Damon Dominique is a YouTuber known for his elaborate, well-researched, and charming travel videos. With an affable yet candid approach, he made venturing off the beaten path into lesser-known, smaller towns feel accessible, while also highlighting the importance of engaging with the people who live there. At the start of his career on the internet back in 2013, his constant refrain was “shut up and go,” a mantra that highlighted his no-excuses approach towards travel.
Since moving to Paris in 2019, Dominique has used his YouTube channel to become a model for people interested in living abroad. His videos share the realities of big steps like renewing visas and finding an apartment, to everyday mundanities like opening bank accounts and getting a repairman to fix a door in his house.
Now, Dominique is working with his audiences in real life. He has launched a new workshop series, Global Citizen IRL, and is traveling across the U.S. and Canada to teach his fans how to make their pie-in-the-sky travel goals happen.
I sat down with Damon Dominique at the Park Lane New York near Central Park, just before his first set of workshops in town this past April, to learn more about how he’s activating his audience to make their dreams of moving abroad come true.
The workshops are an outgrowth of what he’s been doing online and what he started with his book You Are A Global Citizen: A Guided Journal for the Culturally Curious (Mobius, 2023), which is filled with questions designed to get readers thinking about how their experiences in their home country and abroad have shaped their world view. “I always thought it was just so one dimensional to just accept [the first] version of yourself,” Dominique says, when I interview him at the over coffee at Park Lane New York’s Rose Lane restaurant. “You’re told this canvas is you, and it’s already basically painted with your ideals and qualities. And I’m saying destroy the canvas. Go make your own.”
The new course, he says, was created in response to “all the YouTube comments where people told me, ‘Look, I’m not lacking in motivation to travel the world. I’m just lacking in literal steps and logistics. How do I actually do this? What credit card are you using to get all these points? How do you have two phone numbers?’”
Each Global Citizen IRL workshop is a six-hour event that takes attendees through three phases. The first explores the self: What do you enjoy doing? If you had no limitations, where would you love to be?
The second phase encourages participants to start thinking about the realities of what life abroad would actually look like, the challenges that come with creating a routine, and dealing with responsibilities in a brand-new place. Dominique asks: So you know you want to move to Mexico . . . What do you want to do there?
The final phase focuses on the obstacles preventing people from achieving their live-abroad goals and figuring out real-world solutions to those problems. Whether the aim is to relocate to the Philippines as a digital nomad or simply to take your first solo road trip, Dominique’s approach slowly but surely helps his followers break down both the hypothetical and literal limits to getting out and seeing the world for themselves.
Courtesy of Damon Dominique (L; Photo by Ilnur Kalimullin/Unsplash (R)
How do people do that? “ Number one, I think most people packing up and leaving need to go spend three months in the place they want to move to [before actually making the move],” says Dominique.
Why three months? “One month is too short. Because with each day that passes you can make excuses. Well I don’t really have to make friends because I’ll be gone in two weeks,” he says. “Three months forces you to think Wow, I really, I have to create a life, a day-to-day life, and a routine here. And that’s really when you see if you can do it, if you’ll actually like the country.” Dominique also notes that most countries will allow you to spend up to three months abroad without a visa (though several also have remote work visas). That gives potential expats enough time to build community in their new home city while they gather all the legal documents necessary to apply for a visa.
Dominique also encourages participants to get introspective and address their internalized fears about moving abroad. “ This comes up in the workshop with [participants who are worried about their] families,” he explains. “And I say, but why are you approaching this from that angle? What people don’t realize is that moving abroad could also be a growing or a bonding experience for you and your family. Because right now you probably only know your family in the context of your hometown. Seeing them outside of that lens, with them visiting you, or you coming back to visit them while having a new perspective, could actually bring you so much closer.”
Ultimately, Dominique sees the biggest hurdle to moving abroad as a question of mindset and willingness. “ I think what holds more people back is that they just need somebody to be the voice out loud that says I think you can do it,” Dominique says. “That’s all I’m trying to do in these workshops.”
