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.
Thanks for the written transcript! I’m profoundly deaf so I wouldn’t be able digest your Podcast without one.