Jedd Chang served in the Peace Corps from 2012 to 2014. After leaving the Peace Corps, Jedd and his wife, Michelle, became location-independent digital nomads. Since 2014, they have been running various businesses, including the travel blog Intentional Travelers, while they explore new places. Michelle wrote the book An Intentional Travelers Guide to Unconventional Budget Accommodations: Creative Ways to Save Money on Transformational Travel, for which Jedd wrote the forward. In addition, Jedd also functions as the head concierge of the World Domination Summit, which enters its last year in 2022.
1) You have been location-independent for a decade now, traveling to 26 countries while still building a successful career and nourishing a loving marriage. What advice do you have for those that strongly desire this type of life but are held back by the perceived pitfalls?
I think it all starts with being intentional. Intentionality has become the cornerstone of our marriage, but also important in our personal lives. The reason why that’s important is because in our world today, there are cultural norms and beliefs that often imitate your guiding voice, but it’s not your true voice.
As a result, you make choices and decisions based on what other people think you should do—influencers, family, your friends, societal pressures. Being intentional means asking the question: how do I make choices that are for “me”?—because I believe in them, because they are important to me, and align with what I want to do in my life.
It starts from there: being honest with yourself about what you are doing in life, right now. Are you living intentionally, or are you just doing what other people say you should do? Are you living the life you want to live? Using travel as an example, you have this idea in your mind that you want to travel and see the world, and you want to do it as often as possible. But then you think of time. and money. and other important factors. How can you actually make it possible? For me, what really helped was to take it slow.
If you want to make a big change in your life, you probably don’t want to just jump right into it. You want to take it slowly, in manageable bite-size pieces. You start with one bite. If you want to travel, maybe the first thing you do is learn to just take a step outside the front door. Explore your local area.
Lifestyle changes, the ones that usually stick, are done in a very systematic and slow way. Can it happen overnight? Sure. I’m not saying that’s impossible, but an effective way for lasting behavioral change and lifestyle change is building on the change slowly. It could be as simple as getting a passport. I cannot tell you how many people tell me they want to travel abroad. My first question to them usually is, “Do you have a passport?” And they say, “Oh no, because I’m just busy.” The first step can be as easy as taking the time to get a passport, and then now you have one thing checked off that you need in order to accomplish a travel goal.
2) As experienced professional nomads, you and your wife are now inspiring others to intentionally pursue meaningful, transformation experiences through travel. For the novice, who might not be ready to climb Kilimanjaro yet, what’s a potential entry point to understanding the power of this type of intentionality?
First, it’s important we define intentional travel. When my partner and I talk about intentional travel, we say this because we want the experience of travel to be transformational for us. We want to learn as much as we can about the location, the language, the culture. We want the experience to have a positive impact on us and vice versa. We want to think about our impact as travelers in the host country—a big part of this has come from our experience as Peace Corps Volunteers.
We lived two years serving in Jamaica as Peace Corps Volunteers. Oftentimes people might think Peace Corps is doing a specific project and trying to better that country, but really I think Peace Corps is about a mutual cross-cultural exchange. You are giving your time and energy, but you are also receiving lots of education and care in return. You’re learning, and you’re growing. It is a mutual experience. I think travel can do that, too. We have not lived our lives since being Peace Corps Volunteers the same. We take that Peace Corps mindset and use it when we go abroad.
It is one of the reasons why we try to travel to places for more than a couple of weeks—because it’s not just about leisure for us. Yes, we go to new places, and we enjoy the food, the culture, we relax at some point. But more than that, travel for us is about trying to assimilate in a different city and trying to be as local as possible—trying to be like everybody else living there as much as possible.
So intentionality is an acknowledgment that wherever you travel—although you are a guest or visitor—you still have a choice to leave a positive (or even a negative) impact on the place you visit. Often, we don’t think about that. Longer periods of travel afford you the opportunity to integrate and build relationships, and those benefits are amazing. The cross-cultural exchange, the learning—I can’t tell you how much I’ve grown from meeting people, building relationships, and having friends from so many different cultures. It’s been life-transforming. Now, when people ask me about my identity, I think of myself as a global citizen. I think about the importance of humanity as a global concept, not just in my hyper-local area that I would traditionally call home.
Before we leave this question, one very important thing not talked about enough is that all these opportunities come from a place of privilege. If you don’t have your basic needs met and they’re not being met, then it is shameful of us to be like, “Hey, all you need to do is think about the life you want to live, and then go do it.” That’s ridiculous. Everything that we are discussing today presumes your basic needs are met and that you’re in a stable place—that you have a community of support. For those of us who get to benefit from privilege, we need to make sure that we are helping others meet their basic needs.
Michelle and I live pretty simply, which has been a great way to teach people by example. We live very minimalistically; we don’t try to own or buy a lot of things. We don’t try to upgrade our devices every year. We don’t try to buy new clothes every year. We are learning how to live more simply so we can preserve our resources for meaningful and transformative experiences.
3) In your worldview, do you see leisure and purpose having a symbiotic relationship, or do you still see the need for renewal as something unique?
I think it’s a balance. A good, healthy life, in my opinion, is about balance. You have to be realistic that there’s an expense to the things we do in life. You have to make an income to survive. One of the things that I love about your question is this: you use the word purpose. You can have a strong purpose and commitment to whatever it is that you are passionate about. It can be life-changing and world-saving, but if it makes you burn out, if you don’t take time to take care of yourself, you will harm yourself and, in the long run, not help anyone out. Your goal of positively impacting this world won’t actualize because you are solely focused on a commitment that will eventually destroy you. Again, that doesn’t help anybody. So I think it’s important to find this balance.
The opposite is true about balance, too. For instance, take somebody who has already achieved a certain level of success. They’ve got enough money to live wherever. They don’t have to work anymore, and they can just choose nonstop leisure. You and I both know that that usually doesn’t equate to happiness or fulfillment. There are lots of studies that show that.
So if neither of these extremes is the answer, then it has to be something that’s in the middle. Most billionaires still choose to work. Something drives them, and there’s a reason why they continue to work. Balance has to be determined individually for each person. Some people may want more work in their life and less leisure and vice versa. That’s the intentional piece. You need to design your life the way you think is best, test your assumptions, and discover things as you move forward.
Lastly, do not compare yourself to other people. If you are not living by your own standards, then you’re still not living intentionally, and you’re still trying to compete or compare. Stuck in this trap, you won’t find balance, and you won’t live intentionally.
4) Switching gears to the World Domination Summit (WDS), WDS retires next year, and you are a big part of that legacy—literally enabling joy and wonder for so many thousands of us over the years. How are you mentally approaching and preparing for this milestone event?
To give some context, WDS was started by Chris Guillebeau. He was writing a book about life, nonconformity, and unconventional living. When he was going on his book tour for his book, The Art of Non-Conformity, he met many other people who were living remarkable, extraordinary lives, but they were somewhat isolated. So that’s why he started WDS, to bring these people together. He was trying to gather people who were challenging norms and challenging conventions and trying to highlight their stories. That’s how WDS started more than ten years ago. As we come into this final year, the world has changed. People always ask us, “Why not continue WDS?” Well, one, people are not as isolated in these communities as they were before.
Two, our goal was never to build this amazing event that would go all over the world and grow. We are not TED. It was really supposed to be very hyper-focused and unconventional. We’ve never had corporate sponsors. All the revenue earned is from tickets, which goes back into the event. It’s not a for-profit event. There’s no full-time staff member who runs it. It’s all volunteers and a core part-time team. It is a very unique event.
I think all good things come to an end, and that includes this chapter of WDS. The pandemic definitely threw a wrench a little bit in everything. WDS is a very in-person thing—very relationship-centered. It’s personal. It’s relational. We’re in a very polarizing world right now, where it may be a little scary to say what you believe in. This is why WDS is more important than ever—for us to relearn how to be in a relationship, meet somebody who is a stranger, and find commonly shared values. Even if we believe in different things, we can still come together in a respectful, loving, caring way of another human being.
So as I mentally prepare, that is what I’m hoping for this next event: How can we still learn from one another? And maybe create a ripple effect in our communities. You and I have seen how the event has changed our lives.
That said, if you think about how natural life cycles happen, there’s a definite beginning and a definite end to things. What I’ve seen with WDS is that it has given birth to a lot of other events and communities that would not have happened had those creators not come to WDS. WDS has a legacy—its impact will live on, which is awesome.
5) One of your many roles at the WDS is the Propagator of Delightful Mischief and Fun. What career advice do you have for anyone looking to get into this kind of work?
Oh, man, I don’t know. This role that was given to me is the best job title in the world. I feel like it’s the best job in the world, and sadly, it’s coming to an end in some ways. I looked at my resume recently, and I have not had a conventional job in maybe over a decade. Every single time I’ve been offered these really cool projects to work on, it has been because someone has gotten to know me as a human being. They know who I am, what I can offer, and my experiences. The roles have been personal, and they have been the best jobs ever.
I have no idea what will be my next big career move, but I know that I want to work with people and projects where I feel valued and respected. Where I can thrive doing the things that I do well, and that someone is getting to know me on a personal level through the work.
Nowadays, humans do not look at your resume; artificial intelligence looks at you and determines if you have the skills or qualities to be an effective member of a team. So my career advice is this: If somebody wants to follow my path, get as much experience as you want traditionally, build a network of trusted people who will advocate for you. Be open to meeting people you’ve never met before that align with your values and identity. A diverse network can lead to really cool career advancement opportunities. Now, if that’s scary to you and that’s something that you’re like, “Oh, I could never do that.” Totally understand. My brother took a more traditional path. My brother filled out 100 applications, and he went through so many interviews, and he’s now working with a great company and is satisfied. The common theme that ties both my brother and me together, even though we approach life very differently is living with intention. We’re both making our own choices and decisions to live the lives we want vs. listening to someone else. That’s the key. Intentionality.
