Former New Yorker drawn to Sioux Falls for ‘digital nomad’ lifestyle settles in quick

After living for two years in Manhattan and one year about 45 minutes north, Torrel Moseley was ready to trade the New York City area for something entirely different.

“I was looking at doing the digital nomad life for the next year or so and heard good things about getting residency in South Dakota, so I checked it out,” said Moseley, a Colorado native who has spent the past several years working as a software engineer.

A “digital nomad” is a remote worker who chooses to travel from place to place and work from different locations along the way. One day, you might find the person in a coffee shop; the next, a different state in a co-working space.

“I had been looking at places where digital nomads were operating,” Moseley explained. “I learned that in South Dakota, even if you stay one night, if you establish a mailing address here and have the intent of staying, you can get residency just after staying one night. It’s unique, and it’s not complicated.”

Intrigued by the idea, he started looking further into South Dakota, and YouTube videos led him to take a closer look at Sioux Falls.

“It seemed like a nice place to be, so I thought I’ll spend a few days here for a week and get residency and maybe come back at some point as I do the digital nomad thing,” Moseley said.

That was in early June. And, instead of moving on to the next town and plugging in somewhere new, Moseley decided he liked Sioux Falls more than he expected.

“I thought, ‘It’s nice enough here, why don’t I give this a go?’” he said.

“It’s great. Being from Colorado, often people are very impressed by mountains, and I love Colorado, but (Sioux Falls) brings up a certain feel that is present in some of the towns and cities on the front range of Colorado. That as a backdrop I love — the Big Sioux River running through and nice trails. Those are the things I look at.”

He’s now living blocks from downtown in a temporary lease at least until the end of the summer.

“I really appreciate the trail system and the parks and being in a place where you’ve got the amenities of the city and you don’t have the traffic or stress of a big metro area,” Moseley said.

“I feel like the downtown offers most of what you could want or need. It’s very walkable, and it’s also very friendly and accessible, with a trail running straight through to Falls Park. Those two things colliding — good infrastructure and nature — that’s what I like about the city.”

He mostly has been job-hunting with some freelance work and is interviewing with multiple companies that would allow him to continue working remotely.

He discovered Startup Sioux Falls downtown while searching for coffee shops “so I walked around and struck up a conversation with someone on the back patio and took advantage of a day pass to go work there when I had a presentation to work on for a company and just hit it off chatting with people there.”

As Moseley further connects with Sioux Falls, he’ll continue to have those kinds of experiences, predicts Denise Guzzetta, vice president of talent and workforce development for the Sioux Falls Development Foundation.

“We see this all the time — people discover something about Sioux Falls that draws them here, and then they quickly begin building community,” she said.

“While we are an outstanding place for remote workers thanks to our favorable tax structure and cost of living, someone like Torrel with a software engineering background is going to find so many ways to use those skills in Sioux Falls if he chooses. We have such a variety of exciting, growing companies that will want to connect with him, and we’re here to help facilitate those connections.”

For now, Moseley is thrilled to discover that “within a 10-minute drive of my apartment, there are eight or 10 coffee shops,” he said. “I can hang out and work, and they’ve got good-quality coffee, and it’s a friendly place to be with a laptop for a few hours, not to mention the downtown library is a fine place to go too.”

Sioux Falls’ friendliness in general has stood out, he added.

“The thing I really appreciate about Sioux Falls is that you go out and the people you run into on a day-to-day basis are just nice, polite, they smile, they say hi on the sidewalk, and for me, that counts a lot,” he said.

“The politeness and friendliness of folks in the area is beyond compare. If you want to come here and have this as your home base and live the digital nomad life, it’s very amenable here. I came at the right time because it seemed like a great place in general, so why worry about being a nomad anywhere else?”

To learn more about building your career in Sioux Falls, reach out to deniseg@siouxfalls.com.