Moving abroad is exciting but also overwhelming. What do I pack? How do I find a place to live overseas. Will my job sponsor my visa? The questions go on and on and it can be hard to find the right answers.

David McNeill of Expat Empire has been there. He knows what it's like to need stability in a new environment and he's on a mission to help others with their move abroad. In Season 2 episode 18 of Alone with Peter we talk about David's childhood, his attitude surrounding travel and cultural exchange, his move to Japan, and how he became fluent in Japanese,

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Feeling at Home in the Netherlands and South Korea with Peter Kersting | Expat Empire Podcast 46

I actually had the privilege of being on David's podcast Expat Empire a few months ago to talk about my time living abroad. You can check that out here!

David McNeill Founder of Expat Empire

If you want to get in touch with David McNeill or learn more about what Expat Empire has to offer your move abroad check out the links below.

Website: https://expatempire.com

Podcast: https://expatempire.com/podcast-overview/

Facebook: https://facebook.com/expatempire

Instagram: https://instagram.com/expatempire

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/expatempire/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ExpatEmpire

Please enjoy part 1 of our interview with David McNeill, Founder of Expat Empire

*Transcripts may contain a few typos. With interviews ranging from 1-2 hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors.

Peter Kersting: Welcome to Alone with Peter. I'm your host, and on this podcast, you're going to hear interviews with entrepreneurs, artists, digital nomads and people seeking personal growth. We'll dive deep into what set them on their journey, where they are now and how their story can impact you, including any helpful insights if you aspire to take a similar leap of faith. No matter where you are on the journey, thank you for spending some quality time Alone with Peter. Today, we're talking to someone who crosses a lot of those lines. I'm excited to have David McNeill on the show for a few reasons. David is the founder of Expat Empire, a business designed to inspire you to move abroad, giving you the tools you need to make that plunge swimmingly. We'll talk about how he got started and what Expat Empire has to offer you and your international journey.

Peter Kersting: David is also a podcaster, traveler, and I call him a digital nomad, but we'll get into what that term even means. He's lived in Tokyo, Berlin, and now Porto, Portugal, and he's fluent in Japanese. We'll focus quite a bit on David's experience with Japan as it's an integral part of his story and something I'm personally invested in. In part one, we're talking about David's childhood, travel, cultural exchange and Japanese studies. Stick around because this is going to be a really fun three part interview, concluding with some helpful tips for you if you're interested in doing something similar. So without further ado, let's get into our interview with David McNeill of Expat Empire. Well, David, that's kind of a weird tease, but I want to get started by saying how the heck are you, man?

David McNeill: I'm good. I'm good. Thanks so much for having me on the show. It's a pleasure to be here and talk about my story, and I know we've talked about yours as well. So a lot of things that we have in common, and I'm sure past that we'll cross, hopefully physically one of these days, but definitely at least in spirit.

Peter Kersting: Dude, I would be so excited to meet you in Portugal for a beer, which brings me to my first question. Tell us where you're from originally, but cat's out of the bag, where are you right now?

David McNeill: Yeah, so I'm originally from the United States, and as to where there it's a little hard to pin down, but I was born in Northern California. So maybe that's the easiest answer, but we moved around growing up a lot. But now I am based in Porto, Portugal or actually just outside of Porto, the downtown in an area called Matosinhos, which is more of a beach town vibe that we've got going on over here. Yeah, I guess that brings me up to where I am today, but definitely I'm sure we'll dive into all the good stuff in between.

Peter Kersting: We are definitely going to dive into a whole smorgasbord of things, because the way the Alone with Peter is designed is we spend a lot of intimate time with our guests. We do three part interviews. So today in this episode we're going to be getting into your backstory. So I hope you're ready to talk about some stuff, because I want to get an idea of who David McNeill is. I think in order to do that, we have to talk about who, not who you were, but where you came from.

David McNeill: Yeah.

Peter Kersting: So tell me a little bit about what it was like moving around so much, because it sounds like you're from San Francisco but that's not where you stayed all the time.

David McNeill: Right. Right. So yeah, we moved many times growing up, mom, dad and my sister, younger sister, mostly because of my parents' jobs one way or another, it wasn't military or anything. But my dad was working in visual effects for motion pictures for films for a while. My mom was a teacher, but she has a PhD and got a position at university and things like that. So for her job, we moved sometimes for my dad job, we moved sometimes. Yeah. I think that was a big part of just my experience growing up, obviously having to deal with that, but also learning that I could kind of pick up my life and go make new friends and get comfortable in different environments. Mostly it was the West Coast and the south, actually spent most of my years growing up the childhood in Alabama, in mobile Alabama or nearby there, where my grandparents are as well.

David McNeill: So that's a big change from somewhere like California and then also even going back there to the Los Angeles area for high school. So huge cultural shift even within the United States, and then from there it was like, okay, where for college? For me it was like, there's a lot of great schools here in California, but I would like to go somewhere totally different. So for me it ended up being the University of Texas at Austin. I applied to all out of state schools, but ended up going there and yeah, just ultimately continued my career in different cities in as well. So I think it had a huge impact on my desire to experience something different, and eventually that became certainly getting abroad as well....

35 Embracing Culture and Mastering Japanese with David McNeill of Expat Empire