off and started our own company again. And then, I pivoted one more time to what I'm doing today, which is the advisorship that you mentioned, and mentorship and all of that kind of, I mean, other than a couple of bits in there where I was working in house for some companies, most of that was because it was being a chief technology officer, it's difficult to do that, being executive when you're not in house with the other executives or the other management teams.

It's possible. It's just that these two companies were not remote first, and they didn't have that culture. And so I agreed, cuz I hadn't been to Austin before, so it was fun. For the most part, for the most of my life, it's been designed to be remote and I've been remote or running my own companies or something along those lines or.

For about 25 to 30 years. My family has, has designed ourselves to be that way from the very beginning with the intention of traveling. We just never really pulled the trigger on it and did anything about it until recently. I think we've been traveling internationally now doing this with a, an intention of that for the last three weeks.

Prior to that, we. In an RV driving around the United States for about 18 months and prior to that was the chief technology officer in-house type of thing, yeah. .

Lydia: So you mentioned it was sort of always your intention to go down this route to explore, see the world, but also work. How did you find the change in lifestyle? How did you find sort of navigating working remotely, how you're actually gonna make it all come together and work.

Nate: Yeah, that's a good question. My wife and I, before we had kids, we traveled together to France and tried to set up a home in there, permanently, which didn't work out. We spent three months and a whole lot of money, because of the, kind of the French bureaucracy. To be honest, a lot of it was just the availability, kind of a digital availability, and kind of flexibility that there is today in the world, wasn't there back in 2008.

And we spent a lot of time and energy trying to figure that out. I had contracts with folks like Microsoft and things like that, and I lost those while I was trying to get set up in France. So that's one part of it. The other part was traveling around the United States. Each of those times that we did that we learned a little something.

The first time we did it was okay, we need it. If we wanna go to France and live there for any length of time and do anything that's not considered like tourist prices, you better have a French bank account. And there's a couple ways to do that. We learned that the hard way. The next thing that we learned was that we really needed community and we moved to this tiny little village for some period of time. It was small, it was like 900 people. We didn't speak French very well. Nobody spoke English.

It was actually the worst meal I've ever had internationally, which was surprising to have in France. But it was one of those things that you just, you learn a little bit each time. You stretch yourself and we learned, well, not every meal in France is amazing and, and, you know, sometimes you better.

Figure out how to speak the language and also like we need community. That was one of our big learnings there. So we took those things and added those two when we went into the, um, into the camper van, to the, to the trailer, um, the RV around the United States. And we learned that lesson as we moved around.

But we learned a new lesson when we did that. We learned that when we were the 18 months around the United States. Going one week at a time is too fast for us. We tried going back to France a couple times, in other places, and we would go for like a month and we really enjoyed that kind of like time period.

And so we thought, oh, well then maybe that was a little too slow. So we tried to go a little faster when we were in the rv and it turns out, that wasn't right for us. Like we actually do need to go to somewhere, maybe a month at a time or so. Anything more than that, we get a little bored. Anything less than.

It's just too fast. We don't do well, we don't with a lack of structure and things like that. So I think each one of those we learned a little bit as we did it. And that's what kind of my thought might be is to try small stints before you just jump. You learn a lot in the process.

Lydia: Definitely, I think that's so right. It's a lot of trial and error and there's no one way to approach being a digital nomad. It's very specific to the individual and you. Go for it. And then you're like, okay, maybe that's not the best way to approach it. Or actually I've learned this and now I'm gonna take this into the next journey

But I think that's a really good point. Starting off small, seeing what works, what doesn't work, and then you can sort of build up to the big, journey. I think that's a really good piece of advice there.

Nate: Yeah, I think speed of travel dictates a lot of stress, like how long you wanna stay, if. You might get more stressed if you hang out for too long, or you might get more stressed if you're just going weekend to weekend to weekend or something. So it just depends on the person. But for us, we need about a month.

That's, that's our pace. And everybody's, everybody's different, but that's ours.

Lydia: how did you find that out? Was it from the jumping around quite quickly and then figuring out that it just wasn't working for you?

Nate: I think it was when we went to f we came back to France in 2014, I think it was. The first time we tried to go was 2008. My wife had already been around, Western Europe, years before when she would, she had lived in Sweden for a year and traveled, backpack Western Europe. But, we came back, I think it was in 2015 or something like that, and.

We came back with two young boys, and we realized then, so we had booked out this place. It was a pretty amazing deal for us. And it was right on sh it was just outside the, the main city, kind of, quarters and so everything was very accessible and we learned that especially with kids.

When that we could go out and go do something really interesting in touristy or you know, go out to the bakery or like whatever, go do something, cultural one day and then the next day we would rest and the next, and then the next day we would go out and the next day we would rest. And that seemed to like do really well.

And if we would go out in the mornings and come back in the afternoons and like hang out because of the kids and eating naps. Schedules and things like that. It was very easy for us to go out in the morning and come back in the afternoon. And that actually worked really well for us. And that was just totally by accident.

But we had booked three and a half weeks and we're like, man, that's a long time. I wonder if we're gonna get really bored. I mean, it's Paris, but still, you know, we're kind of, we kind of get antsy. So, but we did not get bored. I think it was the perfect amount of time. I think two weeks we, we realized, If we tried to do what we did in two weeks, we would've been absolutely crushed.

Like it would've been disastrous. And so we, I think we learned by just trying it and at that moment, and when we figured it out, then, like I said, that was 2015. We just took that from that point forward. I, and then we. Again, tried to like go quick in the RV because we were like, oh, it's us, we'll just move on.

But no, it's, it was still the same, like we would move too fast. We're like, we didn't even see, we just saw Niagara Falls for like half a day and then we'd like move on and we'd like, where are we? I don't even know what place we're waking up in, and it's just didn't make any sense to us. So we just decided when we came here, we started booking things out one month at a time, and we haven't changed that yet.

So I don't know that we will, I think, I think one month is pretty good for. But it was purely testing, trial and error. Yeah.

Lydia: That's been the same for me, like the end of last year when I was traveling and working. I. Almost had a bit of, I dunno, I dunno even know where it came from, but a bit of, fomo, a bit of fear of missing out. And I thought, I've gotta do this, I've gotta do this, I've gotta do this.

So then I was jumping from place to place, which I knew wasn't gonna work out well, but I was like, I need to do all of this. But actually at the end of that, I saw everything I wanted to see. But, I was absolutely knackered. I don't even know what I did looking back at it now.

So it's sort of, yeah, it's finally finding that balance that works well, that you can enjoy both sides of things as well, because when you're constantly moving around and then you have to work, you are really, really tired and you can't focus as well. Because you are tired from like the jet lag or just getting into a new routine as well.

I think that's a massive important piece of advice slowing down a bit and not rushing and enjoying it all and. Being okay with that. You may not tick everything off of your list. I think this year is, is what I've sort of been telling myself is you can always go back. You don't have to do everything in a month.

Nate: Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's important, and I think that's, A part of this lifestyle that is a benefit to us is, you know, we walk down to the beach or we go to a cafe and somebody goes, oh, you know, something, something like, I don't know, like, eat all those calories. You're on vacation or something. Well, we're not, you know, but, but , the mindset shift there is also though, that we don't have to go see everything because we might be coming back.

Like we just, literally today walked through the little village We. And saw little real estate things and I'm always interested in that. Just, you know, I don't know that I wanna live here. Maybe, maybe not, but like I always look at 'em just cuz they're interesting. But, um, you know, we looked at it and I was like, oh, there's this thing.

And I went in and talked to the real estate agent and I just told her, I said, you know, we move around like one month at a time and we might, you know, we might come back, you know, around the next year. And um, and if we did, what would that look like in trying to like figure out like what is real estate and how does it work here?

The interesting thing about it is that like we also know there's a lot of interesting cities that are close by us and a lot of things that we're gonna miss out, and we've just come to the realization that like you can't see everything in every country or every city that you go to, and so you have to get comfortable with letting things go and just enjoying the.

And if, and my wife likes to say it, she's like, we're not doing this, be as a, in a lifetime trip. We're doing this as like, this is our life. So it's a different idea when it's not a once in a lifetime trip. You don't have to go check every single box. You can come back next year or the year after that, or stay for another couple months or leave and then come back and hang out some more.

Like you have the freedom to do all of that. So I think. Takes away the anxiety of missing everything, if you think about it that way, you know?

Lydia: I think it takes a, a bit of time to, train your mind to see it like that. Because I remember when I first started, I was like, yeah, I have to do everything and, and then I have to work, and then I have to do this, and then I have to socialize and like you're trying to sort of tick all of the boxes at once, but you're still doing like a, an eight hour day or, or whatever it is.

You just need to, like you said, become comfortable with that. You don't have to do in everything in the first week, you could be there for two months. There's no real rush, it takes time to get your head round because normally you go on holiday and you've only got two weeks off and you, you are normally like, okay, we need to do this, we need to do this.

And you are used to sort of trying to tick everything off the list. But normally when you go on holiday, You're not working or you are not trying to network. It's the time to really sort of unplug from the work side of things. So I think it's a, it's an interesting lifestyle that takes a while to get used to.

And I think, like you said, it's, the conversations with other people who aren't in this. Digital nomad space or who necessarily understand it. Those conversations are interesting as well because some of my friends who are sort of unaware of this space, sometimes they see it as just a holiday, which I completely understand, but then I always sometimes feel myself, no, no.

I, I work, I work, and I'm like, why am I, why am I getting my backup about it? It's such a funny thing. I swear I'm doing. It's like, it's a, it's a funny thing it's still such a new thing that I think digital nomads are still trying to figure out people who are sort of, don't really know what it is, still trying to figure it out. But there's no real, real right or wrong way.

Nate: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what's so nice and freeing about this is like, there isn't the right way. And, and, and it is kind of like early on, I think some people would say, oh, I've been doing it for 10 years or 15 years or something. Sure. But like, the wave is relatively new and I don't think anybody's like, oh, this is how you do it.

Right. And even I, like, I, I catch myself because I get judgemental about people who do go from place to place so fast. And yet, like, honestly like that. If that's them, that's them. That's how they do it. Like who am I to say that is right or wrong? It's just different from me and so, and for our family. But yeah, I mean, I think I like the fact that it's new.

It is weird to talk about. Most of my friends, most friends don't even know what I do, so, so it's like, they're like, are you perpetually on vacation? Have you like retired? What? How did this work for you? Where, where are you and how do you do it? Yeah. And I'm like, no, it's just by design, but for a long, long time, and sure I do work, but like I've designed it so that I can work from anywhere and you know, it's, yeah, it's.

It's an interesting place to be where you're like, I'm doing this thing that's super fun and interesting, but also you feel like that you have to defend yourself to say like, no, I do work too. You know? So, yeah, it's weird. It's a weird thing like, yeah.

Lydia: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if that changes anytime soon so more about the logistical side of things. How do you approach working and travel exploring? How do you break up the day? Is it more flexible? Have you got any pointers or anything that people could implement into their day-to-day digital nomad life that could help?

Nate: Let's start with how, like what I do for work, cuz that'll explain a bit more like how I organize my day and my week and those kinds of things logistically. As you mentioned, like I'm a advisor, mentor, to startups, so effectively a consulting and, so that gives me a lot of flexibility and it allows me to kind of structure my day how I want, or my, my week how I want.

So what I do is I do things in buckets, there's a. Couple books out that kind of like teach people how to do this. But the idea is you kind of like theme your days. And so like I have days, you know, with just about anything that's kind of like freelancing. You have days where you have to do administrative work days where you have to do like billing or whatever, things like that.

There's prospecting and lead generation and all of the stuff that goes into basically running a business, as well as the actual work for the clients in the meetings and such. I structure my week such that Monday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday I have as client client workdays, which might mean meetings.

It might mean doing something for them depending on what level of consulting I'm doing or whatnot, but it's really all about the client those days. , I might sprinkle in some administrative stuff if I have the time, but really it's about the client. Those days that takes Priority Tuesdays is about crossing lead gen, or networking and kind of giving back to startups.

I advise at Tech Crunch. , as a mentor. And, so that's one of the, one of the accelerators that I'll work with and I'll give during that day. So most of my, um, advisor ships for that kind, those kind of companies happen on Tuesdays. Anything where I'm like giving an hour here or there, for whatever reason, to whatever organization or to whatever startup is usually happening on a Tuesday.

And then Fridays I take off completely. And that's just by design because. I do all of this stuff, like for traveling and all of the things, the consulting I like. You know, I do all of this by design because I want to enjoy my life and so part of that means I wanna spend time with my family. So I just take Fridays off and I figure out how to make that work with whatever else I gotta do to make up for it.

So that's kind of like the week, but the day is actually different too because most of my clients and everything are in the United States. , or at least in North America, I have an interesting. Thing that we, like. My family calls the Paris schedule, and was comes from one of those times that we were in Paris and I still had to work with my clients at the agency, back in San Diego.

And what we ended up figuring out time-wise was that we would be able to get up at whatever hour, go and do something interesting during the day. You know, take a leisurely morning and lunch and, I don't know, wander around the city or whatever, come back and at nap. For the kids, we would've our lunch and then do their nap time, and then we might be able to go out and have one more, do one more short thing.

But generally speaking from after lunch or after their nap time on, we would kinda stay in the house and that was okay with us. And at , somewhere between two and four o'clock, I would start working with my clients who were just getting up and I would work till midnight and then I'd be exhausted and I'd shut the lid on my laptop and go to sleep.

And. That worked out so well that actually we coined it the Paris schedule and that's been that way since the kids, since my boys were two. They're now 12 and nine. And now that we're doing this, they're like, wait a minute, are we gonna do the pair schedule? They love it. And so, cause we spend all morning hanging out.

So this morning we went for a walk down in the little village. We went down by the sea and ran through the ocean and had lunch at a cafe. And then we come back and now I'm talking to you. And from here it's about three o'clock in the afternoon. From here on I'll be doing meetings and, , normal workday.

So, and I'll do that till 10 o'clock or so and go to sleep 10 or 11 o'clock. That's how I structure my day. And those buckets seem to work really well and I have that flexibility. Cause I'm consulting now, everybody will have that. If you're working for, you know, organization that requires you to be on, you know, nine to five sort of thing, it's, it's quite a bit different.

But the advantage of having the time zone differential, if you're a night hour like me, It's actually really big. Like my brain starts spinning at about three to four o'clock and it won't shut off till I'm exhausted, but it does not get up early. It does not like the morning hours. And so I wake up, whenever I wake up, I don't have an alarm clock.

We get up and we wander around and figure something out, and the kids love it and I play with them. And then when work time starts, they're doing school. And, that's how we run our day. And so it's a. Pretty amazing schedule for us, at least here right now in Western Europe.

So it might not be so amazing when we're exactly halfway across the globe and I have to do things at two in morning, but we'll see how that goes.

Lydia: It's interesting how there's a theme that sort of runs through every part of the digital nomad life, like when it comes to travel, when it comes to approaching the work. A lot of it is trial and error, and a lot of it is, depending on the individual themselves, there's no one way to do it.

And it, again, it depends on the type of work you do and where you are in the world and everything like that. But it's great to hear that You've found an approach that works and you are finding a, a better balance of having the, the work and the family and the chance to explore as well. You're not just in a different country on your laptop all day with no chance to actually see where you are.

Nate: It does. It works out well I think. We would still do it even if I had to be on my laptop eight hours a day in a different country, because you still get your nights and your weekends and you still, it's easier to do the, to explore Portugal or wherever you are on your nights and weekends rather than, you know, take a flight and try and do that on a night or a weekend.

Like, that's not easy unless you're already in Western Europe. So even then it's tough. But yeah. So I'd still say do it even if, if you. Be remote at all. You still, there's still advantages even if you don't have the schedule. I have. There's still, the ability to wander around and hear different languages and understand different cultures, even if it's just going out at night.

Lydia: Definitely. And what would you say your favorite thing about the Digital Nomad lifestyle is?

Nate: I think it's that schedule. And if I'm purely selfish, it's because I don't have to wake up in the morning for anybody. Like that's, that's number one. I think the other thing though is my wife and I were talking about this just today. When you travel, I always used to say like, people would just say like, well, why do you travel?

And I say like, and why do you travel with your kids? And I want my kids to understand and have empathy. But I think it's even more than that. I think that like when you're in a place like this or any place that you're not comfortable in or you don't know very well, it's almost forced empathy. Um, and I say that because, and I think that's a good thing, like, because, you know, we wander around here in the algarve and.

It's a lot like Southern California, which is where we had lived for quite some time. except for little things you know, you walk down the street and nobody maintains or manicures anything, it's just wild, right? Like the next door neighbors stuff, it's just all over the place and it's and it's just like trees and Things are growing all over the place.

They don't wash the buildings. I don't know if they even have an HOA here. It's not like you go to Southern California and it's everything is, you know, they try and keep it pristine on the outside. It owed lawns and manicured everything here. It's not like that and don't, I'm complaining about, it's just different.

And so, but the funny thing is that , if you complain about, You're not really actually having any empathy with it. Like, but if you're walking down the sidewalk and it's just like a mess and, and you're like, wow, okay. All right. And then you get used to it. You are forced to. If you're there for long enough, you get used to it.

You're, that's a, that's almost forced empathy. Like you ha you can't, you can't complain about it every day for a month. You'd be a wretched person, but also , It's just exhausting to do that as a person anyway, you gotta get over it at some point and like move on with it.

Granted this isn't even that different from the life that we left. Like this is pretty close, but it's still one of those things where you're like, oh yeah, I was used to having all these things manicured and whatever. You walk down the street and it's not, and things are all over the place and you're like, it's just how it is.

And you just get used to it. So the nice part is you have no choice. If you stay there long enough to be empathetic for what the culture does and what they value, like you don't have much of an option. And I think that that forced discomfort is really, really valuable for a lot of reasons. And I, I could go on for like an hour on just this topic, but I won't.

So, but yeah, I think those, those two things, like I don't have to get up in the morning and force empathy, I think are the two, if I had to bucket it. Those are the two things that are. I think super valuable for me, my family, the things I wanna teach, value systems, those kinds of things. So yeah.

Lydia: I think those two are really good points and really good values to see you through. Not just from like a business sense, just a. A general life and learning sense.

What's next for you and your family? Nate, what's next for work as well? So you are currently in Portugal. How long do you have left and where are you off to next?

Nate: So we've been here for I think, three weeks. We were in Porto for a week. We came to the Agar and we've been here for two. We're here for another two. I'm actually gonna take a trip. Short John, a business, friend who lives in Lisbon, , or is trying to live in Lisbon, current, currently in Germany, but he goes over, his whole team is in Ukraine and I helped him and his team.

They've invited me over. So I'm gonna actually take a weekend leave here, go to Poland. Take a train into Lavi and back again. And it's honestly giving me like butterflies because like I've never quite done anything like this where, I dunno the language, I don't have to be responsible for anybody but myself.

But normally it's just I have my family with me and stuff. People that I'm meeting, I've heard so much about, and the people I've talked with and stuff, I'm super excited about meeting them and, kind of doing this little bit of little mini miniature adventure for myself.

But otherwise, our family, we're going back to Lisbon in May. We'll stay in Lisbon for May. And then we'll go to Scotland for a month, we don't know, for the next couple months. And then eventually in October we'll be in Greece. And then kind of loosely have an idea of maybe we'll go to Africa for a couple months, uh, Mauritius, India, and then who knows?

But we're heading east. We're just kind of like zigzagging up and down. We're not really sure at this point. So this is all we have really booked right now. This is pretty open, so Yeah. Yeah. Who knows? We'll figure it out. ,

We'll see what happens.

Lydia: That sounds amazing. And then the final question is, can you really have it all? Can you have business and pleasure?

Nate: You know, I feel like I have it right now, so I'm gonna have to say yes. I also, I think, yeah, I mean, I'm, let's, let's cut the chase. I mean, you only have one episode on, on this, podcast now cuz I've just answered Yes.

Lydia: Done.

Nate: yeah. Done. But I also though I wanted to say like, yeah, I think, I think you can, but I think honestly it's either you have to be extremely intentional about it.

Also, by the way, very lucky. I grew up in, at the right time at the right place and the right, you know, I had the right things that were curious to me and the right things kind of like in my, in my hands. Like they were given to me in, in some senses. But also there's, there is a, you know, I think the happiness concept, like, I think that's kind of like the underlying, piece of your question, right?

Like, can you have it all as more like, uh, can you be happy with both your work and your personal life? And I think the answer to that is yes, because it's in your head, not because it's external. I don't think that the digital nomad life is for everybody. I don't think. Consulting is for everybody. I don't think running your own business is for everybody, although I think it's for a lot of people.

I might not think so, but I think that the happiness factor is all in your head. So can you have it? You just decided, you, you decide what makes you happy and don't let the world and the context tell you what's happy. You decide that and you make it up for yourself. And it could be anywhere.

You could literally be anywhere , and make that choice and. Corey 10 Boone was the perfect example of that. You know, looking at things that were dramatically worse than what we're talking about today. And people were like, there are ways of finding happiness in, in your head.

So I'm completely subverting your question, but Yeah. I think, yes.

Lydia: It's the happiness, isn't it? If you can have the. The 50 50 of business and pleasure. It's the sort of the happiness that comes along with that. It's down to. The individual as well. It's down to you to make the right moves to help with that balance, to help find the happiness and to find what works for you, which I think is sometimes quite overwhelming, but also, motivating as well.

Like when I first started, I was very overwhelmed. I was like, okay, everything sound to me. But as time has gone on, actually that's a great thing because. It's down to me. If I want to be happy, I can do that with, everything that I've got to figure out.

Nate: I think that's iteratively too. Like, you know, we've been talking this whole episode about how we've learned what we've learned and. Why we do what we do today and why my schedule is, and like those kinds of things and why we chose these places. That's all iterative. I wouldn't have this episode 15 years ago.

Like there wouldn't, this wouldn't be a thing because it didn't go through those, those trials. And I think that, you know, we, we asked this question about like how did we learn what we liked about, like, kind of the logistics and things like that. And the thing that stuck in my head was, this is very similar to , a discussion that I had with.

A, , family member who early on she was trying to, she was really bummed out about the jobs that she was getting, and she's just like, I just don't know about this job. And, and I said, and I said, the trick to this is try everything. And she's like, yeah, but I feel like I need this career thing. And I'm like, no, no, no.

Like you're early enough. Like just try everything. And the key to it is to learn from each one and be like, I like this and this and this about this job, but I hate these things. Take that, go find the next job. And. Keep the things that you like, look for a job that has those things and maybe try, experiment with some other things.

And it's kind of the same thing that my wife and I do with wine. We buy two bottles of wine. One of them we know and the other one we don't. One of them we like, and the other one we're experimenting with. And so maybe we'll find out that we like it and maybe that'll be our new one that we get. And maybe it won't.

Maybe it'll be terrible. And pull it, pour it down the drain. We always have one that we like and we keep that with us. And that's the same as like the logistics. It's the same as digital nomadism, you know, jobs, relationships, you know, like you have to push the envelope a little bit somewhere, but you also have the thing that you like.

And that's everywhere in life. You have the static, the thing that holds and takes root, and you have the dynamic, the thing that has to challenge the static. And those two things have to come in play and be, have friction for life to be really. Interesting. And otherwise it'll get dull and die or it'll be too chaotic and anarchic and it won't work.

So it's gotta be both, you know? So that's everything.

Lydia: definitely. I think that's a great place to end the episode. Ending on a high, it's great. Anyway, thank you so much for, giving me some of your time today, Nate. I really appreciate it. Could you please tell us where people can go to follow your journey and, find out more about you and your work?

Nate: You can find me at, on Twitter, Nate Ritter, n a t e r i t t e r, or nate ritter.com for kind of my professional things, startup consulting and whatnot. , we have a YouTube channel that is, severely behind in our, in our episodes. But if you want something more current, you can, search for Nate and till.

Either on YouTube, which is the channel that's behind or on Instagram, which my wife is, diligent about keeping us current. So Nate is the, is the handle there as well?

Lydia: Amazing. Well thank you so much Nate. I'll um, include those links in the show notes. Thank you everybody for listening and we'll see you again soon.