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Learn How Cody Mckibben Leverages Currency Fluctuations in South East Asia

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INTERVIEW: Cody McKibben (Thrilling Heroics)

Rob: Welcome to another edition of The Lifestyle Design Confessions podcast. I’m Rob Murgatroyd from getjetsetmoney.com and today we have Cody McKibben of Thrilling Heroics on the line. Cody has packed it all up and moved from sunny Sacramento, California to live in all kinds of remote spots around the world. And today, we’re actually talking to him from Bangkok, Thailand. Cody, are you there?

Cody: yeah, I’m here man. Thanks for having me.

Rob: You’re welcome. So Cody, just by way of background, could you tell us kind of how you came to living in Bangkok. Just give us a background of how you were and how you found yourself all the way over on the other side of the world.

Cody: Well, it’s kind of a long story. There are a number of different things that got me kind of motivated to pick up and move to Asia for awhile. I read Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week in ‘07; and also for me, probably for not having read that I’d be doing something completely different, you know, I may still be working in a cubicle so that was a big motivator but I’ve always been into travel and being all over the place with family and friends and on my own. I had a small, basically a web consulting business and just decided to…I wanted to spend a year living abroad, somewhere that’s different as I can possibly find and so I figured Southeast Asia and spend about 1 year working from home, gearing up my business to be mobile, you know, work remotely with clients back in the States and Europe and Canada and Australia.

Rob: Let me interrupt you for a second Cody because I want to make sure we break some of this down because I think a lot of times when somebody achieves a goal, in the beginning you know, when they’re looking forward to the goal, it would become this huge thing to accomplish but then after they do it, it’s kind of like, “Well then I’ve moved to Bangkok.” But before you got there, there was a lot of stuff that you have to clear out in your head. You know like, “Am I nuts? Is this going to work out or am I going to be left on the streets somewhere?” Talk to me a little bit about some of those fears and apprehensions that you had when you knew you wanted to do something international. You knew you wanted to live abroad but you know, maybe you were fearful of it. What was that like for you?

Cody: You know before I did start with living this kind of mobile lifestyle and working remotely, I guess when someone asked me what was the biggest challenge and the hardest thing to overcome. It was just the fear of uncertainty really before making a big, huge life change. Actually Bangkok is the first place…well, Thailand is the first place that I lived abroad you know, that I like planted myself for awhile. I’ve done a lot of travel and stayed in several different places out here in Asia and the Pacific. In that time I’m mostly based in Bangkok, you know, always coming back here but…so here is my first time in Asia ever; it was my first time like living abroad for more than a month so yeah, it’s really…it’s like you built up this huge mountain of a challenge in your head and the first 2 weeks probably after I got here was surprisingly I didn’t have the kind of culture shock that I thought I would have and I just really connected with a lot of the people and found a lot of helpful folks that helped me get my feet on the ground. It really did turn out to be…it’s like so much easier to move abroad or to travel permanently than maybe make it out to be in your head before you just do it.

Rob: So what did you do with all your stuff?

Cody: I sold all the stuff that I didn’t need. Now the elimination thing; sold a bunch of stuff on Craigslist and moved out of my…I was living with a buddy so I moved out of his place and sold my car and so pretty much all my belongings (laughs) except for my laptop and my iPhone…

Rob: Yeah. I’m not ready to get rid of my iPhone…I feel you.

Cody: Well yeah. Those two things are still my main possessions. I mean you know that’s our business. I just sold everything and that was a big change but I’m actually in the process of again getting rid of all of my stuff right now. Get it down to one or two bags because tomorrow I move down south and finally leaving Bangkok.

Rob: We’re going to talk about that in a minute but when you touch on the iPhone, how difficult is it for you from a technological perspective of being in Bangkok? In other words, I think a lot of people feel that there were certain feature comforts in the States that we take for granted and they’re fearful that if they go there, living somewhere abroad like Bangkok, that they won’t be available. In other words, wi-fi, good access, on the 3G network or 4G network or something like that. Talk to be a little bit about living your mobile lifestyle from a technological standpoint. Is that an issue for you? Do you ever find like, “I just can’t get a darn wi-fi.” Is that a problem or is that really not a problem at all?

Cody: You know there are definitely days when just kind of everything technological goes wrong and you’re just kicking yourself but the reason I base myself mostly here in Bangkok is for business reasons because obviously it’s the biggest city in Thailand. It’s not the beach where I want to be so that’s why I’m moving but the infrastructure here is really good. It’s slower than California but pretty much everywhere in the world is slower than California but it’s pretty reliable; probably surprisingly reliable for anyone who hasn’t travelled to Asia before and it’s like that across most of Asia. As long as you’re in the city you’ll find…you know like I pay extra for my own dedicated DSL line for example and it’s not very expensive; 75 bucks and it’s like the fastest connection in Bangkok. So there’s that or you know, there are internet cafes everywhere. Lots of the restaurants and pubs have free wi-fi and as far as the iPhone, obviously the more remote, the more difficult but anywhere in the city and especially Bangkok, you can walk to one of the IT malls here, get your phone unlocked whatever it is and get your own 3G and then I’m sure there are more places that’s more difficult than this but I actually love it…but yeah, back home you go to AT&T which I hate AT&T by the way (laughs).

Rob: Everybody does. Yeah.

Cody: Yes. I mean it is nice and convenient because they give you the package deal and it’s fairly reliable, right? But you pay a big premium for that in the States or in UK; and now here, seriously, I can walk in 7/11 and in Bangkok…

Rob: They’re everywhere, like there’s one on the moon.

Cody: There’s 6 of them on my street so…(laughs). You walk into 7/11 and you just buy…it’s like pay-as-you-go iPhone for the works including the data network and I mean my cell phone bill out here including internet and email is probably less than 60 bucks; so they’re pretty technically savvy out here. They can do stuff that I can’t figure out and that’s pretty good so…

Rob: When you wound up finding yourself in Bangkok…I’m sorry, when you went to Bangkok, had you ever been there before?

Cody: No. my very first time in Bangkok is my very first time in Asia. My first stop was in Beijing and then a couple of days in Hong Kong but yes, Bangkok was kind of my first long stay.

Rob: Did you do it completely alone or did you do it with a girl a couple of guy friends?

Cody: I travelled out here alone and for like a week I travelled on my own. I flew out of San Francisco right out of SFO and like I said I travelled to a couple of spots and spent 4 days in Phuket which is, everyone knows Phuket; that’s probably the biggest tourist destination in Thailand but it shouldn’t be because it’s way over but…

Rob: They got hit by the tsunami…

Cody: Yes they did in 2004. It has actually recovered really, really well. There’s so much money there and tourist stuff but we can get into that later if you want; I really didn’t know yet where the really, really good spots were but I spent 4 days on the beach in Phuket and then I came up here to Bangkok. I do a lot of travelling on my own and I met up with a buddy who has been living here for like a year or so teaching English here in Bangkok.

Rob: So when you’re on the plane from SFO flying, are you sitting there reading The Four Hour Work Week (laughs) trying to embed it in your cerebellum and go, “I can do this, I can do this.”? Or were you like, “Well, I’m here and I’m doing it.”?

Cody: When I was working in the office actually and I’ve been on the blog since like forever and yes, I saw Jet Set Life ages ago and back at that time I read Four Hour Work Week and I really gone through it and kind of supplied a lot of it already; I’ve been on the blogs for like 2 years reading stuff like what you guys put out there and lots of other big content online and really immersing myself on that fray. So I mean, I have no idea actually, I probably was listening to some podcast because I do like it when I’m travelling. It’s a big use of one’s spare time but…

Rob: I love that dude but that’s another conversation but I love him. So okay, now you got this site, it’s called Thrilling Heroics and it’s really a blog I think. We will talk about how you broke that down but did you have Thrilling Heroics prior to going to Bangkok?

Cody: Yeah, I did. I started in June 2006 and my job prior to moving employment, I was actually kind of the assistant office manager for the dean of the business school of the university I attended. The day to day stuff was just bull because here was a really good, awesome person and I enjoyed learning a lot from him and a lot of the business professors but it’s not that fun keeping someone else’s schedule and just running an office really; we had a lot of opportunities to meet really incredible business people but I knew I didn’t want to…I just kind of get into that after I graduated from college and I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to stay involved in but it got me into entrepreneurship; but anyway, being in that environment did get me interested in start ups in entrepreneurship and I started the blog originally because I thought that I’d like to do an MBA program one day, maybe try to sneak my way into Stanford and I mean that hasn’t happened yet, maybe one day but I kind of just set it up like my own platform to talk about my ideas and the things that interest me, the businesses, the new technology out there; I was watching and listening to a ton of lectures online from the top professors from Stanford, Harvard and stuff. So I kind of started with that and it just evolved with me I guess.

Rob: Time actually just…I think last month put a blog post out on getting an MBA. Did you read that?

Cody: Yeah, like kind of designing your own ????

Rob: Yes and I thought that was very interesting.

Cody: Yes. Actually there’s a…I can’t remember his name right now but there’s a guy out there that has a really good program called PersonalMBA.com; I knew him through some of my friends and co-founders of an old business and that’s something I went through and it was really, really good. It’s like he just spent 12 years reading all the top business books out there and then basically boiling it down to the basics and putting it in laymen’s terms and just like really good and solid business and marketing lessons. So I kind of flirt with that and now there are definitely benefits to a really great education from one of the top unis but you know, you have to teach yourself too, no matter where you go to school or what degree you get, you have to continue with your education on your own afterwards.

Rob: So why call it Thrilling Heroics? It’s a rather unusual name.

Cody: Actually that came about from…this is really nerdy, I’m a geek (laughs)…

Rob: It’s okay

Cody: It came from originally a line from an old TV show. It’s one of my favorites. It’s a show on Fox originally called Firefly. It’s kind of a mix between a sci-fi show and like a cowboy show. It’s like cowboys in space (laughs), and one of the characters…it went for like 8 episodes and then it got canned but it’s like they have a big underground following now and they made a movie out of it but one of the characters, like he’s about to basically jump out of like a helicopter on to a train and he’s like, “It’s time for some thrilling heroics!” so…(laughs)

Rob: There was something about it that resonated with you?

Cody: Well, yeah. To me it means like the lifestyle I tried to live. Like it’s taking risks and it’s the adventurous, fun lifestyle that I tried to live…that’s what it means for me. There are other stuff that kind of tie into that but it’s a long story, just for old friends and kind of a dedication to one of my best buddies I grew up with that passed away; but that was kind of something we shared, we used to do daredevils stuff all the time you know. I guess that’s the kind of the legacy of that.

Rob: Got it. I see how that resonates with you. So let’s talk about the term “lifestyle design” and what it means and how you’ve lived it. For example, Tim comes up with a term on his book “lifestyle design”. I think it’s a great use of both of those words together but there is also Global Nomad and Digital Nomad and Flash Packer and Back Packer and you know a fan of Jetsetter; you know there is all kinds of different ways of looking at it and it is continually evolving so you know without getting too deep into semantics I think we all sort of understand the gist of all of this means. It is being able to be location independent, have an automated source of income coming in and living a life that you know, you’re not stuck in a cubicle, living a deferred life plan of this words but I am curious to know for you, is how did the concept of what you thought lifestyle design to be and what it actually turned out to be when you started really embracing it and living it? How much is the definition changed for you?

Cody: Well, I think it is kind of a loose definition. I mean, it means “lifestyle design” the way Tim Ferriss weighs it out, you know The Four Hour Work Week is kind of a blue print to deconstruct your life and your business and make it just as efficient as possible and make sure that you have got your goals prioritized in the right order so you get to live the lifestyle you want, right? But I think the lifestyle you want is different for everyone so yeah, he does in the book and the way he lives his life and he stressed his travels a lot and that really appeals to me but it may not to everyone. Lifestyle design doesn’t have to mean that you go travelling but for a lot of people that’s something that they want to do. You know, I think travel is the best thing that you can do for your personal growth and just learn a lot about the world and other people and expand your network and the opportunities that are open to you. So for me, it did turn into running my business and molding it into something that supports that permanent travel lifestyle because that’s my number one priority and you know, that’s what represents complete freedom to me; the ability to be in any city that I want at any time pretty much. So for me it’s like the angle is just to be able to do that mini-retirement thing, to go for a vacation any time I want for a couple of weeks, go visit friends all over the place or be at a conference in another country which was something I did like last week; and yes, people building that kind of remote business or mobile business…yeah, there’s a lot of names for that like digital nomad or location independent; I’ve kind of referred to myself as I guess a nomadic entrepreneur.

Rob: That’s a new one. I haven’t heard that one before…nomadic entrepreneur.

Cody: Yeah, it’s like .2 mini words but for me, my brand of lifestyle design is cultivating a life where I got the freedom to travel as I please, very much like you guys.

Rob: One of the reasons why we came up with our product Getjetsetmoney.com is because people…people read The Four Hour Work Week, they got inspired to do it and they either burn through their cash or didn’t have some sort of automated stream of income set up; so I kind of went about finding people who, not necessarily were living abroad doing it but I found people who were generating a monthly automated income that required maybe 1, 2, 3, 4 hours a week after the initial set up was done. So I think that’s where the big confusion came in. You know, a lot of people said, “Well, you didn’t work on that for 4 hours a week. You worked on that for a hundred hours.” That might be true but after the initial upfront was worked on and it’s done. For example, we get orders every single day; we got about 4 or 5 different products now. We got orders every single day and just got back from a month in Sicily and every day another one of our products were selling; one of our guidebooks, Jet Set Money, Jet Set Insider. One of these things were selling so I just simply modeled people who are doing it. Some have travelled, some of them didn’t travel; it didn’t matter to me as long as long as they were able to set it up.  So, you know I’m curious…we’re not going to go into how you make the income; I know that you do some consulting working and stuff. I saved that for our Jet Set Money members. This is more about inspiration, showing people by speaking to somebody who is actually doing it that, “Yes it can be done”. Could you just sort of explain briefly how you’re able to take advantage of currency fluctuations and how you’re using what Tim calls Geo Arbitrage to your advantage by living in Bangkok right now.

Cody: Well it’s funny that it’s that principle Geo Arbitrage…it’s like staring you in the face but I never really thought…

Rob: Would you mind explaining it because a lot of people have no idea what we’re talking about.

Cody: What it is, it’s basically that you earn in the strongest currencies you can right now; I don’t know how long but right now that’s US dollars; do business with people in the UK, in Europe, in Australia. Actually I think the Australian dollar and the Canadian dollar is rising against the US dollar. I think they’re stronger now but…so basically, earn money, find some clients with the strongest currencies and then live somewhere with the cheapest cost of living, where you’re comfortable and like for example Thailand…you know you can live in luxury here and you can get by really well and have a great lifestyle for like a thousand bucks tops. I mean you can go over board and spend as much as you want but…

Rob: Break that down for me. When you say that you could live in luxury, give me a sense of, you know, sort of what that means. Like, what would you equate if at all possible in the US? I mean, obviously is not like Boston. You know, it doesn’t look like Boston but let’s say is there any…like I was in Punta del Este a few months and I was blown away by how much that resembled Paris. I mean I felt like I could live in the city of Paris for a thousand dollars a month and live like a rock star. Is there an equivalent in Bangkok that’s sort of like that as compared to the US let’s say?

Cody: Well, you know some days, I don’t know but there are similarities to different places but Bangkok is unique. Sometimes it gets a bad reputation. There’s definitely like a dark side and there’s a lot of creeps here but I’ve met some incredible, incredible people. A lot of really entrepreneurial folks and all kinds of people doing interesting projects from all over the world but I’d say like you know, in a lot of ways, that Bangkok actually kind of reminds me of L.A.; just the general feeling you know, just walking around the city and the temperature. It’s a little dirtier but (laughs) as far as the lifestyle, I mean, I keep a really basic apartment here because I do travel so frequently. So like right now, I’ve been living in just a pretty minimalistic studio apartment, you know, just myself but it’s in the very center of town. It’s like right next to a train to get around town. I mean if you look in the map, it’s in the dead center of Bangkok. This apartment is maybe about $300 a month, utility included.

Rob: Wow! That’s 300 US, right?

Cody: Yes. You could get like a really place in the same area for maybe $450 – $500 a month and you could get…I mean, a new building that’s built in the last 2 or 3 years.

Rob: You could really pimp it out, yeah.

Cody: Yes. I keep this as a basic place here and then when I spend money, I prefer to spend it on experiences you know; I go out with friends to a really nice dinner about 5 nights a week, go out for drinks, go out to a nightclub, the pub and I try to travel frequently as I can with my girlfriend.

Rob: Now your girlfriend is someone that you met in Bangkok?

Cody: Yeah, we did actually. She’s English and we met each other here of all places and it is really cool because we’re very, very like-minded. She’s like a permanent traveler too. She started out as a back packer and basically started a magazine for back packers so she’s got the traveler thing and the entrepreneur thing and we just jive with each other really well.

Rob: Well, if she wants to get a little love from a jetsetter, just have her send me a blog or something my way; even though back packing isn’t my market, I’m always looking for somebody who’s taking a twist and doing something totally different so I can tie in a lifestyle of you with the back packer, entrepreneurial niche of her. I think it would be an interesting one.

Cody: Yeah.

Rob: Okay. So when you’re earning the dollars…so now you’re a consultant, you make some income coming in as a consultant; do people pay you vial Paypal or something like that and you just convert it into Bangkok money?

Cody: Yes. Like I have a number of different things and we will get into it too but yeah, my business is the main thing…I do consulting one on one myself and most of my biggest clients actually do direct deposit but my business does a lot of web design projects; stuff for small businesses, authors, that kind of thing. I’m still working on my muses and turning my business into something where it runs completely without me but I do have a lot of small side projects like affiliate sites and stuff that are basically bringing in a couple of hundred dollars a month in Paypal. So everything comes in to my, right now, US bank.

Rob: Would this be more difficult for you if you had kids? Do you think or do you feel that, that is just an excuse that people make to not do this?

Cody: Well, in all honesty, I’m sure it would. I have no idea what that’s like. I’m not a parent and you know, being a single traveler, a single entrepreneur is a lot easier than having a family but I know it’s possible because I’ve got lots of friends that do it; and you know, like for example my buddy Adam Baker was out here awhile back with his wife and his 2 year old daughter. He traveled through Australia, New Zealand and then out here to Thailand. They spent like a year and a half travelling.

Rob: Is that the Man Vs. Debt guy?

Cody: Exactly.

Rob: Cool guy.

Cody: Yeah. And you know I think there’s probably a time in there when you need to probably settle down somewhere. I think it’s about that age like 2, 2 and a half but I do know lots of people that travel with their kids and really raise their kids travelling and just exposing them to a lot of things and they make the most of it.

Rob: What would you say is the best part of you living abroad?

Cody: Can I say two things (laughs)?

Rob: Sure!

Cody: I think it is that Geo Arbitrage you know. I mean there’s all kinds of factors at play but if you’ve lived, grown up, lived and pretty much stayed at home in the U.S. for example and you haven’t traveled a lot and even if you’ve travelled like a 2-week vacation, it’s so much different than actually living somewhere; if you rent an apartment for a month it’s different than just travelling to a place for 2 weeks. The longer you spend, you know, obviously you make friends and you figure out where the deals are and you find the hidden gems; I mean yeah, travelling and living abroad is so much cheaper than people tend to think and you really can live the same, like if I were to live the lifestyle that I go in Thailand, if I were to do this back in California, I swear to you it would at least cost me 5,000 bucks a month, which you know, I don’t have that right now (laughs).

Rob: So therein lies the problem, right? You know, it’s kind of like if you’re dating a beautiful woman, the standard changes for you of what you expect in a girl the next time you date someone else or if you’ve lived in a big house, expect a big house; and now you have a certain expectation of what a couple of thousand bucks will buy you. How do you ever live anywhere else, I mean not even in the U.S. I mean how do you move to Rome, Italy or something like that. How does that happen? Do you just focus on creating more income or do you just focus more on enjoying your life and don’t worry about the income? What’s sort of the plan for you down the road?

Cody: I wouldn’t say it’s not that I…if I were at a stage where I wanted to move somewhere like in one of the greats in Europe like Rome or Paris or London, which I love all three of those cities but they don’t appeal to me that much right now but if I did for whatever reason, yeah, my thing would be, “Alright, so let’s get the business to a point where it is making 5 thousand – 8 thousand dollars a month than what I’m making that much.” But I guess I’ve gotten to a point where…in all honesty, like one of the reasons I travel is because I love California, I love where I’m from but I kind of feel like things just aren’t being managed the best; it’s not like a political thing in any sense. The “developing world” I see has so much opportunity out here and you really can’t…you know I just look at the value you get for your money and it doesn’t matter what currency but you can get so much more value here for your money right now and that of course things like that will always be changing and my desire for where I want to be will always be changing but right now I love it out here. I think…that’s the other thing, for me the biggest drive for travel and living abroad is that there’s so much opportunity available to you that things you could never do, place you could never go, friends you could never make, jobs you could never have…

Rob: Experiences, etc…yeah.   Okay, so now you’re going to be moving from the center of Bangkok to the beach. Tell me why you’re doing that. Is it just you want to be at the beach?

Cody: Well, yeah, being my business headquartered here for awhile now and I love Bangkok. I made a lot of really great friends and have a great time that I’ve been here but I guess I’m reaching a point where I’m ready for a change of scenery and basing it here for business reasons to really kind of boot trap and get busing cranking for awhile and so I’ve spent some time doing that and now I’m just ready to change my environment really. I want to be, as much as I love the city, like for me somewhere where I could spend my time outdoors and you know like the beach or the countryside, for me is where I feel more creative; so me and my girlfriend Nikki were just to that point where were ready to spend a couple of months down in the south of Thailand now and actually we’ve got a little house about 2 minutes from the beach on one of the islands down south.

Rob: Give me an idea of where that is. So when you go from Bangkok, you fly there, you train there? How do you get to where you’re moving to?

Cody: Well, actually because we’re moving some stuff with us, not very much but a couple of bags…anyway, she was down there just recently and found a great, great place; you know a nice, new, bungalow style house and a great balcony where you can see the ocean and a hammock and everything so it sounds too good to be true; I haven’t seen it with my own eyes yet but (laughs).

Rob: Okay, so how much is that?

Cody: $430 a month.

Rob: So for $400 a month, you’re living on the beach, looking at the ocean and you got a hammock. I mean, that doesn’t sound like it sucks.

Cody: Yeah. It’s literally a 2-minute walk down our little hill to the beach and I guess from what she said, we’ve got our own little bar on the beach right below us.

Rob: That sounds unbelievable.

Cody: I mean she’s already friends with the owner of the bar and stuff so…

Rob: You know it’s incredible too because you know, somebody would’ve said to you 5 years ago, “So, let me tell you what’s going to happen. You’re going to read a book, you’re going to get inspired, you’re going to travel across the world, you’re going to move to Bangkok then you’re going to meet a girl who’s a back packer and now the girl is entrepreneurial and starting up a magazine. The two of you guys are going to live on a beach in Thailand.” You’re going to go, “Are you crazy?” Like there’s no way…you know what I mean?

Cody: Yeah!

Rob: Like it’s so…for me, one of the interesting parts of setting up a “dreamline” is that you really only set it up for 6, 12, maybe 8 months max at a time because there’s just too much that can happen you know. So you are, for me personally, you are a shining example of just setting a short term goal and immersing yourself in the goal and taking big, bold actions on achieving the goal.

What’s nightlife out there, restaurants, clubs…does it feel like you’re in some weird culture-shocked place or you feel like it’s totally hip and cool and the vibe is great and you just love it?

Cody: There’s a wide range of stuff but Bangkok for example…everywhere there are scenes out here, everywhere has great nightlife but Bangkok probably is one of the top scenes for nightlife. You can stay out all night if you want. I prefer a lot of times just to go to the pub with my buddies, with my guy pals and have a couple of beers. So you got everything from like that English style or Irish style pub with great food and it feels like home for me. We’ve got that thing back in California; to the most, fanciest, upscale nightclub, you know, the rooftop bar and all the friendly girls you know dancing on the dance floor and the DJ; I mean huge, gorgeous places. I mean tonight we’ll be hanging out to one of the nicest places I found here with my buddy so…

Rob: By the way what’s so cool about this is when you say “later tonight”, you’re getting ready to put your dancing shoes on and I’m having a cup of coffee right now because it’s 8:40 am here for me in Atlanta; and what time is it there for you?

Cody: It’s 7:40 in the evening on a Friday night (laughs).

Rob: I mean that’s trippin’. I mean you’ve like catapulted into the future for me. This isn’t like East Coast, West Coast. This is like, you know, Jupiter and Mars.

So I’m going to let you take off because I know that number one, your schedule is really, really tight and number two, you’ve got the big party to go to with your girl and friends but if you were to give people some advice, who want to make this move, create the lifestyle that you’ve created; what would you tell them to do? In other words, is this for everybody?

Cody: Like what I was touching on before, I think everyone’s ideal lifestyle or their dream lifestyle is probably a little different. I mean for your audience, I’m sure everyone does want to travel but it’s not for everyone; so it depends on what you want to be doing with your time but yeah, you want to travel or make any kind of life change, like that’s what it was for me, right? I don’t want to be living in California anymore. I want to be living abroad…my goal was I’m going to live abroad for at least 1 year so that’s turned into a bit over a year and a half so I see myself that I’ll be back to visit about early next year but I see myself moving back any time real soon; there are several spots that I’m going to spend some time.

To set a short term goal like when I do the “dreamline” I usually just do 3 month, 6 month and aim for something big; and the biggest challenge to overcome is the fear of uncertainty. You know, making a big mountain inside your head but when you’re done with it and you look back and just think, “Oh man, that was so much easier than I thought.” That’s my biggest question for people you know. These days I try to just encourage people and say, “If I can do it, really, anyone can.” If you want to be travelling…last year, alone, I’ve been to Beijing and Hong Kong, I’ve been all around Thailand which is a big country and lots of different things to see from mountains to jungles to beaches to great cities where the nightlife; I’ve done conferences in Malaysia and Singapore, I’ve spent 3 weeks down in Bali about a month and a half ago which is gorgeous; you know we’ve been all over the place…

Rob: So you can do it!

Cody: Yeah. The biggest challenge is just getting over yourself but I think once you get up on the road, it’s so much easier and there are so much opportunity. You can get so much value for your money and so much opportunity will open to you and that’s why I’m doing things that I wouldn’t have imagined a year ago; just kind of pulling yourself out of the environment where you’ve been for ages and dropping into a new spot and just being open to making new friends and trying new experiences and get in to al kinds of interesting things.

Rob: Are you consistent and religious about setting up a dreamline? In other words, do you fill that out the way it’s intended to be?

Cody: Once my guiding thing actually is I did originally like a set of life goals and I put it on the advice edition on my blog not too long ago; I called it my Bucket List; things that I would really like to experience before I kick the bucket. And so there’s kind of those big goals and they range all over the place but yeah, I do try to do a dreamline every 3 months because it changes that fast because of new opportunities opening up.

Rob: It makes you want to have, be or do, right?

Cody: Yeah, exactly.

Rob: Okay. Do you include business goals in there as well or just lifestyle goals?

Cody: Well, for me probably mostly business goals. To see how I want to change my business to allow me to have the lifestyle that I want; the way that I’ll get there probably kind of changes because you meet new people and get involved in new things and so I kind of change up my business mostly every 3 months. I review that and make sure that I’m on track to do the bigger picture of things I want to do.

Rob: Well Cody, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time with us. I know I pushed you further than the time that I told you it would take but you’re interesting so I wanted to (laughs).

Cody: Oh, no worries. Thank you so much Rob.

Rob: You’re welcome. If people want to get a hold of you, what’s the best way for them to do it?

Cody: Definitely drop by the blog. It’s www.thrillingheroics.com and you can find me on Twitter, probably it’s the best place if you want to like shoot me questions or just connect; it’s twitter.com/codymckibb

Rob: Cody, enjoy your party tonight. Have a cocktail or a Guinness for me.

Cody: That will do man! Hope that I catch you guys somewhere on your Jetset adventures one of these days.

Michael James Dittbenner And His Journey On Taking An “Indefinite Sabbatical” To Travel The World

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INTERVIEW:  Michael James Dittbenner  (Myfnlife.com)

Rob: Welcome to another edition of The Lifestyle Design Confessions podcast. I’m Rob Murgatroyd with getjetsetmoney.com and today we have Michael James Dittbenner on the line of www.myfnlife.com . This guy has taken things to a whole new level. All you got to do is listen to the name of his site, you know he has. Michael has decided at 30-something to take an indefinite sabbatical and travel the world. Without further ado, Michael, are you there?

Michael: Hey Rob. How’s it going?

Rob: I’m doing great! So Michael, just by way of background, how did you go as a successful biotech guy to a guy that’s travelling around the world? You mentioned on your blog a little bit about how you had an ‘a-ha’, an epiphany moment that happened at breakfast with your friends where all the F’s came out. So if you could explain a little bit about that.

Michael: Sure. Actually even before all the F’s came out, I think everything in my life kind of had aligned for this to happen and ever since I was in my early 20’s and finishing college, I always want to travel the world. I was always have that dream in mind and of course with almost everyone else in our society we think we had to do the next best thing in our career, in our success so I did that. I became very successful in my career and I just got to a point in my life where I actually went to the corporate office; you know, I was going to that next best thing and I just said, “You know what, this is the time in my life.”  Things are aligned for me somewhat financially where I had good and bad investments, being in the whole corporate situation, the office, was just not fulfilling my life the way I wanted to and so I said, “You know what, I’m going to take a step back and look at the things that are really important to me.” And this was one of the dreams that I always thought was something that I really want to do. So I had to make a decision. I just pretty much jumped ship and say, “I’m moving back to the West Coast. I’m going to plan this for a few months and then just go for it.”

And so once I got back, once I finished with work with the company, I met with one of my friends for breakfast. I told him about this idea and he said, “Well, why don’t you list down the things that are important to you.” So I started listing a lot of things that are important to me; of course, first and foremost was my family and friends. Fitness was my previous life before the biotech world; you know I was kind of an obese child, I always was curious about fitness and how to stay healthy and get to live an active lifestyle, you know just having fun; food and experiencing cultures. I have travelled a lot with work in the past. I’ve been to several other countries and I always enjoyed the culture and when I think of food and wine and beverages, it always brings in part of that culture as well. And so I started listing all these things and I just happened to notice when I started listing them that they all began with the letter F. I was like, “Wow! What a cool f’n life!” And right when I said that, “Wow, that’s exactly what this is all about.” I think it shows a little bit of my edgy side but it also shows just having fun and the freedom. You know if you look at the website there’s a lot of F’s out there and sometimes I think I might have over-F’ed it but it’s so cool and I’m so passionate about it right now. I’m excited to move forward with the trip.

Rob: Okay. So what exactly is My F’n Life? Is it a blog site where people can sort of go through this journey with you? We’re going to talk about what that journey looks like in a minute but is that basically what it is?

Michael: It is. In My F’n…when you open up the actual website, you’ll see across the top all the F’s…facts, friends, fitness, fashion, flight, food, f-ilanthropy (obviously phonetically with the F) and fun. So all of these when you click on them, you’re going to have all the video blogs that matched that. So I decided on this journey, I want to do videos. I have a few up so far on my travels to Israel and some of the small places so far and the ideas that when I first created this was for just my family and friends to follow along on these video blogs. I don’t like writing myself. I never really understood the concept of blogs for a long time so I said, “What about a way to do this is maybe do videos.” I think that’s more exciting and kind of captures more essence of the experience I’m going through. So that’s what this whole psyche about, so you can look on each one of these or you can go right in the middle of the website. I can see a kind of a chronicle order of events of all the video blogs. So it’s basically video blogs where you can comment on it if you like. It shows my flight schedules under Flights but it’s also all linked to all the social networking platforms out there so just basically look into Twitter and I keep all the updates on there as well. So if you are following along, you don’t have to go just to the website, you can go to any of those platforms that you might already be using.

Rob: Okay. So now we start this journey which, I guess, started how long ago?

Michael: Actually I just started a few weeks ago…

Rob: A couple of weeks ago…so I got you just at the beginning!

Michael: You did. Yes.

Rob: Okay. So the goal is for you to start in San Diego and is it to sort of work your way around the world? I know you got a loose itinerary but give me sort of a snapshot of what that looks like.

Michael: Yeah, that’s actually part of it. So I just got back from Israel. I was there for just under a couple of weeks and I had to come back to San Diego to kind of wrap up my estate and some other affairs. So the first part of this trip is I’m kind of viewing that a little bit more of a “vacationy” type of trip where I’m going to Europe most of the time. So I’m going to be flying out next week to Toronto for 2 days then to Iceland for a few days to do some glacier things and off to Amsterdam and Paris and London and then down to Barcelona. Once I reached Barcelona, I’m actually going to kind of camp there for about 6 weeks and use is as my…I guess you can say my European hub to travel around Europe for a few weeks; then I’ll be off to Greece for a couple of weeks, to Mykonos and then Germany in September at this point and then in October I’ll be possibly going to either India or Africa for one of the philanthropic things that I will talk about in a minute. And then I’m actually back here in the U.S. for the holidays. I want to come back for the holiday and then starting December is my true “around the world trip”.

Rob: Was that just the appetizer?

Michael: That was just the appetizer (laughs). So that was the kind of fun, a little bit more ‘vacationy’…as we’ll talk about in a minute, the purpose of this, where the trip actually has some purpose to it as well, I really want to capture some of the social responsibility that I’ve been feeling most recently in the last few years; so most of that starts at next year but the reason why I want to do this more of a ‘vacationy’ style at the beginning is because I think for years I’ve been so wrapped in the corporate world and it seems like every summer I’ve had even in California, I’ve always had that next position or the next opportunity in my career, I never really just enjoyed the summer in California (laughs). I was trying to hit some hot spots in the world that will kind of fulfill that for me personally.

So then we get to the true “around the world”. At this point I really want to start doing some philanthropy as well. I had some connections with an organization called Keep A Child Alive which delivers medications and goods to HIV children in Africa and India. Also, I got a few other children organizations with orphanages and so forth. I don’t have kids right now and they’re kind of my passion to help being and working with children is first and foremost so I really want to find out what those organizations are; but with that of course, I may have some pretty amazing trip as well. I’m going to Rio for New Years which should be pretty amazing. I’ve been there a couple of times before and it’s probably, I think the hottest spot for the New Years and also one of the most fun that I’ve had. So I’m definitely going to start New Year’s day in Rio and then explore South America. I’ve never been to Uruguay or Argentina or Peru so I’m going to look at those areas.

And then to answer your question to go around the world, this is actually around the world plane ticket that I have that a friend actually gave to me using mileage points. And what is, is I use is a 15 segment trip. You have to go one direction around the world. Many of the airlines have these types of trips so I’m starting south in South America and heading west. Part of my idea is to try to hit all the summers as I do this. So I’ll be in Brazil obviously for their summer. Once I’m finished in South America, I head over to Fiji, New Zealand and then Australia which where I plan to live probably until the end of their summer which is March to April; and then from there I head over to Cambodia where I’ll be doing some voluntary work and living with a friend for about 2 months. While in Cambodia I’ll be exploring all Southeast Asia including Laos and Thailand and China. I already have a few trips planned as Cambodia being my hub, and then moving into the summer in Egypt, in South Africa and just kind of keep working my way west. At this point, it’s kind of top line because that’s a whole year ahead and I think a lot can change in that year and time period as well.

Rob: There are so many people who say…I mean like, you know, everybody’s jaws dropping right now and they’re going, “Holy sh**. How in the world?” The questions that are coming up in their minds which is, “How could I afford it? How could I leave that? What about work? What about my family?” All of those things; where’s your head around all of that? Are you just looking at it and saying, “I’m going to take the first letter of my website and just say ‘F it!’ and I’m just doing it. This is something I want to do and I’m just going to do it and yeah, there’s a lot of excuses about why I can’t but I’m doing it!”

Michael: Yup. You did sort of hit down the head with the F part of it but you know, there was a lot of thought that I put into this obviously but you know I think a lot of people ask the same question; usually the number one question most people ask me, “How are affording this and how are you doing it?” And you know what rob, at this point, I have a couple of thousand dollars to start and that’s where I’m going to do. I think everywhere I’ve been in life and all my success has always been it’ll-come-to-you-if-you-work-hard sort of background and I know it’s just going to come; like so many people around the world already opened up their homes for me. Places to go, things to see, people to meet…all of those cities that I’ve already talked about, I already have some sort of small connection already through social networking platforms and through friends. So I’m very, very fortunate to have that peace; also the peace of having a friend who gave me an around the world ticket for this.

But beyond that, that’s where I’m still exploring. Maybe I even look at your website. I want to start an online business. You know I have an entrepreneurial site to me and quite a few businesses on the side at the biotech world. And I definitely plan within this time period not only to have these life experiences but also to figure out my next step in business and life and I picture that being some sort of online business that will help me with the travels as I go along.

Rob: So what’s so cool to me is you’re looking at it and you’re saying, “The time is never right. I could sit here and kill myself in San Diego and wait to hit the 10 million dollar mark or I can go. I got a couple of thousand bucks in my pocket which is probably the equivalent 20 years ago of a hundred bucks…where people would say, ‘I came to America with a hundred bucks’.” You’re making that…you’re going to figure out a way to do it and as with everything, whenever you have that sort of mentality, it just happens.

Michael: Right.

Rob: So you’re doing everything from using miles that a friend graciously gave you to work your way one way around the world to connecting with people on the social sites to you know, couch surf or you’re going to do whatever it is that you need to do to make this dream happen to see the world but more than that for me, what I’m hearing is that you’re willing to say, “I really want to get back and I’m going to put my heart out and I’m going to try and help people with this process. It’s not all about me, me, me.” You’re doing something with children that you and I both know that you’ll be rewarded for universally by doing that; so I just think that’s absolutely incredible.  What was your biggest fear in doing this? You know, because you’re kind in the beginning right now. What are you most fearful of?

Michael: Yeah, I think that fear actually stands with the previous question is how I’m going to do this. You know, I think everyone puts on their own roadblocks and I had a million I could put in; so the fear is exactly how this all going to unravel because I’ve been trained…in my whole life I’ve been so orchestrated, knowing my 2-year, my 5-year, my 10-year plan. So I think that’s the biggest fear, is exactly how’s this going to rule out but even that biggest fear is actually my biggest excitement of it as well and the whole freedom you get in thinking about doing this right now, you know, overrides any of that fear at this point…so I think my fear is also my excitement at this point…if that makes sense.

Rob: Yeah, it does. Let’s talk about the 2-year plan and the 5-year plan. Isn’t it hysterical when you look back and you go…how old are you now?

Michael: I’m 35.

Rob: Alright, so you’re 35. So if we go back when you were 25 and you said, “This is going to be my 10-year plan.” Isn’t it a joke when you look back and you go, “This is not even close!” (laughs)

Michael: I know (laughs). If you have to make up this power point presentation and you know, it’s all orchestrated and you know, what I’ve learned from that process is there’s just so much more to life and there’s so much more than just the corporate aspect although that’s an important one. Obviously that’s given me a life that’s been pretty amazing so far and I might even go back to that but at this point, I’m free to open up my life to all these different experiences but yeah, it’s funny how that all works.

Rob: Do you have any anxiety about leaving your friends behind, some relationships, etc.?

Michael: No at this point because we are so connected in the world today which is probably a good and bad thing; I can Skype with family, I can Skype with friends and with Facebook and these videos that I’m doing, that’s again, one of the reasons for the video; I feel so connected that a lot of people and a lot of friends are actually planning some vacations around some trips where we could actually meet up in other places in the world which is pretty extraordinary as well.  I think I’m so excited that everyone has been so supportive of this whole concept already that I have no fear. Obviously I’m doing this alone; I don’t have a house or kids. I think that’s part of the adventure too. I want to meet so many different people and it’s going to bring me in so many different directions that in terms of being lonely, I just don’t see that as a fear. I don’t think it’s going to happen (laughs).

Rob: Well, you know what, I want to connect you…it’s on top of my consciousness here. The guy named Colin Wright who’s a 25 year old guy and he’s got a website called www.exilelifetsyle.com . He was in L.A and he decided very much the same thing that you’re doing and he had spent the last 2 years in new locations for 4 months so he just left New Zealand. He did New Zealand for 4 months, Buenos Aires for 4 months and he’s been doing so over the last 2 years and I think that you guys will be fast friends so you should definitely connect with him. And he’s getting ready to do another 4 months…I’m not even sure where he’s going next but you guys are very, very similar.

Michael: That sounds awesome. It’s a great concept. I like the 4 months period and I’m assuming without knowing his history, he’s doing it because he wants to kind of get into the culture a little bit and experience really what the locals are experiencing.

Rob: That’s right.

Michael: That’s one of my goals as well and obviously in some places I might only be 3 to 4 days but that’s why I’m living in Spain for awhile, going to live in Sydney for awhile, going to live in Southeast Asia for awhile. I bet we definitely have a lot in common so I’d love to connect with him.

Rob: What have you learned the most would you say? I know you’re sort of just beginning this process but what would you say that you’ve learned the most from this experience so far?

Michael: I learned the most…I think so far even with how exciting this is, everything that’s happening, there’s still a whole other plan and I want to help other people to figure this out. I mean there’s so much a plan from…I just made a phone call 2 hours ago to turn off my electric. That seems so simple but there’s so many different things especially with the businesses I was in and trying to dissolve, my other real estate and things like that. It’s been quite complicated I definitely needed the last 4 months to do this process. I think the hardest thing that you have to learn is being able to be organized and to put it all together. I mean, I’m leaving in just a few days and I’m here looking at my empty loft with some boxes and clothes and just thinking of everything that I’ve been through the last 3 months; so I think, it kind of answers the question but just thinking about all that organization and putting it all together.

Rob: Yeah, this is totally going to change for you by the way as you go through this. I mean, this is going to be very interesting for you to listen back to this interview (laughs). You’re going to hear yourself go, “Sitting in my apartment, my loft…”

Michael: Reminisce the good ol’ times…(laughs) I actually sent a photo of my world of shag rug to a friend today and the caption of the photo of the text message was “lots of memories” and he replied back saying “there are many more to come”

Rob: Yeah, that’s a great friend. Okay, so when people say that they’re packing light, they’ve got nothing on you. You are packing really, really light. Tell me how you’re going to pack for this.

Michael: I am and I still can’t believe I’m doing it. I’ve done a lot of research on this and I’ve travelled a lot obviously in the past as a business traveler. I was pretty much George Clooney’s character in Up In The Air in terms of everything synchronized and knew exactly what to pack in my carry-on. This is a whole new ball game so I’m trying to pack for possibly different weather and culture. It has been quite a learning process and reading a lot of blogs. I found a website called onebag.com and I put all these learning together and I just realized that even with my massive closets that I had, I dwindled it all down to pretty much one rolling duffel bag and one backpack for all my camera gear. I think I went to North Face about 30 times trying to find the right bag at this point. I think I found one. I found like a rolling duffel that opens up and pretty much bring in like, you know, 4 long sleeves shirts, 3 pairs of jeans, 1 pair of like travel pants and shorts, some tank tops, underwear, socks…you know, pretty much the basics and I learned from onebag.com how to pack that pretty extraordinarily to fit all in one bag. Obviously there’s a lot of little things you know, shoes and other things but I’ve done the practice and I’ve actually finished it last night and was successful into fitting it all into one bag. So I’ve impressed myself; it seems like a lot but I think even as I go along in what I read and in what people say who travel, I’ll probably start packing lighter.

Rob: Yeah, it’s going to change. The guy I was telling you about had it down to 100 items in total that he used to travel around the world but now he’s got it down to 50. He’s written a lot about that on his blog. I think you’d find it interesting.

Michael: I need to check that out. I could probably learn a lot even before I leave.

Rob: Yeah, you could. So, you know, it’s amazing to me…if I take a look at the quality of the production of your blog My F’n Life. How are you able to do all of that from the road? Is it just that technology has just gotten so damn good that the quality of the cameras are getting smaller and better and better? You know, because I think that I’ve got some pretty good production on Jet Set Life but yours is really, really good as well. Tell me how you do that.

Michael: Yeah, actually it’s not a background of mine at all. In fact I was really poor in taking pictures when I travel. It just seems like a nuisance. Obviously this is a whole different idea and I’ve been really, really excited to do the videos I’ve done so far. What I is actually a couple of things. I want everything small and light because I’ll never travel with some big camera in my backpack. So I have a new Sony camera, it’s a tiny pocket, it has HD video on it so I’m probably going to use that as my primary source of videos. So you open it up and it’s just pretty much point and shoot. I also have the new Kodak flip camera which is the XI8 I believe it’s called. It’s also an HD, tiny and the reason why I got that one is it’s the only small camera that has an external jack for microphones right now. So what I found is if I want to interview someone or if I want to be a little bit farther away from the camera, I actually have an external mic I could plug in and you can hear me quite well.

Rob: Yeah, you need an external mic. That’s the biggest complaint that I have with people who make videos. You think that condenser mic goes all the way…it doesn’t. you got to have a clip on.

Michael: Yes, I learned that the first video I tried to shoot (laughs). So those 2 pieces are all I have. I have a gorilla tripod that I will be using. Lots of times I’ll be by myself so I need to have that.  Then I have a 13 inch Mac Pro which I put all together. So pretty much I can shoot to film, I can upload it on my Mac computer; I’ve been to a few one to one, like personal trainings at Apple. They actually showed me how to use Imovie.

Rob: I did that too. I sat next to the old lady who didn’t know how to use the Mac and I was like, “Okay Gloria, this is email.” But I got to tell you, I learned a lot.

Michael: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. I think I went to maybe 6 sessions and I learned so much more I never would have learned on my own probably so it was definitely worth it. I have probably 6 to 8 films at this point; pretty goofy but I try to limit them around 2 to 3 minutes because I know I don’t like to watch long videos and I don’t think my family wants to and friends so I’m trying to capture as much experience and do it within a 2 to 3 minute time period.

Rob: Yes. When we travel, we shoot about 6 hours of video and we condense it to 3 minutes which feels like, “Argh! I got 6 hours. You don’t know how much money this costs me to film this sh**!” (laughs). So what would you advice who is considering doing what you’re about to do and sort of in the middle right now? What would you tell them in terms of what you have learned thus far?

Michael: A lot (laughs). Actually, I already received numerous amounts of emails through the website which has been extraordinary seeing how people have been inspired by this and they’re going to live vicariously through me and it’s really cool to see that; and I’ve responded back and you know, there’s actually a guy who works on Wall Street that said he wants to…he set his day, he’s going to do this now and he’s going to take some time to travel around the world and forget Wall Street for awhile. So he’s actually inspired by this as well. And what we talked about is again, you have to set that date as the number one thing and just say, “I’m going to do this.” And from there it’s just a learning process and use all your resources. You know I’m just beginning but I think I have a pretty good resource. I think is an amazing source on how to make me fund this. I have so many different sources online right now that can help with this process. So I would recommend having them do a lot of research. That’s what I did. Use all your connections. Use your friends, go on to social networks and send out a viral, “Hey, what do you think about this? How do I do this?” it’s been a tremendous help with my whole process so far.

Rob: What is something that you didn’t expect that has happened? In other words, you know, in putting this all together, you know getting ready to be gone…what was something that you just didn’t plan for or would tell somebody who’s doing this, “Look out for this.” Like make sure you call the electric company and tell them you’re leaving (laughs). Is there anything that’s happened so far that you look and you go, “Oh sh**!”?

Michael: I think the process has been so exciting that if there was any hang ups I don’t know if I recognize it as a hang up. I just dealt with it and moved forward. I think things for me like planning even the small things like medications and what to bring and what exactly to bring. I think for me it’s more of the process and the logistics of what to bring. It was surprising on how I dealt with that but…

Rob: So it hasn’t happened yet?

Michael: Yeah, I don’t think so.

Rob: That’s awesome.

Michael: Yeah, at this point.

Rob: Well, you know Michael, I just want to thank you so much for taking the time with us today. You are in the beginning of an extraordinary journey that I cannot wait to watch online.  And if people sort of, for the moment, want to live vicariously through you, what is the best way for them to get a hold of you and to watch you go around the world?

Michael: They can definitely do it right through the website which is www.myfnlife.com My email is actually on there under the contact information. I definitely prefer for people to contact me through email if they have questions how they can start their own journey. Obviously they can also do this through Facebook and Twitter as well and all that are connected in the F’n home in the website so you can connect through that way as well.

Rob: By the way, I think it’s hysterical when you say f’n in every other sentence (laughs).

Michael: No (laughs). I don’t actually say it quite often so this whole concept is getting on my personal behavior (laughs).

Rob: It’s just so funny! Well listen dude, I cannot thank you enough so much for taking the time to do this interview and I’m sure you’re going to have a ton of people who’s going to follow you. I wish you from the bottom of my heart, I wish you the best of luck with this journey.

Michael: Thanks Rob! I really appreciate it. It was awesome talking to you and I will definitely be in touch.

Dan Andrews Re-Designs His Life And Moves To The Philippines To Run His Empire From The Beach

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Rob: Welcome to anther edition of the Lifestyle Design Confessions podcast. I’m Rob Murgatroyd from www.getjetsetmoney.com and today we have Dan Andrews of the Lifestyle Business podcast and outsourcing to the Philippines in which we’re going to talk about today. I’ll give you all the URLS so you’ll have it. We have lots to cover about lifestyle design. The reason why I want to have Dan do it is a lot of people talk about it but Dan is really living it. In fact he’s going to tell you where he is in just a second. Dan, are you there?

Dan: I am here. Good to be here Rob.

Rob: You too man! So what part of the world are you in right now?

Dan: Right now I’m in a small island of about a 5 hour trip south of Manila called Mindoro. So I’m sitting on a tropical patio right now while watching the yachts bob up and down.

Rob: Okay, so you just got a lot of middle fingers from everybody listening to this (laughs).  So just by way of background, can you catch us up a little bit? Where are you originally from and what led you to change your life and pick up and moved to the Philippines? Just kind of catch me up and give me a little snapshot of that.

Dan: Sure! Well I started out my business career in Southern California. Not a classy background, you know, just got into the business like most people started; trying to hustle my way up the corporate ladder. Two major turning points for me…one was reading The Four Hour Work Week and the second was I started my dreamline right after I read the book and shortly thereafter I achieved a hundred thousand dollar a year salary. It was sort of a level I always idolized and I realized when I got there that my life wasn’t any better and I couldn’t afford the things that I really wanted which primarily I wanted to travel the world and do all these cool adventures and stuff and I couldn’t afford those even at when I thought was a dream salary.  And so those were two major turning points for me that really got me thinking about my life.

Rob: Okay, so let me get you to unpack the dreamline. For those of you that don’t know, a dreamline is something that Tim Ferriss coined, a phrase that he coined is The Four Hour Work Week which is a very short goal setting device where you’re really not making a set of goals that go much beyond 6, 12, maybe even 18 months and you list three or four things that you want to have, do or be and quantify it economically; like for example if you want to, in his case, learn tango in Buenos Aires…how much does that really cost, moved to Buenos Aires…how much does that cost. What I’m curious to know Dan how you used the dreamline because I know a lot of people have seen it. I’ll put a link so you can download a PDF for it or an excel spreadsheet. How did you use it? Did you put business goals in there or did you put personal goals in there? Did you actually do it the way he intended it or you quantify how things are going to cost? How did you put it together?

Dan: I was extraordinarily earnest about it. I mean, I printed the spreadsheet off the website and went and sat down in a park in San Diego with my best friend, now business partner, now podcast partner and we literally wrote out that stuff that we wanted. I remember, I mean it’s amazing to think now, one of the things on my list Rob was a laptop. At the time I didn’t own a laptop so I thought, “Well, I need to get me one of those.” I had on there a Smartphone. I need to have a Smartphone if I want to be a guy who travels. I want to be able to make money from anywhere. It was one of the things I wrote down; I wanted to have 100% mobile office. I wrote out 9 things and my time line was 12 months. And I remember looking at the list at that time thinking, “I have no idea how I’m going to do this stuff but it’s kind of cool anyway so why don’t we just go for it.” And then 8 months later, all but one thing I had achieved; and the one thing I’m still waiting to do which is record a 4 song acoustic EP…I still haven’t gotten around to that one (laughs).

Rob: One of the things that I think is so brilliant about the dreamline is…I guess that’s a 30-something guy; we tend to look at things economically a lot and then becomes all about money but then the dreamline really defines it and puts a really fine point on what you want to have, what you want to be and what you want to do. I think the “be” and the “do” is something that’s left out a lot like what you just described. And which is creating an acoustic EP. Most guys don’t really think about that. They think about, “Well, I want to make 10 million dollars.”, “I want to make extra amount of income.” But I think it’s bigger than that and I think it really is about lifestyle design. So what does that mean to you? Obviously, from the economics, lifestyle design is being able to live where you want, having an automated income; but what is the bigger picture for you? Is it about really living life to the fullest?

Dan: I realized…well, the one thing that really quantified it for me and gave me the courage to walk away from my job was I realized that my salary, my income would be worth many multiples of what it was if I were able to earn it from anywhere. And so a lot of the experiences I had of my dreamline were not cash intensive, they were time intensive. So for example, live in a foreign country next year and then if you’re following that, move on to the next one. I mean, no amount of cash in my job would have been able to purchase me those experiences. And so there is that vague fear of falling behind. If I don’t continue to climb the corporate ladder and I walk away from all that, I’m going to have a resume gap and I’m going to fall behind; but what I came up with was a ratio which was 5 times. Money that I can make location independent is worth 5 times of what I can make from a job; a location independent from projects that I have equity in and so the thought experiment was easy; if I can make 20K a year from projects that I have equity in, I’m just as rich as if I were to make 100K from a job. Furthermore, I’ll be able to continue my expertise and build that equity over the years so it’s a no-brainer. And so the moment I saw that 20K on a piece of paper, I was like, “I’m done. I’m walking out.” And so that was really the turning point for me, was like putting up a ratio to it because I knew there was going to be a sacrifice involved and before that I was kind of paralyzed by the fear of falling behind, you know, falling out of the race. I got over that pretty quick.

Rob: Alright, so people would argue that, “What’s wrong with San Diego?” (laughs). It’s a completely beautiful, laid back town. Frank Kern even lives there. I mean, like it is an awesome, awesome place. So why would you pack it all up and move out to God knows where in the Philippines and leave San Diego? And to what you’d say what?

Dan: Well, to me, I moved to San Diego as a lifestyle design decision. I’m not originally from there.

Rob: So it’s like a baby stop?

Dan: Yeah and I great one at that! You’re right about the things you say about San Diego. My business partner lives and works and holds down the fort in San Diego for me. I really couldn’t do this without him. I mean, that’s part of it; I have to take an alternate path but I just have a bug. You know, some people don’t get off from this kind of lifestyle. For me, ever since I stepped foot outside of the country, I was just filled up with excitement and I just want that to be a part of my life. Not everybody has that kind of bug and you can design a lifestyle obviously in a town like San Diego and that’s what my business partner does. He’s a big fan of lifestyle design but for him that means…he likes to travel about 3 months every year and we do that so we’re going to Bali together for example and a few weeks here. And then he’ll go back to San Diego and then I’ll go my merry way with my day pack and a laptop case. That’s just my ideal lifestyle right now.

Rob: Okay, so let’s sort of unpack that a little bit more. Where are you from originally?

Dan: Originally I’m from Pennsylvania.

Rob: Alright, so you’re in PA and you say, “I want to get out of here. It’s cold. I want to be at the beach.” And you kind of do what Jeremy did with IBMA; he make the move to the beach and then you live a lifestyle out there but then you get a little greedy (laughs). You’re like, “This is good but I can make is so much better if I went to the Philippines.” Did I get that right?

Dan: You know, actually first I went to Vietnam a couple of years ago and then I moved back to San Diego for a lot of work on some business projects; I was actually in a master mind group with Jeremy.

Rob: He’s a cool guy.

Dan: He’s great! We actually talked about your business as well.

Rob: Oh, did he? What did he say?

Dan: He said you were one of his best students. He said you guys were doing great and had an awesome blog. And that’s when I actually sort of following your blog.

Rob: Oh, that’s cool!

Dan: We’re also hanging out with Pat Flynn who lives in San Diego as well. He was part of the group.

Rob: Love Pat.

Dan: He has a great blog if your readers aren’t listening to that yet. That’s a great one.

Rob: Well actually, Pat just started a podcast.

Dan: Yes he did!

Rob: And it was very, very good. If you listen to his first podcast, he’s kind of funny. You know, he’s like, “I’m nervous. I don’t really like talking in front of people but I’m not going to edit it because I wanted to be raw!” (laughs)

Dan: I have never met a nicer guy than Pat. He just melts you with niceties.

Rob: He says, “This is how much money I make this month. This is where I screwed up. This is what I’m learning. I don’t want to be one of those guys that are living in the Philippines. I’m perfectly fine living here in San Diego.” (laughs).  Totally cool. That’s one of the reasons why I reached out to you because I knew you were sort of like you’re in the fringes of the same circle.

Rob: Let’s sort of go back to when you made the decision to leave San Diego, go to Vietnam, wherever the first place was; there had to be a moment…and the reason why I’m asking this question is a lot of people, it’s just kind of like popsicle sticks that are like in a little river that kind of like get stuck as it’s going down the stream. Sometimes you just need somebody to like take a finger and flick it so it goes down. Here’s that point where somebody goes, “My God man, I’d love to do this but I’m just scared. You know, Vietnam, Philippines! Am I going to wind up being like on a National Geographic show locked up abroad where they’re going to like handcuff me? What’s going to happen?!” What would you say to them? Try and go back to that point where you were like getting ready to do it but you were just scared. What was that like for you and how did you break through?

Dan: There are a couple of points for courage. Number one is I had started my business and I was making sales. I was having that experience when you wake up in the middle of the night and the Paypal account buzzes your iPhone and you get giddy and you have every buzz and notification coming through because you have to see if it’s another sale. So that, to me was you know, one point of courage. I know how to generate the income on my own. I know how to do it for my own business so what was a big turning point. Another big source of commiseration and support was the internet. Listening to Internet Business Mastery; those guys got me out of the cubicle. They really did. I owe them a lot for that. I felt like from having listened to all their content, like I had a comprehensive understanding of how to build a business and you know, if everything were to burn to the ground I can start over from scratch and that won’t be a problem. Reading a lot of blogs and stuff was really critical for me because nobody in my life thought this was a good idea. Everybody thought I was crazy. Everybody! I mean, even my business partner thought I was crazy. I mean you know, I was 26 making 100K, executive at a medium sized company…why would you do this? It’s just something I felt like I had to do, I’m not sure. It’s tough. I mean, on the international side like I think that was really the motivator for me; I have done traveling before and for me, it was the biggest heartbreak in my life that I couldn’t continue to do that. I mean I saw people on the internet doing it, I knew I was capable of it and I knew that I have a passion for it. And it was heartbreaking to sit in an office every day; I was willing to go back and sleep in my mother’s couch in order to building a business that will allow me to be a digital nomad. That’s how badly I wanted it.

Rob: Yeah. You were very in touch with what it was that lit you up and that excited you and you were not willing to ignore that because if you did, you’d wind up getting married, you know, having a kid and hating your life.

Dan: Basically (laughs)

Rob: No, I get it. I get it because I have seen so many people that are in that situation and they’re like, “You know when I had the chance I don’t know why I didn’t do it.” Okay, so now you’re flying down, you land in the Philippines, you get off the plane, the heat hit you in the face and you go, “What the hell did I do?” or was it like, “No, I’m here. Let’s rock and roll.”

Dan: Well, there are all kinds of serendipities that happened that just are long string of events. It’s the old ‘close one door, open another’ scenario. I mean the people that were closest to me had all kinds of invested…like they were invested in me continuing on the way I was, right? And so they were continuing to try to support me like try to keep the job and maybe work half time and do your business on the side and all that stuff; and then the minute I closed the door, boom! It was like a rose garden bloomed. And all these people come out of the woodwork and say, “Alright, well are you pretty set on this? Okay, well why don’t we do a little bit of investing in Vietnam? Or why don’t do this or that?” so these opportunities started to pop out of the woodwork that I had not foreseen. You know, the first thing I did actually was kind of poetic. I sold all my stuff, I drove across the country alone for the first time, hung out in Montreal for a couple of months and then I went to Vietnam and got on a motorcycle and started going around looking for investment opportunities, working on some websites and I don’t know…it’s kind of like coming home for me Rob because that’s like what I wanted. I wanted that lifestyle driving across the country and then touching down on the tropics, get on motorcycle; I was made for that.

Rob: Got it. I interviewed Cody McKibben and he’s in Bangkok. And I’ve interviewed one of your students who could not say enough about you, Sean Ogle. He absolutely loved doing the work with you which we’ll talk about later about how you set up an apprenticeship program. He absolutely loved it. So it seems that a lot of the lifestyle design guys wind up in Asia. Bangkok is one of the big ones and the Philippines is another one. So for people who were considering making the trip to the Philippines, I’d like to talk a little bit about the Philippines itself in terms of living there. What was your impression of what you thought the Philippines would be like and what is it actually like after you’ve been there?

Dan: Uhm…are we allowed to swear? (laughs)

Rob: You can **** away!

Dan: Alright, well you know my first impression about the Philippines was, “What a ****hole.” I touched down in Cebu and especially if you look on the internet; retirement sales and people trying to get people to Cebu or maybe to call centers outsourcing there. It’s sold much differently than the reality. I mean in general the urban centers in the Philippines are very grimy and have very little to offer in terms of architecture and culture, good food and street food and all these things that we commonly associate with Asia. I mean the Philippines doesn’t feel like the rest of Asia. It’s a little bit more like a South American kind of place but in Asia. So I mean really define my expectations, I think the Philippines is totally off of the map in terms of the travel scene, in large part in terms of the lifestyle design scene. There’s not a lot of that going on here. I mean it’s expensive to get here, it’s off of the tourist trail, there’s not much of that your expectations would be on the things that you would get out of an Asian travel experience; because that is largely untouched by travelers and the nature areas are just incredible. The travelers have great times. You get immediate access to the locals which is like nothing else that you could experience in the rest of Asia. You’re plugged right in. everybody speaks English; it’s a national language here. I mean what you do see here in terms of the scene is that you see some big business clown here because there are some big time business opportunities. The expats scene is very different than the rest of Asia. You have a very large percentage of the expats that are here to retire or to hang out and be scuba divers or something like that and then you have a very small but a very unique set of expats that are doing big business because you can actually do that here.

Rob: I’m not sure I’m totally picking up what you’re putting down…is it a ****hole? (laughs) or is it not a ****hole? Or you learned later that it wasn’t as bad as you thought?

Dan: It wasn’t as bad as I thought. My expectations were that this was going to be like Thailand but less tourists…or Vietnam but less tourists.

Rob: Okay.

Dan: You know, I wasn’t prepared for it to not be Asia. It’s tough to say. I mean it’s just so not like the Southeast Asian route which is like my travelling…which is so…I’m used to that, like I just expected more of that.

Rob: Right.

Dan: And I’ve been learning a whole other set of pleasures to enjoy here in the Philippines. You know, a whole other set of things that are wonderful about this place; especially things like the access, the English. You know the lack of tourism is great.

Rob: So are there more upsides or more downsides? Do you regret the move or do you think in retrospect it was the right move to make?

Dan: Well for me, you know Rob I’m always moving around. Constantly I still move around so I don’t feel I’ve committed myself to the Philippines anyway. I’ve got a bunch of employees here so I’m hanging out with them and then I move around to other countries quite a bit and stuff like that so I don’t regret it at all. I mean it’s been a wonderful experience here. I think I’m going to spend quite a bit more time here. I guess I’m so ambivalent about it. Most of the people that are here love it here.

Rob: Do you think that that’s something within your personality? Are you kind of like ambivalent about where you go or is it this particular place that you are ambivalent about?

Dan: No, I think that’s my personality. I think like I’m a born contrary and a bit of a head case so…

Rob: (laughs) Okay, got it. So what do you wish that someone had told you about living in the Philippines before you arrive? So in another words let’s say somebody is listening to this and going, “Yeah, I heard good things. I’m going to give it a shot.” What do they need to know?

Dan: That was a great question. I think the biggest thing is that there’s not much of a peer group here. I mean a lot of people that are listening to this I’m assuming are sort of looking at your blog, the kind of a jetset, like Cody’s blog and Sean’s blog and all these kind of stuff; it’s not quite the same here like that scene doesn’t exist and the reason is that Westerners like me and you and Cody like they’re not here. And so you kind of have to develop your own scene in the Philippines.

Rob: But they would be in Bangkok?

Dan: Exactly. Yeah, Bangkok; even places like, I mean there’s a lot more Westerners of that age group in like Saigon, Hanoi is a great place, all throughout Thailand; even in Cambodia there’s more of that kind of like laptop-internet marketer culture. Whereas here, there’s not a lot of that going on.

Rob: So let’s talk a little bit about your actual lifestyle living there. I know you said that you’re on the beach and you’re looking out at the water as we speak, right?

Dan: That’s correct.

Rob: Alright. So give me a little snapshot. If I sort of looked around your place right now, what would I see? Would I see like a bungalow, an apartment building?

Dan: I’m on a beautiful, tiled patio with a nipa hut roof and we are on one of the most…it’s a typhoon safe harbor; it’s a national park, it’s gorgeous, all green. Now we’ve got about 25 yachts. That is a lot of yachts easterners like, a 2 or 3 teeny bars on the pier here that the yacht is coming and hanging out in. it’s a very secluded spot. The only kind of tourists that come here are primarily scuba divers. It has the largest biodiversity in the world so it’s one of the greatest spots for scuba diving in the planet.

Rob: And how much per month does that cost you?

Dan: If you like to be living in a resort here, you could probably live pretty well for…you have a hard time spending more than $700 a month unless maybe you’re scuba diving all the time.

Rob: Okay. And the equivalent in San Diego would cost you…?

Dan: Maybe…it depends on what car you drive (laughs). If you could manage the car maybe $1500 to $2000, I don’t know. It’s about 3 times the money.

Rob: Alright. It’s about 3 times the money. So do you find that…you’re in this beautiful place, you got all these great scenery around you and you have to spend a portion of your time I suppose inside, in a coffee shop or in your apartment there on wifi; do you find that there’s a struggle for you because it’s so beautiful outside and you want to be a part of the outside. Is it difficult for you to get to work and if it’s not difficult for you to get to work, do you find that you actually do the opposite and work too much you don’t really enjoy it?

Dan: You know I’ve had both problems, like I’ve kind of swung back and forth. It is very when you’re in this culture to have that work creep; you know like sort of a more conventional lifestyle sort of give you a format you know, for your life and like, “Now, I got to go visit the in laws.” Or “I got to go to the soccer game.’ Or “I got to go to the happy hour now.” And that kind of cuts it out for you. Whereas you’re just in an island with a laptop, you could easily like work all day long or poke away at Twitter or something. I’ve certainly done my fair share of that. I’ve done plenty of times where I’ve shut the laptop for a week and I just got on a plane.

Rob: What’s a typical day for you like there? I know it’s probably 10:00 at night there now, is that right?

Dan: That’s right.

Rob: It’s 10:20 am here for me. It’s still very unusual for me to have a cup of coffee in my hand, just starting my day while you’re ending yours. It’s just weird. What was today…a perfect example because you’re at the end of your day…what was today like for you?

Dan: Sure. Today I woke up at 8:00 and I did creative work for about an hour and a half, I ate a small breakfast. Then my remote team convenes on Skype at 10:00 am. I asked them all what they were doing and I made sure everything was going okay. And then I went back to do some creative work and I closed the laptop, went for a walk, about a 2 hour walk and in the middle of which I stopped to go snorkeling. Then I came back, hang out and talked to everybody, ate lunch and then opened up my laptop and did some work before the interview tonight. So that’s about it. It’s a pretty simple day today.

Rob: Pretty cool day. So how long do you think you’ll stay in the Philippines and what are the countries do you think that you’d like to give a shot at your lifestyle design?

Dan: You know I want to do it all. I mean, I’m going to Bali in a couple of weeks then I’m flying to the States. I’m going to do a tour; I’m going to be in New York, in California, in the outer banks and then after that I’ll probably come back to the Philippines for awhile. I don’t have any clear plans. You know, when I continue to invest in the Philippines, I’ve got a lot of projects going on here. I’ve got a team here and so those things are important to me. I also keep a condo in Manila. That’s another thing so I use that as sort of a home base when I fly out to different parts of the Philippines from there. So I mean I’ll probably continue to keep Manila as my home base and travel throughout Southeast Asia from there over the next year. That’s the general, vague plan but we’ll see how things go.

Rob: Alright. So the biggest question that everybody has is how the heck do you generate the income while you’re partying in the Philippines? I know that you’ve got some information products that finance some of these where we’re going to cover all of that in the second half of our interview for our getjetsetmoney.com members. So for now, if people want to get a hold of you, what’s the best way for them to do it?

Dan: dan@lifestylebusinesspodcast.com…just go to the Lifestyle Business podcast. We try to do a podcast every week and we try to answer small business entrepreneurs and all different kinds of people listen to that podcast. We try to answer as many questions as we can based on our limited experience growing our own businesses. So that’s the place they can get in touch with…

Colin Wright Dumps a 120 Hour Work Week and Trades It In For a Life of Passion, Travel and Ultra Mobility

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Rob:  Welcome to another edition of the Lifestyle Design Confessions Podcast. I’m Rob Murgatroyd from www.getjetsetmoney.com and today we have Colin Wright on the line from exilelifestyle.com. If you are even slightly interested in designing your life in a bigger way, you don’t want to miss this interview. This dude is the real deal. Without further ado; Colin are you there?

Colin:  I am here Rob.

Rob:  So first of all, before we even get into anything, I have such trouble keeping track of where you are in the world. Where are you at this very moment?

Colin:  Right now I’m actually in New York City.

Rob:  You’re in New York City; and you were where right before that?

Colin:  Right before that I was in…well just about a week ago I was in New Zealand.

Rob:   There you go.

Colin:  Between here and there I was in Los Angeles.

Rob:  Okay, just by way of background, give me a little evolution of how and why you moved from Missouri to L.A. to Argentina to Australia. What’s going on here? Why are you bouncing all over the world?

Colin:  I’m originally from the Bay Area actually, up in northern California and my parents decided that it would be a good idea to move to Missouri because that’s where they’re from and crime was pretty high back in the early 90’s in that part of the world. So we moved to Missouri, lived there for about 12 years and there’s not a lot of work for a designer out there unfortunately. Not a lot of good work so I ended up moving after college to L.A. and then I quit the job that I took when I moved out there. I started out my own studio so that’s kind of what led to Exile Lifestyle and travelling.

Rob:  So what is Exile Lifestyle?

Colin:  Exile Lifestyle is a great excuse (laughs). It’s a project that I started that is essentially my excuse for travelling and having other people decide where I go because if you do that kind of thing without a project then you’re a crazy person but if you do it as a project then you’re innovative. So I opted to go for innovative as much as possible. And basically what I do, I write about what I know; about entrepreneurship, sustainability, minimalism; all these different kinds of things. Whatever catches my interest honestly and while doing that I run by businesses and travel to a new country every 4 months and my readers decide what country that will be.

Rob:  Alright we’re going to get into a little bit of that because it’s really fascinating to me. How old are you?

Colin:  I just turned 25 in April.

Rob:  So are your parents sort of entrepreneurial in spirit or are they travelling type of people? Were you raised this way or did you just sort of evolve in this?

Colin:  No, I think they always wanted it. They enjoy travelling and they just don’t get to do it very often. My mother up until just recently worked for the church and my father still works for the state up in Missouri.  So they’re the kind of 9 to 5 people and always kind of have been because they don’t really know any other way but just recently my mother actually quit her job and become a full time writer and hopefully do some travel writing. So I think there’s a latent travel bug, entrepreneur bug in both of them. They just never really had the opportunity to take advantage of it. And now that we kind of got the technology and the culture that’s accepting of it, I think they and probably other people their age as well will start to do more of that.

Rob:  The things that you do are really, really interesting. I just clicked through your blog and I noticed that when you sort of have that pivotal moment, if anybody wants to sort of follow along with this, you can go to his blog at exilelifestyle.com and you’ll find the picture of him sort of in the back of a white van getting ready to leave L.A., packed it all up to go to one of his ventures; I don’t remember what it was but what’s really interesting is a couple of days before that you split with your girlfriend and you decided to throw a breakup party; and when I tell you a breakup party, he was partying. It was not like there were tears; they were dancing, drinking and partying. So just sort of like get into your head a little bit about that, like how did that come about and what was the psychology there to have this send off to your next adventure?

Colin:  The breakup party just seemed to make sense at that moment. My ex and I…actually she’s a blogger as well. She’s living up in Seattle these days and we were basically living together in L.A. in this townhouse on the west side and we decided to go up to Canada just in case Obama didn’t win essentially, we’re going to take a look at some places to live there. On the way back there, we headed to Seattle to stay with a friend of ours. They were sitting around, sitting at this little like jazz, Latin, fusion club or something like that and then she turns to me and said, “You know I kind of want to move to Seattle.” And I turned to her just kind of thinking about it and said, “You know, I kind of want to leave the country.” At this point we were both running businesses in L.A., working our behinds off, working 100 – 120 hours a week, just you know, really busting our butts to bring money in with the lifestyle that we were living. So this revelation kind of came as a shock and we just kind of nodded at each other and said, “Okay, I get it. This is something where we’re going to be stepping on each other’s feet if we’re not careful.” We had such an excellent relationship. We don’t want to lose the relationship that we have but we can’t continue going on with this type of relationship. So we set ourselves a deadline of 4 months, in those 4 months we would make our plan, I would figure out a way to leave the country, start up a blog and all that kind of thing, she would decide what she wanted to do in Seattle and then at the end we would have a great, big break up party where we would invite all of our friends and show them that we’re still friends and they don’t have to choose between us and you know, this is what a good relationship would be. A good relationship means if things are coming to an end, with the romantic relationship side of things and still carry on and have a positive, communicative friendship.

Rob:  And so you left and she left and you headed off to…where was it that you went?

Colin:  Argentina.

Rob:  Okay, and you went there for 4 months?

Colin:  Yeah, I did.

Rob:  Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about how you choose to the next destination that you’re going to. So you went to Argentina. Was that something that you chose or was that something that your readers chose and you said, “Alright, let’s do it.”?

Colin:  It was something that my readers chose. I basically asked for recommendations and I take the first A suggestions of countries. I put those on a whole and even others just in case there are some write in votes that take it and that would be kind of an upset vote. That would be awesome. And then my readers vote on it over the course of a month and whatever country wins at the end of that month, that’s where I’ll go next.

Rob:  Okay, so then you headed out there to Argentina and where did you go after Argentina?

Colin:  After Argentina, I took some time and travelled to South America a little bit, briefly went back up to the States and then moved down to New Zealand.

Rob:  Now you’re obviously doing this alone. The girlfriend isn’t there, your parents aren’t there, it’s just you being 25 years old, travelling around the world by yourself. Is there or was there any anxiety about, “You know, man this is freaking me out. What the hell am I doing? I’m alone, there’s nobody around. I mean what was I drinking?” So you have any of those moments or is it all passion and inspiration?

Colin:  There are a lot of those moments especially when I get to a new country. The first two weeks are incredibly lonely. When you’re in a place where you don’t speak the language, you don’t get the culture, you don’t know anything about it, you don’t know a single person there and you’re just trying to find a place to live and then you’re trying to find a place to go to the supermarket and just all those basic little things; rebuilding, starting from scratch every time. It’s incredibly lonely to do that alone, to basically start a new life without any connections, without a network to build off of. So that’s difficult and when I left initially, I was really excited about it. Part of the reason I wanted to travel this way and is that I never left the country before last year when I started this thing. So I’m a really green traveler, I really have no idea what I’m doing in a lot of cases and I’ve learned a lot already just by taking this kind of crash course project but the fact was I was feeling so miserable that I have this huge experience and knowledge gap in my life and as a big picture person that was driving me absolutely crazy. I know all there was to know about my aspect of business and entrepreneurship and people and had a worker crowd and all that stuff in L.A., all those important things but I had never been to a grocery store in another country which seems simple and stupid like a small thing but you learn an amazing amount just from talking to the person bagging up your groceries in Argentina. That’s the kind of stuff I really wanted to take in. I’ve faced super psyched even through the kind of miserable weeks for some times a month that occur.

Rob:  Okay, I know you’ve been everywhere but let’s just take just for sort of illustration purposes, let’s just take Buenos Aires. Was it BA that you went in Argentina?

Colin:  Yes.

Rob:  Okay. So you land in BA, you’re there for the first time, you go to your sort of 2 weeks start up, ramp up, just freaking me out phase, you’re looking around for an apartment or a youth hostel, or how do you have it set up?

Colin:  I gave myself in Argentina 48 hours to find a place to live and I tried to do it with as little internet intervention as possible because everything is so easy if you go through the internet but then you get kind of a whitewashed experience. You see what everybody else sees. So I basically spent those 48 hours walking the streets of Buenos Aires, barely speaking a word of Spanish and trying to find a place to live, kind of just looking at pictures of buildings to figure out where I go to find an apartment that they’ll rent to gringos and then find somebody there who spoke English. Thankfully you can deal with it and that’s kind of the process that I repeated. I kind of just walk around, try to figure out a place, force myself to talk to people and that’s a great way to learn a place; to really have to get your hands dirty and to wear off your shoes a little bit, to wear them down just by walking the streets.

Rob:  So you know, there are some people that wouldn’t dare going out on a weekend without having a reservation in a restaurant let alone taking a trip and not having a hotel. You literally flew into a place with no place to stay and just figured it out from there and didn’t even want to use the internet, is that right?

Colin:  Yeah. It’s totally possible.  That’s the thing; different strokes for different folks. I know a lot of people that would drive them absolutely crazy to do it the way that I do it but for me, I hate to have a really structured plan because then it doesn’t feel like a vacation. It feels like work. It feels like I have an agenda and the entire point of this was to get away from those 120 hour work weeks and still make as much as I’m making before but just have more play; you know, turn life into kind of this exploratory experience. So leaving it flexible like that and just kind of taking things as they come, not having a hotel, not having an apartment when I arrive but being able to roll with the punches. So if I meet somebody on the plane who knows of a person who knows of a place, I can take advantage of it without using a down payment on it.

Rob:  This must be very interesting conversation for somebody that bumps into you on a plane and says, “Hey, where are you going?”  (laughs)

Colin:  (laughs) it’s usually a very long story when people ask what I do.

Rob:  Yes, I can only imagine. So to be able to do what you’re doing, you have narrowed down the amount of things that you have. You talked about minimalism and how you’ve been able to reduce everything that you own down to 50 things. In fact, when I was doing some research for this interview I saw that you were interviewed by a local news station; I think it was in New Zealand about how you have this all narrowed down to just 50 things. Can you kind of explain a little bit about that and why you came up with that strategy?

Colin:  Sure. I mean at first when I initially left the country, it was kind of a practical thing why I didn’t want to have to pay rent on an apartment in L.A. when I wasn’t living there, I didn’t want to have to pay car insurance. I basically just wanted to get rid of all the clutter, everything that I wasn’t going to be using and I realized that if I got rid of it I have no choice but to go through the crazy plan that I came up with so I have nothing to go back to. But then as I got rid of stuff I kind of realized that philosophically this really aligned to what I believed. I’ve always loved minimalist designs. I’ve always been a fan of reducing rather than adding as a designer in order to make things more intuitive and communicative. And as I started to build my life around that concept and get rid of more and more stuff, I realized, “Okay, well I’m getting more done because I’m not worrying in the back of my mind that I have parked my car in a bad place and then that’s money waiting out there in public waiting to be stolen or broken or whatever.” I don’t have all these extra clothes so I have to decide between 80 different shirts every day. It’s not the kind of lifestyle that I wanted to be living so travelling on a practical level, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to carry much with me anyway if I was going to be jumping around quite a bit. So I wanted to reduce everything down to what would fit in one carry-on bag.  It was a pretty sizeable carry-on bag and they don’t let you carry it on everywhere but since then I’ve reduced it further. When I went down to Argentina, I was about down to 22 items. Right now I got 54 actually; I think I picked up a couple new pairs of underwear when I was in New Zealand (laughs). Important things like that but basically now that I’ve reduced it down this far I find that I’m far more focused and I worry far less about having to keep up with the Jones’s I guess as it is, which I always felt in L.A.; you have to wear a certain thing when you deal with a certain crowd, you have to have a certain caliber of wristwatch, you have to have a certain caliber of car. And now I invest a whole lot more of my time and money in experiences rather than stuff. I still like to have nice things but I’d much rather have a great experience.

Rob:  I think what’s important to understand here is we’re not talking about being like Jim Jones in Ghana and drinking Cool Aid. We’re talking about a very practical set up of elimination of things which will allow you to not only travel effectively but it will also allow you to live your life without the clutter.

Colin:  Yes, and to have nicer things honestly because if you don’t have a bunch of crap that you barely care about then you have only stuff that you care about and you can take that money that you would’ve spent on other stuff without effort or the time to earn it and invest in something really nice. You know I always have a really nice computer. It’s something that I must always have so the tech that I have is usually very high quality because that’s something I care about. That’s how I earn my money. It’s something that I enjoy having. The same with clothes, I like having nice clothes. I don’t have as many as I used to but the clothes that I do have are much higher quality and higher in value in my mind because they serve their purpose much better. So not having that excess clutter really helps you appreciate the stuff that you do appreciate more as well.

Rob:  Yeah. You’re increasing quality instead of quantity which is one of the things when I travel to Europe that I see people walking through the street…you know we just got back from Italy a couple of months ago and just walking around the streets you see people so well dressed and I was like, “How do they afford the Prada and the Gucci?”  You know my Italian friend said, “You know what, they got one amazing suit that they wear a lot.” There’s something to that. You know, we’re in America, we’re just so…you know we just have such volume. We’re constantly giving stuff to Goodwill because we can’t fit it win our closets. So I’m picking up which you’re putting down (laughs). So let’s talk a little bit about of all the different places that you’ve been to, I’m sure you have your opinions and I hate getting asked this question but I’m going to go ahead and ask it to you anyway. Out of all the different places you’ve been to, which one do you like the most and which one do you like the least?

Colin:  Okay. Well, the least is easier. I had a really bad time in Lima, Peru. It might have been the circumstances. I was on my way through Lima for a few days en route to Bogota, Colombia. There are people that I was going to meet up with there but for the 2 days that I was up in Lima, a transportation strike started. So it got pretty bad. They’re actually stoning buses and pushing buses full of people off the cliffs if they bribed bus drivers to drive them instead. So they broke ranks. At the protest people were dying and getting very badly hurt so I was stuck in Lima in a place that a part of town that was just so touristy, which is something that I just can’t stand; I like to get the nitty gritty real life kind of thing and the only real life nitty gritty kind of place nearby was the place where everybody was getting shot. Like there were people getting shot every night so I decided to not get that nitty gritty so I decided to stay in the tourist area where all there was to eat was Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King; it wasn’t like travelling except that everybody was very short so I ended up being there 2 weeks instead of the 2 days that I planned and that cut me off from the rest of South America the rest of my trip. And I got punched in the face at a gay dance club as well in Lima which was really upsetting.

Rob:  (laughs) that should be the title of your next blog post. “I got punched in the face at a gay club in Lima.”

Colin:  That is actually the exact blog title of the blog that I just wrote about.

Rob:  Oh you’re kidding! I was going to say that sounds like a brilliant blog post. That’s so funny.

Colin:  (laughs) yeah, it’s one of those things where I just had really bad associations with Lima. Other people told me that they really, really enjoy it so I’d probably give it another shot at some point. They have great blind massage therapists there. They train their blind people to be massage therapists and they’re excellent. So that was good. I’ll go back for that if not nothing else.  Favorite places…tough because in a lot of ways Argentina was like my first and you never forget your first. And I met some really amazing people there and having to learn ??? Spanish while I was there.  And you know all the adventures there are still in a lot of ways kind of feels like home to me; the closest to it that I have so I feel like when I go back there that’s going to be like a homecoming kind of deal. But New Zealand is much fresher in my mind right now. It’s one of the most unfairly beautiful places I have ever been. It’s truly…the deal they made with the devil to get that kind of place. You can’t take a photo without it being like a postcard and you can’t throw a stone without hitting a cute bird. It’s one of those places that…it really is the most upsetting (laughs) how beautiful it is because then anywhere else you go you have that comparison and everywhere else looks ugly.

Rob:  Right. It looks like heaven.

Colin:  Yeah. It’s freaking gorgeous there. I just couldn’t believe it. I heard that it was really beautiful but the rumors and reputation don’t live up to the reality. I was absolutely astounded. The people are excellent there as well. That’s one of those countries where I’m definitely going back there to invest in some start ups in the next 3 or 4 or 5 years. The whole mentality of the country, the people there they got what’s called the number 8 wire mentality. It means basically they will get over anything. If they need something they’ll just make it out with whatever they have at hand. And to me that’s a sign of an entrepreneur. And as a country full of entrepreneurs, they just don’t have the “always on” internet access that we have right now because they’ve got internet monopoly there so it’s very expensive to use an internet for an amount of time.

Rob:  What did you call that, the number 8 wire?

Colin:  Yes, number 8 wire mentality.

Rob:  Where did that come from? That phrase.

Colin:  I believe number 8 wire there at least is the wire that you use to repair fences.

Rob:  How interesting.

Colin:  That’s kind of a wire that they use to just like lash things together. If they need to fix their car they’ll bring out some number 8 wire and just loop whatever fell off back on. Like it’s the kind of place where people build…some dude built a motorcycle that was a completely different design from any motorcycle ever built before and then like won some big international race with it. It fell apart but then they took some of the components that he designed, this guy was totally untrained or something. The rest of the world looked at it and said, “Oh, it’s better.” So they took some of the components and made modern motorcycles because of this Kiwi that was just innovating on his farm or something.

Rob:  That’s insane. Okay, so now you’re in…you just left New Zealand. Does that mean that New Zealand is over…the 4 months trip is done?

Colin:  Yup.

Rob:  Was there anxiety the other way about leaving New Zealand? Like, “Oh man, I love it here. I want to stay.”

Colin:  There’s always a bit of anxiety and actually New Zealand was an interesting circumstance because I met this really awesome girl actually the last week I was there. And we went on a date not really expecting anything and then we ended up going on a date like every night that last week that I was there. So that made it very difficult. Usually, by the end of the 4 months, I’ve had enough time to kind of get a lengthen breath of experience and knowledge about the place and people which is what I really want and then I’m kind of rearing to go for the next place. So it’s a bittersweet leaving for sure because you meet so many good people while travelling and New Zealand especially, I met some really, just incredibly awesome people. So leaving them was hard but we do live in the future essentially and there’s never really a goodbye. You can keep up with each other on Facebook, on Skype and some of the people whom I met in New Zealand they’ve already planned to travel to the States to visit me so it was a little bit easier to leave than it would have been than I was trying to do this 40 years ago, when all these technologies didn’t exist. As it is, I was just able to look forward to this road trip that I’m about to do now and looking forward to Thailand and say, you know, “Thank you New Zealand for what you gave me. I’m taking a piece of you basically.”

Rob:  Okay, so now you’re in New York. Is New York just sort of a layover for you or is that a destination for a minute?

Colin:  It’s a layover but for a couple of weeks. I spent about 5 days in L.A. just to kind of decompress a little bit. I stayed with a friend out there and just went to the beach and worked a little bit, caught up on things. But New York I guess is a starting point for this month and a half road trip that I’m doing with two other bloggers around the United States, as an in-between between New Zealand and Thailand. So we’re starting out here. One of the bloggers, she’s got a wedding to go to on the 3rd of July so we’re leaving on the 4th of July and until that time we’re hanging out here networking. There’s a lot of travel bloggers in town, meeting a lot of awesome people and connecting with a lot of friends and friends of friends who are all entrepreneurs out here and you know, the kind of people who are running these companies that are getting 10 million dollar investments and stuff like that. So they’re really kicking and it’s always inspiring to meet those types of people.

Rob:  Where are you in New York right now? Are you in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn?

Colin:  Right now I’m in Manhattan. I think we’re changing locations tonight, going to Brooklyn, stay with some people out there. It’s kind of jumping around between friends.

Rob:  Yeah. New York was a really, really…I was there last weekend. New York is a fun town.

Colin:   Oh it’s great, pretty awesome.

Rob:  Now L.A….L.A. is sort of your second home? First home?

Colin:  Kind of. I mean I don’t technically have a home there anymore. It’s a place where I have a big network so it’s really easy to go there and meet up with friends, go to parties, like there’s a great group of people out there with this group called Mind Share, which is kind of like a TED for young people, as if TED’s not for young people but it’s definitely for like 20s or 30s something especially. I meet up with those guys all the time. It’s a great group of like green architect and stuff out there and then my buddy Andrew who I played ultimate cruising with in college is out there as a developer and I usually crash with him he’s got a very comfortable couch and he’s a hell of a guy.

Rob:  L.A. is one of my favorite places. I read some of your blog posts on it. There are some upsides and downsides but you can’t beat the weather. I mean it’s perfect.

Colin:  It’s gorgeous there. It’s almost shocking being in New York because it’s so crazy hot in humidity here coming from New Zealand where it’s winter and then going to L.A. where it’s gorgeous and then coming here which is just oppressive. It’s a shock to my system essentially.

Rob:  L.A. is always 70, sunny, no humidity, blue sky, perfect.

Colin:  Yes, and where I lived too…I was on the West Side so we definitely have like 72 to 75 degrees every day, partly cloudy, mostly sunny, a 5 minute walk from the beach. I mean that’s L.A. to me (laughs).

Rob:  Yes. My brother lives in Santa Monica and I just love going out there. You know it’s just perfect. So how long do you see this kind of lifestyle in your future?

Colin:  Oh gosh…basically until I get bored of it I think. It’s more than sustaining itself and giving me a lot more opportunities that I wouldn’t have had if I just would’ve stayed in L.A. so I can keep on doing it definitely if I want to and as long as current trends continue; hopefully they do and I have the ability to. But yeah, honestly I don’t really have a stop date in mind or certain number of countries or anything. I’m just going to keep going.

Rob:  You know, so many people say to me, “I want to be able to live this.” We’ll call it ‘lifestyle design’ which I guess Tim Ferriss was the one that’s sort of created it and coined it and made it popular; but they just don’t know how to support themselves economically on how to do it. You know, they just feel like, “You know, I would love to be doing this. I’m in my 20s or in my 30s or we’re married but we don’t have any kids yet and I’d love to do it but I’m stuck with a 9 to 5 job and that’s just the way it is. I can’t do it.” You would say what to that?

Colin:  I would say they can (laughs). I would say that we’ve been told for ages, all throughout school that the world works a certain way and it’s total bull. It works for them for you to think that. Basically it works for the people higher up. The school system was created during the industrial revolution to create workers for textile mills and such so it’s very good at getting people to obey, stay in line and to look forward to that kind of…if you’re familiar with the Brave New World’s term “soma”, like the holiday at the end of the day. So work really hard now and suffer so that you can enjoy it when you retire. That’s just bull. I mean we don’t have to do that. We got the technology; there’s no longer a proletariat and a bourgeoisie. The only difference between them was that one was able to create and one didn’t have the means of creation. They have to work for with the means of creation. Today we all have the means of creation. I mean with a few exceptions so if you’re not taking advantage of that it’s your own fault. Any situation, any circumstances you got can be overcome; whether it’s an incredible amount of debt or kids or whatever, whatever you think is standing in your way that can be an asset really. There’s lots of people travelling with kids. There are people who…like there’s Baker over Man vs. Debt  is doing a great job travelling, writing his blogs and doing lifestyle designs and stuff while paying off an exorbitant amount of debt. You can take it and run with it and make it your own. Make it a press release (laughs), worthy story, why not. So basically anybody who’s not doing it and wants to just isn’t trying. They’re not pulling away that’s been put away by the schooling structure and the corporate structure.

Rob:  See that’s the reason why I did this podcast series, is to show people that there are people who are doing it and I find that if people see somebody else is doing it, they’ve got sort of social proof and they’ll say, “You know what, I could do it. He did it. He’s 25. He has a nervous system, so do I.” (laughs) you know what I mean, like, “I could figure it out. It’s not that big a deal.”

Colin:  Exactly. And most of the people will tell you I think, myself included; there’s nothing innately special about the people who are doing this. It’s just that we happen to have certain circumstances that catalyzed our plan in taking that step because we all did it. I mean before I started doing this I was thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if…” But then I’d always contradict myself and say, “Well, I can’t.” Then one day it just snapped and I’m just like, “You know, let’s give it a shot. What’s the worst that can happen?”  And over and over, when you talk to people in this sphere of blogging especially, everybody has that kind of a-ha moment where they realized, “You know I could be doing this. Why not?” Where all the obstacles that were so important before are suddenly removed and as soon as you take that first week it becomes terrifying not to leave. And you keep on looking for new risky opportunities because the risk is actually not taking these supposed risks. More and more people are realizing that. I get dozens of emails every day from people who are readers would say, “Thanks. You just provided me the catalyst. I quit my job. I just started doing this. I just started travelling. I just started this other job. I just ended a bad relationship.” All people need in some cases is just to see somebody else doing it. Living by example and it was weird to me at first to start getting these emails because they seem like such important life decisions but then I realized it wasn’t really me. It wasn’t like I was telling them to go do this. I was just saying, “Here’s what I’m doing.” And they’re realizing that they could too.

Rob:  Right. You know I get similar emails and sometimes you find yourself fighting with their subconscious where they’re saying, “Yeah, but…”   Dude, all I can tell you is I did.

Colin:  Exactly.

Rob:  So Thailand seems to be a place that a lot of lifestyle design people have on their short list. For example I’ve got some friends out there, one guy is writing a blog called Tropical MBA, another guy is writing on called Location 180 and another guy is writing on Muse Life. They are all friends that are living there. Why do you think Thailand attracts this sort of lifestyle for people?

Colin:  I would say it’s probably mostly the currency, the exchange rate. They’re very favorable for Americans, for anybody who has a higher currency honestly. That whole geoarbitrage thing, the so called geoarbitrage where you know if you earn a higher currency and spend it in a place where they spend a lesser currency, you know something that’s not worth this much, you can live a ridiculous lifestyle without having to make much money. And I guess that’s what Sean and David and Cody over there, that’s what they’re all doing. They don’t have to work a whole lot or make thousands and thousands of dollars a month to live this ritzy lifestyle and that’s smart you know; if that’s what you value. You don’t want to have to do much work to make money, that you can live more of your life, that’s perfect and they found the way to do it.

Rob:  I was talking to Sean this morning ironically and he is paying 200 bucks a month for an amazing place which is like insane.  So what would you say is the biggest challenge that you’ve encountered along the way? And I guess the answer is probably your story in Lima.

Colin:  Yeah. The biggest challenge though, I’ve actually…I was almost mugged in Buenos Aires which was tough because then after that I’ve become a very careful traveler. I’m always kind of watching my back and it was totally unnecessary in Christ Church, New Zealand. You know population is 400,000, apparently the highest crime rate in New Zealand but the highest crime rate if you put it in perspective they were still talking about a mugging that happened 3 months before. Like not much happens. The news is full of like fluffy stories where they don’t really have too much to worry about. There are all these public service announcements on TV, not about anything hardcore like drugs and violence; it’s all about, “Well don’t leave your cooking unattended because you might burn down your house.” (laughs). I’m not kidding about that. Like this got really good actually, really well made, highly dramatic commercials about not leaving your cooking unattended so you know, that’s an ideal kind of place. One of that it’s not much, much bigger; it’s like 24 times the population of the entirety of Christ Church and the crime rate is so high. Last statistic I saw was 37% unemployment or something.  People are looking to try to live that westernized lifestyle they see on TV but they can’t. There are jobs in some cases there but they don’t pay very much and they value going out more so dealing with that was really tough for awhile.

Rob:  So you’ve been doing this for now 2 years? Is that what you said?

Colin:  1 year.

Rob:  Okay. So would you say that if you sort of went back to that moment where you were sitting at the back of your van and we sort of like…with a time warp you went back to envision what it was going to be like. How different from what you thought it was going to be was the experience over the last year than it actually was?

Colin:  I met a lot more people much faster than I thought I would. Just making connections; I guess I got  pretty good at making connections while I was in L.A. and I didn’t think it would translate well overseas but it seems like the same philosophies like giving value and getting value back for example, communicating clearly. Simple things like that. The basis of every relationship I guess are those two things primarily. That translates so well. So if you go to other countries and you do the same things then you make friends very quickly and I was just kind of thinking for some reason that culturally there might be a difference where it just wouldn’t work or thinking that people would probably have trouble because me being American and us having 8 years of George Bush, I didn’t think that I’d get a very good reception. One of the very first people I talked to in Argentina actually told me outright before I said anything to him was that, “I just want you to know I do not hate you. I hate George Bush but I do not hate you.”

Rob:  It’s unbelievable. My wife and I travel with a Canadian flag on our luggage. We really do and it’s not even making a political statement. I mean whoever is listening to this, we are not making a republican-democrat statement. What we’re saying is the reality of when you travel and how we are perceived. I used to travel years ago and you told somebody you were from America, the dollar was strong, there was respect, there was an instant admiration like they wanted to be like Americans. Those 8 years of the Bush administration have absolutely changed the perspective and I never tell people in advance because it’s just…it begs that problem and it’s become huge. I mean I’m 44 now, I’ve been travelling for a long time and those 8 years you’re absolutely correct. It was a big deal.

Colin:  It is. It’s unfortunate. I didn’t start travelling until right after Obama was elected actually. So fortunately it has been much better actually. People are more and more…if they find out I’m American and they’re like, “Oh yeah, Obama. Yeah!”

Rob:  It’s really funny. I know. I was in Mykonos actually when he won and I saw his campaign stickers on the island of Mykonos.

Colin:  Oh they’re everywhere. People have their posters. Like every country I’ve been in people have Obama posters up their wall.

Rob:  Yeah. It’s totally weird. If you were to pick one spot to live, where would it be and why?

Colin:  That’s tricky. You know I play a cat and mouse game with New York honestly. This has been the place that I always felt most at home at. Personally because I’m a kind of a workaholic; I love what I do and I love the thrill of it and I love being around other people who love the thrill of it. And New York is that kind of bustling hub of activity and inspiration and people trying to make it; but that being said, I would probably die very young if I work myself as hard as people in New York work themselves. So if I have to move somewhere knowing what I know now, honestly I would probably move to some relatively small city somewhere in the Mid West. Partially because it’s cheaper to live there as you can have a higher quality of life but still have all the benefits of living in the United States but then also, you actually meet some really interesting people in the smaller cities. Smaller like 500,000 as opposed to 12 – 14 million; you get some really interesting people, some really great ideas and start ups and it’s really easy to build a good cultural climate in a city like that because there’s enough people to make it work, there are enough resources for it to work but it’s not so huge like a place in New York, you can just disappear. But a city with 500,000 people, it’s possible to kind of stand out to make something; to have a cause, to have a business, that kind of thing. So I think that would probably be the happy medium based on what I know right now and where I’ve been.

Rob:  Right. You’re definitely not getting a place for 200 bucks a month (laughs).

Colin:  No (laughs). Maybe $500 though. You know in Missouri, my place in college was 500 bucks a month.

Rob:  Well, Colin listen…I know you got to run and I want to thank you so much for taking the time with us today. If people want to get a hold of you what’s the best way to do it to kind of follow you?

Colin:  They can go to my website www.exilelifestyle.com and there’s a contact page there or they can just leave their comments on any of the blog posts or they can just shoot me an email directly at colin@exilelifestyle.com

Rob:  Thank you so much Colin!

Colin:  Thank you Rob.

Sean Ogle Escapes The Shackles Of His Desk in America to Moves To The Beach in Thailand

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INTERVIEW WITH SEAN OGLE

Rob: Welcome to another edition of The Lifestyle Design Confessions Podcast.  I’m Rob Murgatroyd from www.getjetsetmoney.com and today we have Sean Ogle of www.location180.com on the line, all the way across many, many time zones all the way to Thailand. So Sean, are you there?

Sean: I’m here.

Rob: Sean, first of all I want to thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview with a 12-hour time change. I really appreciate it.

Sean: Yeah, my pleasure. It’s not a problem. I’m used to it by now (laughs).

Rob: Okay, so just by way of background, could you tell us a little bit about what led you to pack it all up and move to Thailand. Where were you from originally and I know you got involved with a program called the Tropical MBA and maybe we can talk a little bit about that but just to get people a little background of how you wound up getting to Thailand.

Sean: 3 to 4 years ago I graduated from a university like everybody does, had a finance degree, got a job right out of school and had your typical desk job crunching numbers. I wore a suit and tie. I think I’m the only person in Portland, Oregon who has to wear a suit and tie to work and it took me about six months to realize that that job sucks. I was like, “You know this isn’t for me.” My best friend was getting ready to take a world trip. He’s been saving up a bunch of money and then February of 2009, we actually went down to Rio for a carnival. We went down there for 2 weeks and I think I was walking around Copacabana beach when I realized, “You know what, this is what life is all about. I should do this on a day to day basis. I shouldn’t have to use all my vacation time for the year or two and do cool stuff like this.”  As soon as I got back I started Location 180 and I started making plans to try and break out of my job and then in October of 2009 I finally said, “You know what, I’m done.”  I took off. That’s when the Tropical MBA came up.  Dan Andrews of the Lifestyle Business Podcast read my blog, sent me an email and said, “Hey I got this opportunity for someone to come out and work with me in Southeast Asia.”  And one thing led to another and first thing in January I hopped on a flight and here I am.

Rob: So let’s go back to that time. You’re sitting in either your office or house, checking your email, you got an email from Dan Andrews of the Tropical MBA and he says, “Why don’t you come out to Thailand.” So you had to have one of those moments of going, “Brrrrrrr!” (laughs) Thailand! I mean, where is Thailand? What was that like for you? Because the reason why I created this podcast is for people who were in your shoes back in Oregon who wants to make the jump but they’re like, “How am I going to do it? How am I going to get the money to do it? I don’t know if I could do it. My girlfriend, my parents…” you know, all that kind of stuff. So take me back a little bit to the psychology that was going on in your head at that time. What were you feeling?

Sean: Well, I had all that stuff going on. I had a girlfriend at that time and she’s actually flying in to Bangkok, here in 2 hours.

Rob: Wow!

Sean: So we’re going to go head down to Bali on Sunday which should be fun.

Rob: So is that still a “had a girlfriend” or is that now going to be a “have a girlfriend” or is that to be determined?

Sean: It’s going to be probably “have a girlfriend” but it definitely was a little rocky getting from point A to point B but things are all good now.

Rob: Cool.

Sean: So anyway, that was a big concern at that time. She knew I was unhappy with my life and everyone around me I think knows I was unhappy with my job so finally I was like, “You know what, I’ve got to do something.” Whatever that ends up being, I’ve got to make a change and so the blog really helped me with that. I created a support system, I had a lot of people that were like, “You know what, whatever you need, if there’s anything I can do, we want to help you out.” So I mean I didn’t have a ton of money saved up. I have maybe 10,000 and I said, “You know what, I’m going to go try and start a business on my own or I’m going to travel the world or maybe do both at the same time.” And that’s when this opportunity for the Tropical MBA came up. And at that point, there wasn’t a whole lot of like, “Should I do this? Should I not do this?” It’s pretty much like, “Hell, yeah! Now I’m going to go travel and someone’s going to pay me a little bit of money to travel!”

Rob: Well, you also had to have a little bit of a trust factor because you didn’t know the Tropical MBA guys and you’re flying halfway across the world with guys that you don’t know.  There had to be a bit of a risk on your part there.

Sean: Yeah (laughs). For all I knew they were going to take me on a boat in the middle of the ocean, take what little I have but you know it was one of those things where I kind of have the attitude of “nothing ventured, nothing gained”. I talked with them a lot before I left, made sure everything was legit as I could and sure, it could have been one big scam but you know, these guys have got to be pretty well known through their podcasts and so I was fairly comfortable with the fact that I was going to go out there and end up on a deserted island somewhere but…

Rob: Right. You didn’t get any emails from like a Nigerian prince or anything so…(laughs)

Sean: Yeah, exactly! In the end it worked out better than I ever could have hoped. They have a legit business and they brought me on to really high levels. Not only was I getting paid to live in one of the coolest places in the world but I was also learning all the skills that I’ve been wanting to learn that I was unable to do working at a 9 to 5 finance job.

Rob: Describe for me the freedom that you were really looking for and how travel relates to it.  How old are you by the way?

Sean: I’m 25.

Rob: Okay. So for every 20, 30 something, there’s sort of a different opinion of what freedom is. You know, you usually ask a 20 year old and he says, “10 million in the bank.”  They don’t really know what they’re talking about, you know at that young age; but for you it seems like you have pretty well dialed in. You knew that that included travel, so you defined what freedom meant to you. Can you kind of just describe that a little bit.

Sean: You know I did quite a bit of travel growing up through the states but it wasn’t until I graduated college I took the obligatory, you know, month long back packing trip through Europe and it really sank in when I went to Brazil and I was like, “You know what, this is cool. There’s so much out here. There’s so much I want to see.” And I know there’s a better way to be able to do it then having to wait for my 2 week vacation every year. So that’s initially, one of the first people that I got in touch with was Chris Guillebeau. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his blog.

Rob: I know Chris. He’s a great guy.

Sean: So he moved to Portland and I sent him an email and said, “Hey, you want to meet up for coffee?” And then I met with him probably 4 or 5 times throughout the year when I was at various stages and so he was someone that kind of really give me the encouragement to say, “You know what, you can do this. It’s just a matter of being willing to work towards it.” So I spent a lot of time on the blog. I spent a lot of time learning about internet marketing and various forms of online businesses and I basically, you know, finally got to a point where I was like, “You know what, I feel pretty comfortable with this. I’m going to take a chance and see what happens.”

Rob: So let’s talk about that blog.  You ingeniously titled the blog Location 180. Can you explain why you came up with that title?

Sean: (laughs) I don’t know it was ingenious. I think a lot of people were like, “What the hell does that mean?!”

Rob: Honestly, I was one of those guys that said, “What did it mean?” Until I read deeper in your blog and I found out what it meant that’s why I thought it was ingenious because it really is catchy.

Sean: Right. So I mean when I started out it was basically just branded as Sean Ogle and I was like, I started a blog having no idea what I want. I knew that I had some cool Brazil travel stories that I could write about, I have a few, random things that I can talk about but I really was just wanted with my life and I think the more I started writing, the more I started to realize it was the kind of location dependent, you know, working for myself, travelling and working wherever I want kinds of things that I was really passionate about. And so once I figured out that was the direction I wanted to take, I started thinking of a better way to brand the site. It wasn’t going to work if I just kind of branded it as my name. I mean who cares about Sean Ogle, but I just started thinking of kind of creative names and thinking about what I was doing and essentially I was trying to do a location 180 whether it was a location physically and where I was actually living or location with the work I was doing, the people I was around or whatever it was, I needed to make a change and so that’s kind of what signified the blog title.

Rob: Do you think that the moment that you were in Brazil, were you sort of had this a-ha, this epiphany. Do you think that it was Brazil that triggered it or do you think it was just a combination of everything prior to Brazil leading up to it?

Sean: I think it was a combination of both knowing that I was really smothered. I really knew that I wanted to do something different and I think that finally hanging out in Brazil. We met this girl when we were in Europe that had this penthouse apartment in Copacabana beach and had 4 rooms, beach front resort house in Buzios. I mean we lived the “high life” in Brazil so I think it was kind of like all that stuff combined thinking it’s like, “You know what, you don’t have to be some millionaire to live this insane lifestyle.” It’s all about who you know and having the free time to do it. I think that was the most important thing. Brazil made me realize that you know, if I have more free time I could be doing this on a much more regular basis. You can make some money come but freeing up the time was the most important thing.

Rob: Yeah I completely agree with you. Last year we did New Year’s eve in Copacabana and…

Sean: Yeah, I saw your videos from that.

Rob: Yeah, it was pretty incredible and we had a great time. In fact, it’s funny that you mentioned Buzios because we are doing 10 days…no, about 2 weeks in Thanksgiving in Buzios this year. So I’ve never been so it looks like, based on what you’re telling me, it sounds like it’s going to be great.

Sean: Yeah, it’s incredible. We’ll talk later on.

Rob: Yeah, you have to hook me up. Okay, great!  Alright, so now I want to talk a little bit about…so now we got a little background about what led you to Thailand. I want to talk a little bit about what’s in Thailand. So do you have an apartment there or are you renting a house? What’s the set up like?

Sean: I rent an apartment in the Victory Monument neighborhood. It’s in central Bangkok but it’s still a little ways outside of where a lot of the ex-pat areas are. Sukhumvit Road is kind of where all the main stuff is happening. Sukhumvit and Silom. So I’m maybe a 10 – 15 minute BTS ride away from those areas but the area I’m in is predominantly Thai.

Rob: What does BTS means?

Sean: Oh, it’s the sky train, a public transit.

Rob: Okay, got it.

Sean: It’s predominantly a Thai neighborhood. It’s way less expensive and some of the more touristy ex-pat neighborhoods and the food is way better and way less expensive. Those three things combined kind of made it the perfect place for me to hang out.

Rob: So it’s an apartment?

Sean: I have an apartment there. I pay like 200 bucks a month plus utilities for a basic apartment, you know, bathroom, water, balcony.

Rob: Did you say 200?

Sean: $200 a month.

Rob: I just spent that on dinner last Saturday night! (laughs)

Sean: Exactly. That’s one of the biggest affairs of Bangkok, is you can spend $200, you can have a basic place. You know when I first moved here is the decision that $200 basic room or the like $400 or $500 palace. It was like one bedroom, came with leather couches and flatscreen tvs.

Rob: Dude, that’s unbelievable!

Sean: Or next to nothing.

Rob: So you’re earning money is US dollars and you know, we’ll talk about money…we do an entirely different series on how you make the money and maybe we can talk about hooking that up but for now it’s more of lifestyle but you’re effectively making the cash in US dollars, is that right?

Sean: Correct.

Rob: So you’re taking US dollars and you’re spending it on Filipinos at pesos?

Sean: Thai baht.

Rob: Okay, Thai baht. So you’re spending it there so the conversion is just completely to your advantage.

Sean: Yeah, it’s like 32 bahts for a dollar or something like that so I think it’s interesting because there are certain things here that are extremely cheap like lodging and there are certain things here that are more expensive that I imagined they be, like alcohol for instance. You know more or less it’s just as expensive as it was back in the States so you go out 4 or 5 nights a week and that adds up pretty quickly. So that’s when you become really glad that you’re paying next to nothing on the rent (laughs).

Rob: So booze is more but apartments and living expenses are cheaper?

Sean: They are cheaper and food is like nothing. I mean my favorite restaurant which is a 5 minute walk from my place is…I can get a big plate of any Thai dish I want for like 25 bahts so it’s less than a dollar.

Rob: This may be a silly question but with the dramatic change in nutrition, how was that affected your body? In other words is it like spices that you’re not used to and you get stomach aches, dysentery or any kind of that stuff from being you know?

Sean: I was expecting it to be a lot worst when I got here. I heard like the first 3 weeks you’re going to be a mess and I mean I had a few issues. The first month I was here I was travelling down to the islands. I was in like in Phi Phi, Krabi and Phuket and I ended up eating in a lot more kind of touristy restaurants and those were the ones that ended up making me more sick because they were not fresh ingredients, they have a lot of power outages and you never know if things have been thawed and refrozen. Generally speaking, I’ve had no issues. I eat street food every day, no problems so I think that’s one of the biggest surprises as a fact that that’s been such a non-issue for me.

Rob: Let’s talk about power outages. I’ve got two full time assistants in the Philippines now and there are some very regular, frustrating power outages that they need to deal with and they do the best they can to deal with them but you know sometimes there are elections going on there, there’s power outages. Let’s talk a little bit about that.

Sean: Yes, I work with half a dozen people in the Philippines as well and it’s definitely more prevalent there than it is here. You know, I think in the whole time I’ve been here, I think I have experienced maybe half a dozen and most of which they only last for half an hour to an hour. I think when you get farther down south and in to some of the islands where there’s less infrastructure, I think that’s where you run into a lot more problems especially as you get into a stormier season. But in Bangkok, generally, it’s pretty stable.

Rob: So you don’t have that many issues like they do in the Philippines.

Sean: Very rarely.

Rob: Okay, so you know what I’m talking about where it just keeps going out in the Philippines?

Sean: Oh yeah. It’s like trying to send someone an email for 6 hours and you get an email back the next day saying, “Another blackout!”

Rob: So your girlfriend is going to land in a couple of hours now and she’s going to experience, I’m assuming for the first time sort of what you experienced when you landed, right? This is her first trip?

Sean: This is her first time to Thailand. She’s been to way more places than I have been but first time out in Thailand.

Rob: Okay, so what was it like when it was your first time when you landed and got off the plane? Was it just…you know, did you feel like it was just tremendous culture shock or it wasn’t as bad as you thought or…can you talk a little bit about that?

Sean: The culture shock, that was never that big of a deal. I don’t know why it didn’t bother me more but I never found it to be that much of an issue. I think my biggest concern was you know, it was my first time in Asia, all I had was like a North Face day pack. It was basically the only bag I ever brought with me but it had my brand new dslr, my laptop, my whole life was in this bag. And so I think I was more afraid of hopping in a random cab that was going to drive me out in the middle of nowhere and take all my stuff and leave me there but as it turns out, the entire time I’ve been living here, I actually feel safer in Bangkok than I do in the United States save for a week where I was dodging bullets during some of the protests but generally speaking, I feel totally safe, totally at home. The culture shock, I think to me it’s going to be much more shocking to me to be back in the United States than it is having come out here.

Rob: Oh it will. I can tell you that for sure. It will. So describe a little bit about what type of things you do during the day. What’s a typical day like for you?

Sean: You know it kind of depends. Right now I’ve been working really hard, you know I’m going to be doing some travelling in the next months and I’m working really hard to get some work stuff wrapped up, some personal projects wrapped up. So pretty much I wake up at 8 in the morning and pretty much push through and work from 8 to 9 at night and then depending on the night, I go with some friends, have some beers, having fun. One of the things about Bangkok is 24/7 no matter what you want to do, you can pretty much find a way to do it. There are bars, there are clubs, there’s food. I mean, you name it. So there has been times when it’s 2 in the morning we’ve been working late, I’ll call up a buddy of mine and be like you know, “Hey, let’s go grab some sheesha or go to a club or do whatever.” And so it really depends. When I was first out here, I think, for whatever reason I felt like a had a little bit more free time. Maybe I was just slacking off and enjoying being in Thailand but we used to go wake boarding out in a lake that’s out near here once a week. You know just doing a little bit more travelling. I went down to Krabi and Railay beach on a couple of different trips and I’d go to the driving range in one of the gulf areas where I found my house so it all kind of depends. You know in a lot of ways I do a lot of the same things that I do back home. Lately for the most part, it’s been entirely work focused.

Rob: How has the weather been? I know Oregon doesn’t have the greatest weather in the world.

Sean: (laughs) It’s been about 85 and sunny for about as long as I can remember now.

Rob: So it’s pretty perfect?

Sean: Yeah, maybe a little hot at times but we’re starting to get in to the rainy season so you will get like 3, 4 days a week we’ll get torrential downpour for like an hour and then it’ll stop and an hour later it will be dry but generally the weather is pretty good.

Rob: So what would you say is the biggest shock for you about relocating there?  What was the thing that you just did not think of?

Sean: I think in a lot of ways the biggest shock was that there was no big shock. I got here and I’ve met up with Cody McKibben of throwingheroics.com

Rob: Yeah, Cody is great.

Sean: Yeah, I’ve never met him in person but immediately like, you know, within 4 hours of landing he was like, “Hey, me and my friends are going to go check out the old Ayutthaya ruins. You should come with us.”  So I went and hung out with them on my first day and immediately I was kind of like I just built in a circle of friends. They helped me find an apartment and from there it was easy. I mean there’s a very large ex-pat scene here and if you really make any sort of effort at all, it’s not tough to get in touch with those types of people. So you got a big group of people that speak English, that are all doing cool stuff so that really makes it a very livable city in terms of that aspect of it. I think if you go to a lot of other Asian cities, you don’t see the same ex-pat scene that you see here.

Rob: So if I took a cross sampling of your circle of friends and sort of like interview them and ask them what they did, what would be the consensus? Is it all internet business type stuff or is it all just very different?

Sean: You know I think there’s 3 different types of people you’ll find. I think there’s a 3rd that’s all doing internet business type of stuff and you know, my core group of 3, 4, 5 friends here, they’re all working on pumping out projects, all doing some really cool stuff. There’s another 3rd that we know. They’ve been in Bangkok for awhile. Generally it’s an older crowd 30 – 55 that actually have jobs here. They have families here. They’ve been here for a long time. They know the city. And then there’s another 3rd that’s people that are travelling. People just passing through, that some of them end up staying for 6 months or however long and some are just here periodically as they work their way through Southeast Asia. But I think those are the 3 main types of people that I interact with usually.

Rob: Okay, so let’s say someone says, “Alright, I’m in. This sounds too good to be true. I want to do it.” What would you advice someone to relocate like you did? What would you tell them to do?

Sean: Start a blog.

Rob: Start a blog. Why is that?

Sean: Absolutely start a blog because if it wasn’t for my blog, I wouldn’t be here. That was through all the people that I met. I mean, when I posted my last day on Location 180, I had like half a dozen job offers, I had all sorts of people that were giving me support, giving me options and by starting the blog I was getting in touch with all sorts of people that were doing all the stuff I wanted to do, then I would have never met had I not actually reached out and found a way to find them and give them a way to find me. And by doing that, I’ve enabled this lifestyle. I can’t think of a better way to enable this lifestyle other than starting a blog and networking through that.

Rob: I think this is a really, really important point. You authentically were willing to be vulnerable and put your life out there and say, “This shit has got to stop. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t like it. Somebody help.” And people started responding. Everything from people in the States to people in places like Bangkok saying, “You know dude, I did it. You can do it. Just come on out here and give it a shot.”

Sean: Exactly. And I think that’s one of the coolest aspects of my blog, that you don’t see from many blogs at all, is you see the whole transformation. I’ve never deleted a post off that blog so you can go back to May of 2009 and see how completely clueless and unsure of myself and scared I was to quit my job. And then you can see me going through the evolution of doing that to finally quitting to moving to Thailand to now, running multiple businesses and be able to support myself from wherever I want.

Rob: Yeah, it’s like a movie. It’s weird.

Sean: Yeah, it’s a cool evolution and so I think that’s a pretty unique thing.

Rob: How about the language barrier? Has that been difficult?

Sean: You know there are times when you run into issues with it. Generally, it took me awhile to learn all the names of my favorite foods, like I want to order on the street and kind of have to point awkwardly at whoever was sitting around on the sidewalk but enough people speak English that you can definitely get by but learning a little bit of Thai definitely will get you a long way. I have learned some. I probably haven’t learned as much as I would have liked. Other people have made a much greater effort and you know it’s really cool to see them actually have really meaningful, deep relationships with some of the Thai people. The only really good Thai friends I have generally speak pretty good English. I think that if there’s one big regret that I have about being out here is that I haven’t made more of an effort to learn the language and get more in touch with some of the local people.

Rob: You’ve done South America; you’ve done Europe, now you’re doing Asia. Do you feel like out of those 3 that this is the best for you in terms of living there and economics and people and all that kind of stuff or do you feel like, “I might want to try something new.”?

Sean: You know that’s an interesting question. I’ve been here for 6 months and I will actually be going back to the States for awhile by the end of next month as I kind of figure out what I want to do. One of the things I keep telling people was there’s no place I’d rather spend the summer than in Portland, Oregon. I mean there’s just a ton of stuff to do. A lot of cool stuff going on so I’m going to go back there for a few months and enjoy that, see some friends and family and kind of figure out what’s next. But you know I think I’ve done the Bangkok thing for awhile. I mean, it’s great and I look forward to coming back here at some point. I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to living in Rio for awhile. I thought that was an amazing city and now that definitely got quite a few connections down there, that certainly helps. My other favorite city that I would love to spend some time in is Nice in France. The whole French Riviera, I mean I just love that scene. You know, judging by some of your videos, you’ve spent quite a bit more time there than I have but I mean I think probably the best week of my life was in Nice and on the French Riviera.

Rob: Did you catch the one we just put up on St. Tropez?

Sean: I did.

Rob: Yeah, I just haven’t had the time to edit them but we’ve got Monaco and Nice coming up after that, part of that same trip. In fact, you are the second interview in this new podcast series that we’re doing but the first one is one of our members from Jet Set Money who is a lady who was living in Utah and she always wanted to move to the South of France and she said, “That’s it. I’m doing it. I’m moving.” And she packed it all up and she now lives on the French Riviera. If you go to Lifestyle Design Confessions podcast, you’ll see the first one. I think you’d really enjoy that interview with her.

Sean: Very cool. Yeah, I’ll definitely have to check it out.

Rob: So what would you say in all is your absolute favorite part about living in Bangkok?  If you had to narrow it down, what do you love the best?

Sean: The diversity. I think, in every sense of the word, there’s different people you meet, the fact as I mentioned, you can go out and do anything you want at any given time and have that freedom not to mention the access to other world class destinations like I’m hopping on a flight on Sunday to go down to Bali for the week. You know, I’ve spent time in the islands. I was over in the Philippines for awhile last month. You know it’s so easy to get around and for under 100 bucks you get a round trip plane ticket to just about any major place in Asia say for maybe like South Korea or Japan. And I think the fact the there are so many people to meet. It’s such a central hub. There’s always interesting people coming in. You can always do pretty much whatever it is you want to do and the fact that you can go just about anywhere in Asia very easily and affordably, I think those are 3 things that definitely made this one of the best places that you could possibly live abroad.

Rob: You have left your job. You have left that secure paycheck every single week and my hallucination is you’ll never, ever, ever go back to that again. You’re out; but there’s a lot of people who aren’t so the question I have for you is…so many people have emailed me say is that the biggest challenge they have is creating the income to do something like you did which is one of the reasons why we created getjetsetmoney.com. What are your thoughts on creating a remote income to live abroad for awhile? Is it difficult? Is it easier than you thought? Just sort of in a nutshell, you know stepping from the security of the pay check to stepping in the world of making money online. Is it harder, easier? What are your thoughts on that?

Sean: You know I don’t think it’s a difficult thing to do but it’s not as easy as a lot of people make it out to be. It just takes time. I mean you have to be willing to invest in learning how to do it. There are millions of ways you can do it but you have to be willing to spend the time to learn what you’re doing and you have to put in the time to do it. So I mean like affiliate marketing. I know a lot of people getting by by doing affiliate marketing. Well, that’s great. Anyone can sell an e-book or two but if you’re really serious about doing something like that then there’s a lot of stuff you need to know how to do. You’re going to have a lot of trial and error like you’re doing pay per click advertising. You have a potential to lose a lot of money and something like that, I think you really have to spend hours and hours to really devote yourself to learning. So I would say if someone got a 9 to 5 job then start spending 4 or 5 hours a night learning how to do that or maybe they want to make via article marketing which is another way of it. You can build up some long term passive income which takes a lot of time upfront to write a bunch of articles. So I don’t think it’s hard to do. I think you just have to be willing to learn how to do it and be willing to put in the time to do it.

Rob: Well you guys said it best. I listened to one of your podcast I think where Dan was interviewing you on the Tropical MBA podcast, I can’t remember which one but you guys talked about the hustle and I thought it was so brilliant and like such an a-ha that so many people just say, “Well, I’m going to put up a website, I’ll make an e-book, put an email opt in and smooth sailing. I’m going to make a bunch of money.”  You kind of work your ass off in the beginning. You know you have to really, really be willing to work hard and as much as we all loved the Four Hour Work Week we all know that 4 hours is not that much time to really put into an internet business.

Sean: No. Exactly.

Rob: But the good news is I think, in terms of my experience anyways, once you do put the work in, then it really does create income over and over like for example, we have a couple of different niche sites. We have a bunch of orders on some different products that we had created and the products that honestly, I haven’t even looked at in over 2 years. When I was working on them, I worked my ass off but I haven’t looked at them in over 2 years and they keep making money so I think that’s the flip side of it you know.

Sean: Absolutely. And I know people out here they made $20,000 last year of 30 hours of work that they put in upfront and then said, “You know what, I’m done.” They outsourced some link building and that was it; and they let it sit there and it made them a bunch of money. So there’s all sorts of different approaches you can take in that regard like for me, I’m getting ready to put out my first premium product at Location 180 which I’m really excited about. I’ve been working my ass off to make that happen but I’m really excited. I think it’s going to be a really good product once it finally gets out there and it’s something that not only do I think it’s going to help a lot of people but it’s going to help enable me to like continue my journey doing this and help other people do the same thing which is ultimately what I really want to be doing because you know, it is possible. You just sometimes need someone to show you how to do it.

Rob: Well Sean, we’ll leave that as a teaser so people come back to location180.com to see what it is.

Sean: Sounds good.

Rob: I cannot thank you enough for taking the time with us today and I know that scheduling was a real pain in the butt for you with your girl coming so I’m going to let you jump but if people want to get a hold of you, what’s the best way for them to do it?

Sean: The best way to get a hold of me is you can shoot me an email sean@seanogle.com. I’m on Twitter@seanogle. I mean those probably are the 2 best things. I’m at my computer for probably 10 – 12 hours a day these days so I’m not that hard for you to get a hold of.

Rob: Awesome!  Thanks again Sean.

Sean: My pleasure!

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Rob: Today we have the pleasure of having Tammy Camp on the line. Tammy has figured out what a lot of you guys want to do. She has figured out how to create enough passive income to be able to retire, live her dreams on her terms and she’s actually done some really cool stuff with that time like becoming a champion kite surfer which we’re going to talk about. So she kind of has what everybody is really after and that’s why I hunted her down and she if she was willing to do this interview. So Tammy, are you there?

Tammy: I’m here. Thanks for having me.

Rob: You’re welcome. So let’s talk a little bit about your lifestyle because I think you’re a really, really cool girl in general. You’re definitely in the minority.

Tammy: Thank you.

Rob: So I want to talk a little bit about your life and how you’ve set it up. We were talking last week on the phone and you mentioned that you were getting ready to go off to the Dominican Republic to do some kite surfing and then you’re coming back and you had to go to DC to be on the panel with Tim Ferriss and some other entrepreneurs. So, you know, you got a very full life and I want to talk a little bit about how you…we’ve covered just a minute ago how you’ve set it up but I want to talk about what it’s really like to live it. So are you spending multiple weeks in different cities, travelling? What does it look like for you?

Tammy: Right. I was spending multiple months full of travelling.  I started kite boarding…

Rob: Oh, I’ve been saying kite surfing…it’s kite boarding.

Tammy: It’s either, it’s interchangeable. Kite surfing, kite boarding, whatever you want to call it (laughs).

Rob: Okay, cool.

Tammy: It’s all the same. I started kite boarding 4 years ago, but the truth of the matter is that I was working so much because I’m a bit obsessive about it sometimes so my girlfriend took me to Dominican Republic. I had no idea where I was going. I got on the plane literally not knowing where Dominican Republic was. She had to take out a map in the front seat pocket and point it out to me (laughs), like, “Okay, great!” So I rocked out there and what turned out was supposed to be a 10-day trip…ended up being 6 months. So I just dropped everything and spent 6 months down there. And then the 2 years afterwards I’ve spent…I was kite boarding all over the world. I went to 13 different countries in 2 years.

Rob: Let me back up because this is important so I want to make sure I get this. So you’re killing yourself working like crazy, your girlfriend steps in like Superman and says, “You need help. We’re getting you a life. You’re getting out of here and we’re going to go to the Dominican Republic.” And you go there and you fall in love with kite surfing.

Tammy: Yes.

Rob: And you made a decision because you had the ability economically to say, “I’m not going home. I’m going to stay here for 6 months.”

Tammy: Yeah, absolutely.

Rob: So by the way, there’s like 1/I,000th of a percent of the world’s that does things like that. You know that, right?

Tammy: No, I don’t (laughs). Everyone that I know lives this life so I had no idea. It’s just like very normal.

Rob: Well, it’s normal for you but I’m going to tell you you’re a bit of an alien and that is not how most people function. And they don’t function that way because of all the rules that they have in their head about what life is supposed to be like and how it’s supposed to be lived and all of those things. That’s one of the reasons why it was so important to me to get someone like you because it’s kind of like, “Yeah, so what?”  And somebody else needs to understand that. It’s like once the 4-minute mile was broken, like it hadn’t been broken for like, I don’t know, like since Greece, since the 1st Olympics and that one year, Roger Banister, a high school kid breaks the 4-minute mile…in the Olympics, Roger Banister breaks the 4-minute mile and that year like 50 high school kids broke it as well because they were able to see it’s possible so that’s why it’s important for me to kind of get inside your head a little bit.

Tammy: Yeah, absolutely. Even before that I was spending months in London, you know just running around the city of London and then working and then going out and having lunch, you know sitting at the Oyster Bar at Herod’s. I love that place.

Rob: Alright, back to the story…so now here you are…you’re in the Dominican Republic and you’re 6 months in. Did you just rent a place on the beach or…where did you live?

Tammy: Yeah, I rented a place on the beach. I actually still have an office there right now on Kite Beach. It’s amazing.

Rob: Alright. You have an office there and is it an office that’s empty so that’s available for you when you want to go or is it something that you have employees in there currently?

Tammy: It depends on what project I’m working on. So right now, at this moment, no one’s there but in the past, yes, when I’ve been working on some project that needs to be ramped up or in a different language because a lot of people are very transient there from Europe so it’s like you have all the Dutch, you have all the Germans and French and Spaniards and all that so it’s like if I wanted to do something it’s like a multilingual product. It was so cool. I could execute it there.

Rob: That’s very interesting so you would have access to all the people who can help you with the language and create the product.

Tammy: Yeah, cool. And they’re like surfers so everybody’s cool, you know. I worked with all these people that II enjoyed hanging out with so it really depends on the product that I was working on; but right now it is empty but I have my surfboards there, I have my clothes so like when I leave. It’s like I’m in a Skype call right now and then jump on a plane and be set there for 6 months. So you know, I geocache my clothes so basically I can…it’s a cool concept. So you have, in the places that you visit frequently. You know, you just keep clothes or keep all the things that you need and stash in those places so I have little clothes stashes all over the world so I can just pop on a plane and go. I don’t really have to pack anything.

Rob: So how high-browed do you get in terms of setting up places around the world? In other words, are you fine with something that costs a couple of thousand bucks a month that’s near the beach and you know, to 1 bedroom place or are you fancier and you want it all decked out?

Tammy: Oh, when I mean Geocaching, I don’t mean spending a couple of thousand dollars a month. You know, I just mean like having something very, very small like $100 or $300 a month, not $2000. So you know, just having like a storage. I actually know…the same girl that took me to the Dominican Republic, her father does a lot of business in Brazil so he keeps office suits in a hotel that he frequents every month. They do that for him.

Rob: Oh, okay. You’re not actually talking about having a physical place. You’re talking about just putting your clothes in some storage?

Tammy: Right.

Rob: Okay, I got it. I was thinking more of like an apartment.

Tammy: Yeah, but I have had apartments as well all over the world so you know, you have to catch me on the right time (laughs).

Rob: It depends on what you’re doing.

Tammy: It depends on what I’m doing, yeah. You know, it’s always changing.

Rob: Most people will say, “To live the life that I want to live, I need a million dollars in the bank, I need $150,000 a year in income, I got to take care of my retirement, I got to make sure I got enough money coming in each month.”  What’s the reality of what you really need and sort of lived the life that you’re living? Could you do it on $5000 a month, $10,000 a month or…what do you really think? Do you think most people got it wrong that they think they need so much more than they actually do because it’s so inexpensive in other countries?

Tammy: Yeah, absolutely but you know, you can do it for $3000 a month or $2000 a month. I’ve seen it done before. I mean, travelling abroad I’ve seen European kids or people rather just come over and they make it work. I think we have this preconceived notion that travelling internationally…ooh, it’s so expensive! It’s really not you know. I can hop on a plane to the Dominican Republic for like $300. That’s less than going to San Francisco or California.

Rob: You’re right, it’s ridiculous. I mean I have people who can go to New Jersey but they can’t go to the Dominican Republic. In many cases, it’s cheaper to go to the Dominican Republic.

Tammy: Right. It’s less travel time.

Rob: Less travel time, exactly.  Okay, now that we’ve laid the foundation down for ways that you can do it and talk a little bit about the lifestyle. This is not somebody taking a week or 2 off, you know, to just chill and drink pina coladas and surf. You are actually productive when you’re…we’ll call them taking this mini-retirements around the world and there were certain tools that you use in order to be productive to run your empire. So take it from there, obviously, you’ve got a Blackberry.

Tammy: Absolutely. I have a Blackberry and I think that’s the number 1 tool for international travel. So on my Blackberry, they have this service called BBM and anyone that’s on that network, you know, you can exchange texts and photos and voice messages for free. So I’ve collected friends all over the world. Some are in London, my sister’s in Kuwait, my best friend’s in Portugal. I have all my friends in my Blackberry and it doesn’t cost me anything to stay in contact with them. And I don’t think a lot of people know that within the US, it’s a very international tool, the Blackberry messenger. That would be my number 1 tool.

Rob: Compare that by the way to the iPhone, which is kind of what everybody got in their hands these days.

Tammy: I have both and at the same time, statistically, there are 2 tons more Blackberry on the market than there are iPhones. I mean, iPhones are great. I guess I like both but it’s more of like my “fun toy” for me. It’s not something that I actually utilize to work from.

Rob: So certainly, internationally, the iPhone gets turned off and the Blackberry goes on?

Tammy: Oh, absolutely.

Rob: Yeah, and if you’ve ever tried to use the iPhone internationally, you’ll get the $800 bill that will give you a cold shower real quick.

Tammy: Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard.

Rob: Yes, it’s pretty unbelievable.

Tammy: I definitely turn my iPhone off when I go international.

Rob: What are some other tools that you use?

Tammy: There are many tools that I use and I guess I just want to say one thing. Neil Patel from Quicksprout.com has a great post. It’s called The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Web 2.0. it’s The Top 25 Applications to Grow your Business. I send a lot of people to that post because I think it’s great.

Rob: So let me get it again from you. Let me say it again so I don’t get a bunch of email on this. His name is Neil Patel, it’s Quicksprout.com, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Web 2.0

Tammy: I love Google Apps. I’m a huge Google Apps fan and what that is, it’s basically Gmail and Google Docs and Google calendar specifically for small businesses. So whenever you have your domain name, that is actually ran on Google Apps. You can actually host your domains instead of tammycamp@gmail. I have my whole business running off the back end and I think that’s a great tool. You can sync your calendars to your Iphones, your Blackberrys, that’s all interchangeable and you don’t have to pay for it. What I love most about it is you do use Blackberry or even iPhone. You don’t have to have a Microsoft exchange license for it. You know, your Blackberry license for it so it just syncs. Like everything syncs if I’m entering into my Blackberry, it automatically syncs to my Gmail Apps so I think that’s great. In having everything in the Cloud, I’ve found is essential. So I can literally pick up. I don’t have to take my computer with me. I can access. Having complete access to all of my data, all of my files, everything in the Cloud and that means not just Google Apps. Like for instance if you’re using tools like 37 Signals or Sales Force, you know, your CRMs.

Rob: By 37 signals, you’re referring to Base Camp?

Tammy: Yes, I’m referring to Base Camp.

Rob: You know, one of the questions I get all the time is, “Well, aren’t you nervous about putting something if you don’t have a file on your desktop? You know, you might lose it.” In 5 years that I have been online, I don’t think…in fact I know there’s not one file that’s ever been lost.  You don’t lose it in the cloud. In fact you’ll lose it if you put it in your computer and your computer will crash.

Tammy: You don’t even understand how much money I’ve spent on data recovery services (laughs).

Rob: It’s ridiculous, I know.

Tammy: Now that I’ve put everything. Now that I’ve put everything in the Cloud, it doesn’t happen and it’s awesome.

Rob: It’s a non issue. Okay, I understand that there’s a media tour that you’re sort of either finishing, starting or where are you with that?

Tammy: Well, I’m travelling a lot. I’m making a lot of appearances at conferences this year. You know I have been travelling internationally in the past few years and now I’m ready for everyone to see my face again (laughs). Conferences like the Summit Series, Renaissance Weekend and Mai Tai. I’ll be going to Mai Tai with just Bill Tai and Susi Mai. Bill Tai is like a venture capitalist from Charles River. Susi Mai is like one of the top female kite boarders. They actually have an event that they get all of the tech entrepreneurs and all the venture capitalists who kite board and I get them all together in one place and I’m actually going Maui in five days and that by far is like the best event. And you know it’s a small, small group of us because I mean, hey who kite boards? But during that there’s definitely interviews and all that. You know Forbes is there interviewing why it is that entrepreneurs or even tech entrepreneurs are so drawn to the sport.

Rob: You know what, I get emails all the time from people saying how, from me personally, “How you live this life, how do you travel the way you travel, I’m envious.” My life is in sh*t compared to what this girl is doing (laughs). She is killing it. And I’ll tell you. If you do yourself a favor, sign up for her Twitter feed and I’ll have her give her website in a minute but she will keep you up to date via Twitter in a very elegant, sexy, interesting way and if you just want to live vicariously or you just need inspiration for what’s possible. This is absolutely my number 1 recommendation of the person to follow in terms of living life that most of the members of the site want. So Tammy I just want to thank you so much for taking the time with us today and being as open and candid as you have been.

Tammy: No worries! Thanks for having me.

Rob: You’re welcome. If people want to get a hold of you, how do they do it?

Tammy: Well, I’ve maintained a personal blog at tammycamp.com and that’s about entrepreneurship and adventure travel and kite boarding and just you know, everything that I do (laughs). And also, you can follow me on Twitter. I usually tweet about my adventures so you can do that at www.twitter.com/tammycamp

Rob: Tammy, thanks again and I hope that our paths cross somewhere in the air over Tarifa, kite boarding or something like that. It will be really, really cool to actually meet you.

Tammy: Likewise!

Cheryl Antier Packs It All In To Move to The South of France and Live Her Lifestyle Design Dream!

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Rob: Today we have Cheryl Antier on the line. Cheryl is someone who has taken the concept of lifestyle design. Grabbed it, squeezed it, took everything she could out of it all the way to St. Tropez and I’m so glad that she’s willing to do this interview with us. Cheryl, are you there?

Cheryl: I’m here.

Rob: First of all, I just want to say I think you are awesome. I mean what you have done is absolutely incredible in terms of lifestyle design and I want to just kind of get into it so just by way of background, could you give me just a little bit of what the last 4 or 5 years looks like in terms of where you’ve traveled and how you wound up all the way to where you are now which is living on the French Riviera in St. Tropez.

Cheryl: We just got back in April from a little, quick trip to Washington DC and we wanted to see the cherry blossom festival and then also New York and Philadelphia. So that was April. The last few years we’ve been to Italy a couple of times, Monaco, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany a couple of times, the mainland of Greece…we haven’t done the Greek Islands but that’s on the plans. Now I know I’m forgetting some but I love England, Ireland, I really love to travel. We went to Spain. So it’s a fabulous way to live, to be able to do this.

Rob: So you have figured out a way to do something and this is the reason why I wanted to have you on the line…you have figured out a way to not say, “I am going to live the deferred life plan and I’m going to wait until I’m 65, 70 years old.” You need a walker, wheelchair or whatever kind of condition you’re in, the last stages of your life and sit on a cruise and look at the window at Luxembourg. You said, “No, I’m going to do it now while I’m young. I’m going to find a way to pay for it and I am going to live this life in a big way.” Did I get that right?

Cheryl: Exactly. Life is short, you know. I mean, every minute that we have, this minute right now where we’re talking, is unique. Whether you believe in…I don’t know, reincarnation or you believe that when you die you go to heaven and sprout wings and play a harp all day or you think you die and become fertilizer. Whatever you believe, this moment, right now, this is it. This moment is the only one you’ll get so I really don’t understand people who don’t want to squeeze every single bit of life out of life. They can but they just don’t know what’s going to happen.

Rob: I would suspect that in the beginning, before you made the plunge and actually relocate, I would bet you had some apprehensions, maybe some fears. Let’s talk a little bit about that because it is very brave in my opinion, what you decided to do. You are in the top 1% of people who say, “I’m going to do this.” Let’s talk about it from the beginning. What were some anxieties you had? What were some fears?

Cheryl: Well, one thing that was kind of a huge trigger is that I lost my husband, he had a stroke. It was 3 days after his 50th birthday and I had 2 boys and a house payment and the mortgage and you know, all the things…not to mention of course all the expenses because he had been sick for a long time. So I had all of that facing me and there was one day that was kind of the “straw that broke the camel’s back”. Really quickly my water heater broke, flooded the basement, my kids were thrilled for about 10 minutes because they thought I’d put an indoor swimming pool in the basement and they’re excited to invite their friends over. The flooded basement also broke my washing machine which we didn’t find out until we washed all of the towels and things we were using.

Rob: Cheryl, just to give me a frame of reference, this is how many years ago and where were you living?

Cheryl: I was living in south eastern Utah and this was in 2002. And on the way to the plumbing store which was 30 miles away, we had a flat tire and I never had to change a flat tire in my life, didn’t know how to do it and nobody drove by, nobody stopped to help and that was kind of when I decided, “You know what, this is not how I want to spend my life. This is not what I want for my boys.” I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’ve wanted to live in France since I was 14 and so I started looking for ways that I could come to France.

Rob: And your kids were how old?

Cheryl: Let’s see…they were 12 and 14.

Rob: Okay, that was 6 years ago. So that was the trigger and then you created…because you knew where you were going to wind up which was France so you had to set up a plan to allow that to happen?

Cheryl: Right.

Rob: Alright. So let’s talk about that. What did that look like?

Cheryl: (laughs) that was pretty much a disaster. I spent a year on the internet trying to have an internet business. I spent thousands of dollars but I sure didn’t make anything. And then by sort of accident, I got a job doing some writing, some ghost writing. That one actually happened to be some special report and it happened to be for the internet marketer. After doing these 12 reports, the one thing that I did learn from that…actually I learned 2 things. One is that it was possible to make money. I just needed to learn exactly how to start creating more than just one income stream because one income stream wasn’t going to do it. And the other thing I learned is that I don’t care how much money somebody pays me, I will never, ever write about golf again (laughs).

Rob: (laughs) why?

Cheryl: It is the most boring subject (laughs). So anyway, I started doing several different things. One of them was writing grants and I got involved to doing some mentoring with the local vocational rehab organization and they were sending me clients so that I could help small business owners get grant money. I probably written my third one when I realized, “Hello, let’s write one for me!” so I did and that was what gave me the money to be able to come over here.

Rob: Which was how long ago?

Cheryl: That would have been 2003 and the kids and I moved over here in 2004.

Rob: Okay, so you brought the kids with you.

Cheryl: Yup.

Rob: Okay, so now they are a few years older. How old are they now?

Cheryl: My oldest just turned 21 and my youngest is 18.

Rob: Okay, and what did they think about moving to France? Were they all on board or did you have some anxieties there?

Cheryl: Oh there was total anxiety. Not to mention the fact that our dog, my oldest son’s dog. She was a very, very popular girl. Nine puppies…so the sad thing was when we left, we couldn’t bring her and 9 puppies to France. It sounds like a small thing but that was a huge, huge thing for my son.

Rob: It’s not a small thing. If you have a dog you’d understand that.
Cheryl: Yes, and so for him that was probably the hardest thing. More even than leaving our family; more than leaving his friends. I mean, when you do this kind of thing it’s not without issues. Plus, moving to France; we had one little problem; that none of us spoke French and…

Rob: (laughs) Minor detail.

Cheryl: Yeah. You know, minor thing. Now, after about six months in school, my eldest son became…I mean he’s fabulous. He speaks better French than I do and he’s completely bilingual. I can get along. I can talk to the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and I can do polite dinner conversation but I still struggle and have to take my dictionary along if I needed to do something like bureaucracy-wise.

Rob: Right. You’re not reading “War and Peace” in French yet?

Cheryl: Not so far. No.

Rob: Got it. So now the kids are in…are they in university now or are they out of school or…?

Cheryl: My youngest son is doing internet high school and my oldest son will finish his degree next year and he’s doing travel and tourism which is a big plus from him because he’s bilingual.

Rob: Right.

Cheryl: And so yeah; they’ve adjusted. They like it and we love the lifestyle over here.

Rob: Alright. So let’s kind of get into that a little bit. I just back from St. Tropez and I was at a place you may know because you live there called “The Cube Hotel”.

Cheryl: Oh yeah! It’s fabulous.

Rob: Yeah, we were there for a couple of weeks and I really got St. Tropez at a very deep level. It’s so hard to explain. You’ll get this but for people who are listening who haven’t been there it’s really difficult to understand. The culture in the summer in St. Tropez is like; I can’t even find words for it. Uhm… it’s…

Cheryl: You mean like all the stores close from noon to 4 and everybody has a 2-hour lunch and then goes home and takes a nap?

Rob: Yeah. I mean that and the hundred-million-dollar yachts that are sitting in the port and people partying non-stop. I mean it is a place of excess indulgence and wealth displayed like I never ever seen so it’s very interesting to me that you chose to live in that environment. My first question is, is that just the tourist side of it that you stay away from or do you find yourself on the yachts as well?

Cheryl: Yeah. I mean we do from time to time but it actually is the touristy side of things. And we actually moved to Toulon which is a different city. We’re actually a couple of hours away now from St. Tropez because I wanted a place where the kids could walk at night. I wanted a place where they didn’t have the chauffeurs and the yachts and the helicopters picking people up and dropping them off at the airport. I want it normal…

Rob: Yeah, you’re not exaggerating. This is exactly what that’s like…let’s take the helicopter to the boat…you know…

Cheryl: Exactly

Rob: Like it’s really like that.

Cheryl: There’s a company…I can remember one time when we were with some friends on their boat a couple of summers ago and we parked in the harbor…there was this yacht next to us and the kids were saying goodbye to their dad and it was very obvious, and the girlfriend, very elegant, very sexy lady was standing in the background and the kids gave a hug to a couple of the stewards or the crew on the boat and then the car pulled up, the two security guards got out, walked up to the boat, took the kids, got them in the car and it was the security that works for one of the helicopter companies. So they were taking the kids to the helicopter which would probably take them to the private jet. It’s not unusual for that kind of lifestyle over here.

Rob: So why France out of all the places in the world, why France?

Cheryl: When I was 14 and in 9th grade, I discovered that the French class got to go to Paris. When in 10th grade or 11th grade they got to do a summer trip. I don’t know…I have always felt at home in my skin about France. It’s just always where I wanted to live and so I worked for a whole summer so I could pay for that trip so that I could go with the 10th grade class and at the last minute, my dad decided that no, I wasn’t going, I was a girl and there are going to be boys and there was just no way. I bought a car with the money instead. That was my little bit rebellion but I remember telling him, “Someday I’m going to live in France.” It just was always what I wanted to do. It took me longer than I thought I was going to but…

Rob: But it happened and I think this is what’s so important…you never let go of the dream.

Cheryl: Exactly

Rob: You knew it was there, created it, your hindsight’s always 20/20, if you knew what you know now you would have done it a lot quicker but the bottom line is, it happens. So what is it actually like living there? Is it what you thought it would be? Is it better, is it worst?

Cheryl: Much better. We have 309 days of sunshine. The temperature, even here when it’s very, very cold and you’ll see people in their ski hats and their gloves and their thick coats and their boots. Think about spring time in the Rockies. It very seldom gets below 50’s over here. We use the car only on weekends and not even every weekend. It depends if we’re going to go somewhere for doing what, the train can take us or if we want to walk. We have an open air market. This is one of the reasons that I love Toulon. It’s open. A lot of markets here, a lot of villages have open fruit and vegetable market once a week or maybe twice a week. Ours is every day except Sunday and Monday. Everything is fresh, it’s bio, I mean there’s no preservatives, there’s none of them pesticides or things. You can get almost any kind of fresh fruit and vegetable all year long. If I want meat, I go to the butcher and he cuts it for me in front of me and I can see exactly what I’m getting. If I want fish, I go to the fish mongers and it’s fish that’s been caught in the boat that day and brought over in the morning. I go to the bakery if I want a cake or if I want homemade bread. I mean I’m incredibly spoiled that way, I admit. People here, we work about 35 hours a week. Sometimes I work a little less than that. People get six weeks of paid vacation. If you’re a mom, you get 4 months of paid maternity leave and then your job is guaranteed to be held for you when you come back. Right now we take about 4 and a half months of vacation a year but my goal is by 2012 I’d like to be able to do 6 months vacation.

Rob: So those perks that you just described, is that for the average French citizen? The question is I guess do you also get those perks being an American?

Cheryl: Yes, you can buy insurance over here. I mean everybody is covered by what they call Social Security and it doesn’t pay everything. Sometimes it pays 50%, sometimes 70% but you can buy extra insurance. Let’s see…for the boys and I, I have to tell you it covers full medical, full dental icare. I think I just raised it. I think i’m paying 60 euros a month now.

Rob: Okay, so you are an American who is buying social security which covers all of those things for about 60 euros.
Cheryl: Right.

Rob: Now if you didn’t purchase that, would you be covered or would you not be?

Cheryl: It would depend on the situation you’re in. You’re always covered in an emergency and you’re covered for some things. Now there’s something I got to tell you…you go to a doctor here costs about 20 euros. That’s to visit your regular GP.

Rob: Is that as a French citizen, an American or it doesn’t matter?

Cheryl: Anybody

Rob: Okay.

Cheryl: Also, doctors here make house calls.

Rob: Yeah, I’m really super familiar with the doctor side of things. I mean we can spend 2 hours on that. I am absolutely fascinated with the French healthcare system. How did they set it up with doctors patrolling the streets and have everything that they need to handle it inside of their house. Michael Moore did a movie on that called Sicko.

Cheryl: Right, I haven’t seen that yet but I will.

Rob: You need to because it goes through in a very tongue and cheek way all of the healthcare systems around the world, France being highlighted and I could not believe how great the system is.

Cheryl: Oh yeah, it’s amazing. It really is. I have a son, my youngest son has a chronic disease, a chronic illness and so health care is…when I was looking at where do we want to live and what do we want to do, health care was one of the issues that I have to look out when I was really thinking about my lifestyle and what we wanted to do and France, of course, has the best.

Rob: So you found out that the best is really the best and you have no complaints. You know, you hear people saying, “”Well, yeah but you have to wait forever to get an MRI.” Or you can’t get in to see a doctor. That’s not your experience?

Cheryl: No. maybe if you live in Paris, or maybe if you’re in a tiny, little village where you have to travel to go get an MRI but down here on the French Rivera, I don’t think I’ve ever waited more than 3 days if we needed some things. Oh! I got to tell you this one too…One of the times we put my son in the hospital, they were feeding him through an IV. This was when we first got here. I was used to the US way of, they would put him in, pump him full of drugs and as soon as possible get him out the door. And so we’ve been in the hospital for 7 days and I said to the doctor, “Well, don’t you want us to like get out of here because somebody else might need the bed? When are you going to be releasing us?” And he looked at me like I was crazy and he said, “We’ll release Tony when he’s ready to be released.”

Rob: What a concept. Can you imagine? You mean you didn’t have to have the baby in the parking so you can go home? I mean it’s unbelievable.

Cheryl: Exactly. It is. it’s amazing. I mean, I highly recommend France if you love…we’re so close to everything. I can be in Paris by the train, I can be in Paris in like 3 and a half hours. It’s a short drive. We can go have dinner in Italy any time we want to.

Rob: You know it’s so funny…try and imagine yourself back in 2002 listening back to this interview, having your eye balls pop out, right?

Cheryl: Yeah, if you told me that I would be doing this, I would have called you a liar.

Rob: Yea, it’s funny. What is Toulon like? I was just recently, like I said, we were in St. Tropez and I have a friend who lives in Monaco because he made a buzzillion dollars making a movie and he was hiding the income I suppose or whatever they do there. So we went to the cliffs that sort of like overlook Monaco on the French side. What does your neighborhood look like? Is it chateaus, is it villages?

Cheryl: Toulon is kind of a mid-sized town. It’s actually the second largest port of the Navy. So in the old days, Tulane was kind of a bad girl. You know, all those ships would come in to town and have the sailors…we still actually have kind of an old red light district although there’s not so much of that going on anymore. But Tulane has amazing fountains. I think there are like 25 fountains, everywhere from the 15th to the 18th century. We have little squares that are made of marble and they’re surrounded by sidewalk cafes. We have concerts. We have the Opera House that was designed by the same guy who did the Paris Opera House. We have theatre, we have two music festivals a year, we have concerts. Joan Baez I think was just here. We have the open air market. The harbor was right here. The beach is 15 minutes away by foot. In the center part of Tulane, there’s everything you need. I mean that’s why we don’t use the car because we can walk where we want to go. They’ve got bike pass, there’s hiking, there’s mountain climbing, there’s museums, there’s a cultural center. It’s just an amazing city. And what’s really cool about it and for somebody who’s listening, you are not to tell the rest of the world this…we’re in the French Riviera but we’re the undiscovered city. Prices are not expensive here. I mean you can still actually find a flat around 150,000. They’re going fast but I mean you can find really nice villas up along the top part of Mont Faron which is the mountain here. You can find those in the millions so we have a little bit of everything but it’s actually affordable.

Rob: Now did you decide to buy something or rent something?

Cheryl: I am still renting because I will tell you it’s very complicated. It’s not as bad as Italy but it’s a very complicated to buy something here. And there are a whole lot of rules and regulations and the prices can change and sometimes, like in Italy, there’s many that you pay under the table because…it’s just…it’s complicated.

Rob: It’s under the Tuscan sun, yeah.

Cheryl: Oh, yeah, totally. So I’m renting but I’m in a place where we’re 5 minutes from the Opera, 10 minutes from the open air market, I’m 15 minutes from the harbor.

Rob: What could somebody expect to spend, let’s say they said, “You know, I want to give it a try. I want to live there for a year and I just want to rent.” For something, let’s say, decent. What do you think they’d pay rent?

Cheryl: Really it’s going to depend on which part of the city you look in but you can find something really good, a 2 or 3 bedroom flat that takes up…I mean because we got the 3rd floor of the 18th century building that were in. We’re about 1400, 1500 euros.

Rob: That’s great. Now you say you don’t have to be a millionaire to live a jet set lifestyle. Tell me what you mean by that.

Cheryl: I think, for everybody, the jet set lifestyle is a little bit different and I think the first thing that you have to do is you have to figure out your end vision, what it is that you want to do. I mean, when I was 14, I thought I was going to be a starving artist in a garret in Paris, in love with a French man and sitting at sidewalk cafes and learning how to smoke those thin, little cigars. You know, really suffering from my work.

Rob: By the way, you are writer. You had me at “hello” on that one (laughs).

Cheryl: Thanks (laughs) but obviously I love the French Riviera, I love having this huge flat, I love to be able to take the train to Paris when I want to but being in the center of everything else. I mean, we can drive…if we want to drive in Italy, we could drive to Italy. You can get to Spain. You can almost get anywhere in a day, day and a half. And the things that I really love about the lifestyle here is that people work to live. They do not live to work. And so I think for the jet set lifestyle, the first thing you have to do is figure out what it is that means a jet set lifestyle to you because…you know, what you and Kim are doing, I’m a little old to go to the beach parties and run around in a bikini although I’ll tell you there are women in their 60’s that do it and look fabulous and I like to hit them over the head with a rock!

Rob: How old are you now Cheryl, if you don’t mind my asking?

Cheryl: I just turned 51.

Rob: Okay, I’ll be 44 this week so I get it, I get it…it’s a little tough.

Cheryl: It does but I mean there’s something for everybody and you just have to figure out what your dream is and what you really want and then just work your way backwards. I mean you have to want it because it’s not going to come to you in a silver platter and I tell you it took me pretty much 6 years of working my behind off to get to the point where I really feel like I’m finally coming to what I’m supposed to be doing which is writing because I love it and to be able to feel comfortable. I’m not worried anymore that something’s going to yank the rug out from under me and my lifestyle’s going to disappear.

Rob: Let’s talk about that a little bit. You’re spending time living life the way you want and that you’re interested and passionate about and boom!…you know, your life explodes.

Cheryl: Exactly. I really do believe that’s the key
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Rob: Yeah, and I think that some people are not willing to and if you can get them to say it, then you get all the BS that happens like, “Well, I can’t do that. I have kids.” Or “I can’t do that. I got this.” You know, those kinds of things. So if I were to say to your kids now, “Kids, pack up. We’re moving back to Utah.” They’d say what?

Cheryl: One of them would say, “Gee mom, have a great time and write when you get there.” And the other one would say, “Mom, can I help you pack your bags?”

Rob: Wow! Okay, so you got to split right there.

Cheryl: I do have to split and I that’s something people have to think about too, is when you’re going after your dream, you really, really need to have your family or your partner. It really makes a huge difference if they support you. And even my son who would like to go back home and would help me pack, he still supports me that I want to be here and that I’m doing what I do and it makes a huge, huge difference.

Rob: Well, Cheryl I know that you have about 65 people that are about to walk into a dinner party that you’re running and thank you from the bottom of my heart, sincerely, for being as candid as you have been and as inspiring as you have been. So thank you!

Cheryl: You’re totally welcome. I had a great time.

Rob: If people want to get a hold of you and you know, what you do and kind of keep up with you, maybe a Twitter follow or something like that, how do they do it?

Cheryl: Find me at cherylantier.com

Rob: Perfect! Thanks again Cheryl.

Cheryl: You’re very welcome! Thanks for having me.