The Entrepreneurial Process and Journey by Mitko of That Remote Life | TNE022

On today’s episode, we’re joined by a very special guest- a digital nomad, serial entrepreneur, and fellow remote work podcaster, Mitko Karshovski from www.thatremotelife.com . Mitko and I sit down and talk about his wildly fluctuating entrepreneurial journey, the perks of working remotely vs in a cubicle, the future of remote work, and a host of other topics.

Today's Guest

Mitko Karshovski

Mitko is the host of That Remote Life Podcast. He first heard the term digital nomad in 2015 and since then, it's been a wild ride. 

He spent the next two years reading hundreds of articles, dozens of books, and listening to countless hours of podcasts in an attempt to understand how to work remotely and do so successfully. 

Through the course of his remote journey, he's earned money in tons of different ways: dropshipping, Amazon FBA, social media marketing, copywriting, web development, coaching, project management, and he even helped run a marketing agency. 

Today, he hosts his own digital nomad podcast, which you can find below.

Mitko's Website/ Podcast (an incredible resource for all things remote work and entrepreneur related):
https://thatremotelife.com/
Mitko's Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/mitkoka


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Transcript

I've got everything I need right here with me. I've got the air in my lungs, a few blank sheets of paper. I mean, I love waking up in the morning. Not knowing what's going to happen. I'm going to meet her. I'm going to wind up there. They're not always sleeping under a bridge. And now here I am on the grand a ship in the world. Having champagne with you, finding, I figured life's a gift and I don't intend on wasting it. You never know what hand are going to get dealt next and learned to take life as it comes at you to make each day count.

Thanks for tuning in to the nomadic spirit podcast, hosted by Omar of nomadables.com. Join Omar while he speaks with leading digital entrepreneurs here to help you transition into the age of remote work and digital nomadism all while helping you design your life to be happier, healthier, and full of freedom. And now here's your host, Omar Mo

What is up my beautiful listeners. Welcome back once again. Thanks for tuning in this week to the nomadic spirit podcast. I'm sure you can get a swear that quote in the intro came from, but for those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I'll give you a hit that's right? Those words are spoken by none other than Jack from Titanic Jack in that quote really expresses his desires for experiences over materialism. What he said embodies all that digital nomads, both workers and travelers of all types live for now on today's episode, we're joined by a very special guest lives by Jackson message as well, a digital nomad and fellow remote work podcaster Mitko [inaudible] Ooh, I'm starting to sound like I'm part of the KGB, even though Mitko was born in Bulgaria. That's right. Mitko got a shove scheme of www.thatremotelife.com mitko and I sit down and talk about his wildly fluctuating entrepreneurial journey, the perks of working remotely versus in a cubicle, the future of remote work in a host of other topics. Now, before we get started here with these massive value bums, I've got a request, like I always say your feedback is really what helps this podcast and me as a podcast stor grow. So if you could show some love or hate, doesn't really matter as long as it's your truth by taking two seconds out of your day and leaving a rating or review, that would be amazing. If you'd rather leave me a strongly worded, feel free to reach

Out to me@omarmodigitalatgmail.com that's O M a R M O digital@gmail.com to get feedback for collaboration's or anything else you feel like you just have to tell me kidding. I love hearing from you guys now without much further ado, here we go. What's the name of your podcast? First of all,

For my art, it's called that remote life,

That remote life. Alright, so, and you have, you just hit, like what 10,000 downloads? Quite recently, from what I saw,

Um, yeah, it's like, we're past that at this point, but, um, yeah, 10,000, I think like two months ago or something like that. So congratulations. Thank you. Thank you.

How how'd that feel? Probably amazing, huh?

Yeah. Um, I don't know. I think it's not like, I think like, you really imagine what, like hitting these things feels like, and you're like, wow, it must be like, so cool. Then you get there and you're like

Onto the next one, right? Yeah. It's just milestones is what it is. I totally, yeah.

Yeah. And you always like reduce your own achievements, right? So like, yeah. Like even like a goal to, to you would have been like really amazing a year ago. Once you do achieve it, you kind of like reduce, you know, that achievement. Tell me you celebrate a little bit at least. Yeah. I mean like, my fiance is really good about like, Hey, make sure you Pat yourself on the back and like that kind of stuff. So yeah,

Here's a nice little peanut in the back for 10,000 downloads. Here you go.

That's right. Like maybe I'll go out for a beer during the week, which I try not to do. Uh, so you know that okay.

That stuff that's funny. I mean, it's like for, I recently started a tech talk maybe about a month and a half ago, and I didn't realize how easy it is to actually gain a following on took talk and to go viral on the videos. So in my, my accounts started growing faster than I thought it would. Uh, like I just hit 30 K maybe last week or something and I was followers and that wasn't a month and a half. Like my, my videos are lame as hell, but it's, it's really funny how that works. And at first I thought, Oh yeah, like, look at all these people with 30,000 followers. How do I get there? And now I'm there. It's just, okay, what's next?

Yeah. It was actually, it's so funny that you bring up tech talk because it's funny because my fiance, um, so she is doing like ticktock research for her work for her boss. Who's like, uh, a personality that business coach personality without like naming any names or anything of that. And she's doing like research to see how they can bring it to their business. And she was just like testing out on her personal account, which she's been like, you know, watching, but never posting anything. And yesterday we were driving back from her parents' house and she posted a video in the morning. And by the time we got back home, she had hit, I think 400,000 views on one of the nine videos that she posted

You go, it's so easy to go viral on there. And it's so good for marketing aspects too. I was interviewing this couple yesterday and they make like these one minute video clips, but they post them on Facebook all the time. And I told them what they teach is basically how to help people get jobs and how to help like advance in your career, et cetera, et cetera. And I told them, dude, why don't you just go on tech talk and try to post a video there? And they're like, no, it seems too childish. It doesn't seem like what we should do. And I was like, no, just give it a shot this morning. They responded back to me, dude. Our first video had 10,000 views right away.

Yeah. And like, when you're getting the comments on those videos, do they seem to be like kids, like you said, or did they seem to be older? It's it's, I mean, it's a healthy mix. Gotcha. And I mean, it's just going to age up. So like, I mean, just like with Instagram, you know, it will eventually age up and then you having the social proof of having 30,000 followers is going to help you get, you know, the, the older audiences that ended up getting on it. So, um, yeah. I, I'm very curious. I'm about to jump on it this week as well. Yeah. And so we'll see kind of like, uh, it's, it's kind of like a land grab, right? Like, and I think a lot more people are, are much more educated on social media then like when Instagram came out and they understand, like, I think just the general public I'd even like us to do digital marketing for a living, um, understand the, the levers they're pulling here. So, um, it's kind of, it's kind of weird with tick talk because like I said, I don't know. It's, it's interesting because the general public, I think is much more educated on, you know, like Gary V always says like day trading attention or whatever. Like it's kind of like, yeah,

I figured you were recording Gary V the moment that you said a land grab. I knew that was straight from him. He said that, yeah. He says all the time, I'd heard it from him.

I heard it from him. And it just stuck

Essentially is a, it is a land grab and it's a good one and it's not going to last forever. It's like Instagram in its early days. And I really think it's here to stay because you can waste so much time on tech talk without ever realizing that that time's passed in any way that you can do that has a lot of attention. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So let's go to how you actually started with your podcast here. You've been doing it for how long now?

Um, just over a year, this month. So we started in may of 2019.

And over that time, you've slowly added episodes. You just hit episode number 60, what? Seven or 66.

It should be 65. Cause 66 comes out Thursday

Six. Okay. Do you have like a specific post frequency that you record an episode once a week? Or what is it?

Yeah, so it was always on Mondays, um, up until maybe like a month ago when we actually started doing what I call deep dive Thursdays. So the idea is on Mondays, we'll have a featured interview where it's a successful entrepreneur, digital nomad, um,

Who we tell the banks,

These are usually like longer episodes. They tend to go on for like an hour plus. And, um, you know, it's really their story, how they got to where they're at at the moment. And then on Thursdays we do what are called deep dive Thursdays, which are, we really narrowed down on one topic and kind of go after it. And really, that's more of like the educational episode. Um, sometimes I'll have a guest on, that's an expert in a field that I can't really talk about. Sometimes it's just me talking about, um, a topic that I know about that I'm trying to kind of like, you know, really go after it. Right. Um, and so for about a month, we've been doing two a week. What kind of topics do you usually cover on those deep dive Thursdays? Um, so let's see here. The one that we did a couple of weeks ago was on the stairstep approach to building like a service business, uh, location, dependent service business. And it's like a concept that I've been playing with for a few months. Uh, that's borrowing on, I don't know if, you know, Rob walling from startups, from the rest of us. Um, but he's even around for like forever. Um, he's been around like the startup space, um, specifically the bootstrap startup space for a while now. Uh, and he's got this concept, I think from like 2010 called the stairstep approach of like how to like, essentially

Build up your,

Like your products. Um, but he's more of like a software development guy. And so I was like, okay, this is an interesting concept that a lot of people I've had success with. Uh, how do we tweak it to a service business? Cause I think a service business is one of the easiest ways to get started. Um, and so, you know, applying that concept to service businesses, that was one, um, the one that's coming out this week, when you say, sir has businesses, you mean things like freelancing and things like that. Yeah. Um, because I believe that if you're somebody right now, who's sitting in a nine to five job and you're like, man, I really want to do what Omar does. You know, like I really want to be location dependent. I want to travel around the world. That sort of thing, the best way to get started with that is like, what are you being paid to do at that nine to five job?

Right? You're essentially somebody is valuing your skill right against cold, hard cash. And you just need to figure out how to sell that service, um, remotely. Uh, so that's kind of like my idea of like, Hey, you hate your job. You want to quit tomorrow. This is how you do it. Not that you should quit tomorrow. Um, and then like the one that we're doing this Thursday is with, uh, Dan Andrews from tropical MBA, um, about, they have this really killer principled. They called the 1000 day rule, which is essentially talks about, they have thousands of people I think like over, I think they have like 1200 people in their community called the dynamite circle. And one of the trends they've noticed with all those guys is that it took them about a thousand days to replace their, you know, like their salary at their like job. And so I got to have him on to get on the podcast. He's a previous guest to come on and really discuss that topic. And, um, how does it apply to people getting started and what are kind of his like, you know, deeper ideas and have like a bigger conversation on that topic.

That's a unique idea and a unique angle to play with twice a week as well. And I'm guessing these episodes get pretty short too. Like

They tend to be more around 35 is what I'm noticing. I've been really difficult to have, like, I think like an intelligent idea really communicated in like 15 minutes. Um, my personal opinion,

I, the way I've been doing it as it has been doing two different podcasts a week, but I've been hitting guests. So I've been interviewing almost every single day and I love it. I really enjoy it. I get to meet all sorts of super cool people, doing all sorts of crazy things all over the world. But, but these episodes ended up being like 50 minutes to an hour long, you know? So some people listen to it all the way. Some people listen to it halfway, but either way, it's always really, really interesting.

Yeah. And I think like the interesting thing with that too, is like, um, I think a lot of people aren't seeing the potential of podcasting in terms of like business development. Um, one of the things that I've been pushing on people who not pushing out people, but like suggesting that people who have service businesses is to start a podcast, um, interviewing their ideal clients because it is the perfect warm opener. Like, you know, makes sense. Most people, even if you don't have like a, like a ton of listeners, uh, nobody's gonna say no to somebody who hits them up and says like, Hey, you know, I really want to hear your story. You know, I do like a podcast show. Like nobody's going to ask like, well, unless you're getting over, you know, X number of downloads, you know, you're not worth my time or whatever. Like I've never had any city

It either, which, which is surprising to be, to be honest. Cause I thought that's how it would be at first.

Yeah. Like I've gotten a few things from people where it's like, especially like people who are like bigger names where, uh, especially when I was getting started, like I got one message that said, um, that they don't do. They don't do interviews with podcasters who don't have more than 20 episodes under the belt of published. And I think the idea there is actually really smart of like, I want to make sure that you're in it for the, for the long haul and you know, not like we're going to, I'm going to spend like an hour of my time with you and then

Are you going to do two episodes? Right. Makes sense. Yeah. So now you've been doing this for over a year. You have 65 episodes recorded and you've had guests all different kinds of guests and you're in, you're a Tim Ferriss fan from what I've seen, I've seen a couple of episodes about Tim Ferriss. And you just mentioned Tim Ferriss earlier. Who would you say was your like most unique and most memorable guests, I guess, which one really sticks out to you?

Um, good question. Uh there's uh, like I don't know, probably the people who I really like looked up to earlier on, um, and still continued to look up to. Um, I'm very fortunate that two of my friends are very big pod-casters and people have had online businesses for awhile. Um, Travis, Sherry, and Jason Moore who wrote, um, a group called location Indy. And so they were actually like, so my very first guests, so that was like really crazy to like launch with these guys. Who've been around the podcasting space for like forever, you know? Um, like I said, uh, it was very cool when I got to have Dan Andrews on from the tropical MBA. Cause that's a podcast that I've been listening to for like years, you know,

I've heard of that one before I've definitely seen around.

Yeah. So that was a really cool episode. Another really good one that we did, um, was with my friend Mitch lore. We did this one kind of around the Tim Ferriss topic of, um, the four workweek in 2019, uh, because you know, Tim Ferris just cross, I think that he published the book in Oh seven or eight or something like that. Um, and he hasn't, he hasn't published a revision of the book since Oh nine. And so we said, Hey, let's revisit some of the concepts 10 years later and see how they hold up and what holds up. Well, uh, what's broken. Uh, and so we got to have this like hour plus conversation all about that. And how do we think some of the things that he talks about in the book hold up and what doesn't. So that was a really cool conversation.

So what did hold up, I'm curious.

Um, I think a lot of the things that held up well were like the mindset things, a lot of the predictions that he had in terms of like where the movement was going, like the whole concept of the muse, which now a lot of people call like lifestyle businesses, like, you know, that caught fire, obviously. Definitely. Uh, I think a lot of the things that didn't hold up very well were just the tactics. Like, you know, the way that he talks about testing business idea, just by running some cheap Google ads like that doesn't exist.

Yeah. Not anymore. I mean, Facebook's over run by everything now.

And there's so much more complex as like things like, you know, back in the day, maybe you were able to hop on the Google ad words platform, you know, back then it was called ad words and like kind of string something together and you're gonna get some information, but nowadays, you know, both Google ads and Facebook ads I think are, are complex tools. And a lot of people know how to wield and it's not as easy as let me just pop on there and like run some ads and see, you know

Yeah. Plus I'm sure it was a lot easier to rank on Google back then to now it's 10, 20 times as hard as it used to be. And it's changed over and over again too. It's a process now. Whereas it was just like a couple of cheap tricks back then.

Yeah. I mean like SEO, I think is, I don't know, S I'm kind of like SEO is like a beast that just keeps changing and, um, you know, it's, it's not that easy. Uh, it's not as easy as it was before for sure. And it's going to keep getting harder.

So do you, what do you do exactly asides from the podcast? I mean, I'm guessing the podcast for you is some form of entertainment and hobby as well as adding onto your business or whatever else you do. So what's your main source of income as a, and you are a full fledged, digital nomad. Am I right?

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I have been since like 2016, I think. Yeah, that was 16. Yeah. My main source of income is, uh, I'm the head of operations of a digital agency called apsos media. Um, and so we do, uh, like basically all types of, uh, the, everything that like an agency would do. We build websites, we do SEO, we do ads, uh, both Facebook and Google and a majority of the people that we work with are actually HVHC owners. Um, so these are guys who don't know a lot about the digital world, but they know that they need to be in there and they need to compete with their bigger competitors. And so we help them out.

Yeah. I always feel like it's the older generation in the HVAC companies. These days, I've worked for a couple construction companies, just like doing estimating or some other office work for them. And the owners are always like six year older, 50 plus they never really know how to run Facebook ads or anything else. And they always get somebody else to run it for them. It's a good to good field to get into when it comes to digital marketing.

Yeah. And they're like a lot of those guys also, like they don't, yeah. They don't want to learn how to do it. They're not going to go learn how to do it there. And they're also not like I would also say they're not entrepreneurs or a lot of them aren't they're business people. Right. Like there are people who are like in the AJC space, like they were HVC technicians who then opened up like a business, you know, and they kind of like run on their own. Maybe they have like, um, five to 10 people, like helping them out, like doing the work and they don't have the revenue to bring on like a developer or like a marketing person in their team. So. Right,

Right. Right. And that's where you can, yeah. Is that the single, like specific field that you focus on? I recently spoke to somebody who owns their own digital marketing agency and they had an argument for on different niches, like orthodontists, HVAC, just a bunch of them because it gives them like a fresh perspective and a fresh angle to attack Facebook ads or just making a marketing campaign for somebody. It was a good argument when they gave it to me. But I've found that most digital marketers tend to focus on one niche. Are you the former or the latter?

Um, we, I would say were like 80% HVAC. Um, and then other things that might jump in there would be like, we have one guy who's like a medical sales person. Um, we have a few different like, like businesses in there, but our bread and butter, our HVAC guys. And I would actually like disagree with that person. The, the person that you interviewed, um, you know, I'm sure that it's like working for them and, and both are true. But my personal preference is to double down on one niche because, and like one that one specific type of client, because when you do that, a lot of times you can develop IP around the working with that client and you can kind of like start to develop products for them. It's a lot easier to productize your service when you don't have the variables of, of different niches. Now, if you really nailed down and you really become a boss at serving this one niche and you're like, okay, I, I, I, you know, this is kind of running on its own. I've really product has this service, or I've created some products, um, for these guys that, you know, you know, I have higher margins on and then you want to go and recreate it in another niche, like, hell yeah, go for it.

Makes sense. You, you basically create systems and things that can shorten the amount of time you have to spend with, or doing the workforce specific client and making it more just automatic. And you may, perhaps you use some of the similar campaigns with one client and another HVAC client, and they all seem to work really well together. They all seem to give you results. So that's what you're trying to say.

Yeah. And like, I'm a big fan of reducing variables. Like I went to school to study biotech. Um, and I, you know, I dropped out after two years, but, um, and I studied science very heavily, even in high school. And like the one thing that got like, like, I really use the scientific method a lot, like in business. And it's like, you know, like come up with your hypothesis and then, you know, don't go ahead and change all the variables at the same time, but reduce all your variables and change them, you know, from time, you know, change them as part of the experiment and make sure that you're measuring your results. Because if you go in there and you have eight different variables that you're changing all the time, you're never going to find out what's broken and what is working.

Right. You sound very meticulous. Yeah. So

I'm not, I'm not, yeah, I am sometimes, but, uh,

Yeah. I mean, that's how you move forward in any field or any discipline. Right. You find out what you're doing wrong and you tweak those variables until they work better for you. Yeah. A hundred percent. Where are you right now? By the way,

I'm currently in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is where I'm moved to. When I immigrated to the U S it's like one of my home bases.

I see immigrated. Aren't you from the U S originally?

No, I was actually, no, I was a, I was born in Varna, Bulgaria, which is an Eastern Europe

Bulgarian. What? You don't sound Bulgarian at all. You sound so damn American.

Uh, I've been told that after about three beers, my Bulgarian accent comes out. Um, but yeah, I I've, I've lost the accent.

How has your accent so fully fleshed out?

I think because I moved to the U S at like that last chance of like, not having an accent, like I know people who came in like older than I moved around

10. Oh, you moved when you were 10. I thought when you said immigrated, I thought you meant like within the past four years. No, that would not make sense.

No. Uh, yeah. So I think like that's kind of that barrier of like having an accent and not having an accent. Cause I know even like people that move when they're like 12 or 13, like they still have like, they still carry some somewhere.

Right? Yeah. That, that makes a little bit more sense to me. So, but you're fully, you're fully Bulgarian and you're in Cincinnati, Ohio. You're staying with family right now. Is that where you're spending your Corona virus? Quarantine? No,

I'm actually my fiance and I, we decided, you know, we kind of sat down and we looked at the world and um, you know, like I said, I have a little bit of background in science, so it's like a little bit easier for me to my, my family always makes fun of me. Cause she says, I think I'm a scientist when I'm most definitely not. But I do have at least like the tools to like read more difficult papers and like research, that kind of stuff. And I do have friends in the medical field and had conversations with them to try to like judge what the world is gonna look like for how long. And the, we kind of came to the decision that we're not going for the next year. We're not going anywhere for the next year. So we got to leap sexually. It's actually like a really phenomenal place, especially if you are entrepreneurial and like you want to like do the kind of things that we're into because the cost of living is really low, but there's actually a very high quality like tech scene, like a startup scene in my opinion. Right. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, I'm paying a thousand bucks a month for an apartment and I can see downtown out my window and there's a great startup scene, so, and great bars and restaurants like, right,

Cool. That's not too bad then when you put it that way. Yeah. So

It's funny because like, you know, Cincinnati has companies like Proctor and gamble in it that are like huge branding, like powerhouses. And I've always like, whenever I talk with people, I'm like for how much branding talent there is in Cincinnati, the city really has a really shitty branding problem itself. So yeah. And like, they, like the neighborhoods here are like, I think really top notch, like there's a neighborhood like about 30 minutes walking from me called over the Rhine, which is like such a cool, like hip place, like lots of bars, like really cool restaurants, like breweries. Like it's, it's exactly what you would like, you know, expect out of like a young cool like city. Um, and there's like lots of things happening there all the time.

Alright. Now that I've gone off track over here a little bit, I was bringing it back. So you've been doing this, um, your digital marketing agency. Did you start that before you actually went to go travel as a digital nomad before you've been fully nomadic?

Um, so it's not my agency. Um, I work for, yeah. So I mean, yes, like I I'm a freelancer, but I kind of like, what I do is like a fractional C-suite if you've ever heard of that term before, where I'm like a fractional C-suite is like, if you do not have, if your company does not have the revenue to support a full C-suite, like a CEO, a CFO CEO, those sorts of things. Um, essentially it's like hiring out a consultant longterm that comes in and fills that slot in your C suite. Um, so I kind of filled a role like a COO, if that makes sense to them,

The company makes sense. You're a freelance CEO essentially.

Yeah. Kind of like, and like, it didn't start out as that. I started out as just like a, you know, an Upwork social media, uh, kid. And that was like helping out the CEO of the company. And just as like through my own projects and like businesses that I've grown my skills and stuff like that, he just moved in.

So did that CEO of that company originally hire you as someone to manage your social media stuff, and then you got put on board as a freelance, you will call it that a freelance COO that's we'll continue calling them.

Yeah. So I started working with him like two years ago, I think. Um, and it was just doing like odd bits of stuff. Like, you know, social media, I was writing some blog posts. I was doing some web development, like whatever, you know, I could do that. He needed. Um, and just like through conversations and building relationships and trust and that kind of stuff. I just moved up and was given more authority. Um, and now, like I kind of run the company day to day. Um, and you know,

All from an Upwork ad.

Yeah. I think it's, I mean, just invest in relationships. Like

That's, it makes sense. Build bridges, don't burn them and build them up. Cause you never know when you can use them. Right. So, yeah. W w when you first started, then about four years ago, you were just working on Upwork at that time?

Uh, no. So we're going to take,

You had, you had this cheeky smile on your face. What's coming next. I was a stripper. No, that would cool. Um,

I love those like businesses that are, like, I heard about somebody who wants, who is managing like, like porn profile websites. It was a good digital Nova. And I was like, that's fucking cool.

You could probably make a ton of money that way too. Yeah. I love

Because they're on the fringe like that, but like, you hear people doing it and you're like, yeah. Um, but no, when I'm started. So I like everyone else in 2016, fog, dropshipping was Jesus. Then I, um, got involved in drop shipping, but like I said, like one of the things that I'm naturally good at is like, like building relationships and like forming partnerships and that kind of stuff. So what happened was I took a course to learn how to drop ship, which was actually that my first, you know, I learned a ton through that course that I still use today, even though I don't do anything related to drop shipping, which was how to build a website. How, like, what is SEO, how to do Facebook ads, Google ads, bullet balls kind of stuff. Right. And, um, through that course, they actually had a program that was the coaching program where people who are very successful in the course would go back and teach.

And I decided that I would have a much higher chance of building a successful drop shipping business if I partnered with somebody who knew what they were doing. And so I invested all of these. I think there are however many hours there were of mentorship into a single mentor that I liked after reading their bios in an attempt to build a relationship with that person. Right. And I was able to, and I kind of like our last call. I pitched him on an idea. I had like, let's go into a, you know, a business together. You kind of provide mentorship, we'll go half and half and I'll do all the work. Um, and he countered me with, well, I have no interest in building some shitty small, you know, you know, whatever, like, like very low margin, you know, drop shipping business. Why don't we build one a little bit bigger together.

I'll bring my partner from my previous work into this and we'll have kind of like a triple partnership. Um, and why don't you come work for our current business? Um, so that they could give me some income. And so that's kind of how I got started was that they were, I went into their business, which at a time they had moved from drop shipping to Amazon FBA. So I helped with their, what a great opportunity. Yeah. And so, I mean, I jumped in and started working in their FBA business, uh, for about like a year and a half, I think, while we tried to build a drop shipping business, which didn't, it didn't work out, but I learned a ton and it was like how I got my, like, I call them like the nomad wings, um, which are like, you know, like what allowed me to quit my quote unquote nine to five job.

What do you like, what do you got more confident and comfortable with what you were doing or what you had learned from trying to make that drop shipping store?

Yeah. And like, I'm a big fan of like, you know, in retrospect, like I went in and, you know, come for the tropical MBA guys and they talk about like playing with house money, you know what I mean? Like go in there and like, you know, if you have some crappy job, you're going to have $10 to spare to test ideas. Well, what if you go work for somebody who can give you a thousand dollars to test ideas, right. Uh, and for you to like, kind of, um, sharpen your saw, um,

And that's essentially what you did with that guy. Right?

Yeah. And so I did that and they ended up selling that FBA business. Um, and I was kind of like, you know, they said like, Hey, you know, this is kind of what it was, you know, we're selling the business. So unfortunately, like we know you can try and negotiate something with the new owners. Um, but I had actually at that time, started working with, um, a friend of mine who ran a small agency. And so I went over and sort of helping him with that. And, you know, then I kind of moved into the agency

And that's what you seem to really enjoy them. I mean, being such a meticulous person, it takes a certain type of person to really dive in deep and, and know how to analyze things and how to create campaigns and such. Do you think you feel like it's a good fit for you

Agency? Not really. Because agency, I think, look, man, like if you want to learn business and you want to learn skills, go to an agency, like if you're 18 right now and listening, and you're trying to consider, you know, if you should go to college or kind of like do something else, I would tell you like go work for an agency because you're going to learn like deal making, selling, delivering on, you know, like how to make contracts, you know, like all this like shit that are, you're never going to learn about in college, you're going to learn in running an agency, but it's not really like a great like business model. Like it you're essentially trading one boss for like 50 bosses. Right. You know? Um, so for me what's been really interesting is how do I take an agency and build into a productized service that has higher margins, um, that is, you know, um, far more automated and then using that, how do we take the IP that we've built working with clients and start creating products and software and like all these things that are much more scalable and also are like separate assets that you could potentially sell

Down the line. And that's what you're working on now.

Yeah. That's kind of the direction that we're sort of headed into. And that's really interesting to me

As a whole in the agency you're talking about or yeah,

No, like, yeah. In the agency and like, I mean, I'm always spinning some new side project out just cause like I'm, I'm playing with something

True entrepreneur then. Yeah. For sure. Makes sense. Do you have any certain idea that, or what you're going to end up building or what's gonna, what direction you're going to end up taking in the next year or two?

Um, I mean, there's always like, you know, things in the fire like that are like working that I, you know, wouldn't want to comment on because like, I don't know what's gonna happen, but, um, in terms of ideas, like one of the interesting things is like I remember, um, when I was just getting started, I had this point when I was like really low and I was like, I was kind of depressed and like things that I've been working on didn't work out. And like, I was like without an idea and without an opportunity. And that was like really hard for me. And like, it's one of these things where it's like opportunities, breed opportunities. And when you are like moving forward, you're going to see all these new opportunities. That's why like you talk to a millionaire and they have like a hundred business ideas and you talk to a homeless person and they don't know what, you know, they, they think there's no ideas, no opportunities out there.

Um, and so the more that you work on things like I have like a huge running list of ideas of like things that could work. And the interesting thing is like, the more that you're in the world and the more that you like strengthen that muscle, it seems like the better the ideas become, um, in a way, because like you are sharpening that saw, you're getting more narrow about who you're serving. You get to understand it, especially if you can narrow down an audience. And a lot of the products that you're creating are around the same audience. You can really start to like, like twist there and like really come up with some interesting, um, you know, leavers that you can pull totally

Says, if you start to understand your audience at a deeper level, you can create products around what they need because you already know just from knowing them at a deeper level.

Yeah. And actually around that, I had a really cool conversation with a guy a few months ago. Um, his name is Damian Thompson. He's like a sales coach. Uh, he goes into these like, you know, multi seven figure, um, you know, companies and helps them build like, um, like sales teams. And he was telling me the story of a woman named Laura Roeder, um, who is the founder of meet Edgar? I don't know if you've ever heard of me Edgar before. It's like a social media software. Well, it was interesting because, um, they know each other they've met each other at like conferences. And the thing that he was telling me was that what's interesting about Laura's journey is that she, you know, started out doing like social media management on Upwork and I'm butchering the store. But just to give like the idea, you know, started doing like freelancing and then started an agency that was doing like social media and then, you know, try to start a course all about social media and et cetera, et cetera.

She tried to do all these things, but the things that stayed the same word, the people that she was serving, even though the product or the service changed, the people she was serving were still the same. And so by the end of it, she, through the, through that process, and even though some of those products and services didn't necessarily work out the way she was hoping they would through that process, she learned the audience much better. She really understood their pain points. And when she had this idea for meet Edgar, which is a software, not only did she really understand the audience, she also had a huge list of them because she had worked with them in so many different ways. And now it's like a, I think like a three or 4 million, our annual company. So as long as you, you know, it's much more important for you to, it's much more important for you to understand the audience, do you want to serve for the next 10 years and not so much like what's the next product or what's the next, you know, service or whatever. Right. So since you seem to have experience with that, if you were to give someone advice, that's just starting out and trying to get into the whole online space, create a business around a product that serves a specific customer. How would you tell them to go about it? How would you tell them to get started?

Depends on the person and like what you come into it with. Like, if you are, for example, somebody who's working a nine to five job that's um, well paid, like I dunno like 60 K plus. Um, you could take that skill and go start working with clients and then just find the client that you liked the best and focus on them. So kind of like take your skill that you have at work and freelance with it and find a client around that. But what if you don't have this skill when it comes to that? What if you just have some, what if someone has been working in labor or as a grocery store clerk or something like that, that can't really translate. I think in that case, like, uh, an idea that I've been a really big fan of a concept has been like, just like these like short, um, these like short, small business iterations.

I actually did one, um, a month ago. And it's based on, you know, Peter levels from nomad list. Yes. So do you know how he started nomad list? Actually don't know, but that's one incredible website now. Yes. So it started in, uh, so he was, he he's actually had success for quite a bit longer than just nomad lists. He actually had like a huge YouTube channel and like all these other things before that. Um, but all of that kind of started like not working the way he wanted it to. And he was kind of like feeling depressed and he didn't know what he was going to do next. And he was just really kind of confused as to like what the next steps that he should take are. And his dad told him some Dutch proverb proverb or something like that, which was, if you don't know what to do, just move dirt from one pile to the next, then the idea is just the emotion of it will get you to that next step. Yeah. And so what he decided to do was he launched this thing called 12 startups in 12 months. And it got written up by some like

Online. I haven't heard of that. Was that the same guy? Yeah, it was him interesting. I didn't put two and two together. Yeah.

Yeah. And so he would, you know, he would say is like, okay, like let's jot down some business ideas and how would I build them in a month if I only had a month? And so he just started doing these like little projects, like, um, I know one was like one of the first ones that he did was like, uh, if you say you're going to lose weight, you put a money wager on it. And if you don't hit that way, or maybe it wasn't where it was something else, you lost the money, you know, but if you did hit it, you gotta get it back or something like that. He did a bunch of these like little things like that. And I think like the fourth or fifth was nomad list.

Yeah. The fourth or fifth out of the 12. And that ended up blowing up into what it is today. He has partnerships with huge brands now. I mean, he sells out of ad space in minutes. I remember I tried to going on there at one point and seeing how much an ad would cost just out of curiosity and said, add not available anytime soon. Check in, in the few months. It's crazy. Yeah. So

Like, I think if you don't know, if you don't have ideas or anything like that, like just move dirt from one pile to the next job down to ideas and like give yourself like literally a month of saying here's a business idea. If I had to do this in a month, like just one month, like start of July to the end of July, what would that look like? What would that MVP look like? Because I think so many people get this idea and they think about it for three months and then they forget about it. And then they remember again, two months after that and they like imagine all these create crazy fancy things. And then they like finally do something about it a year and a half down the road and realized a terrible fucking idea.

And they wasted so much time just thinking about it. They could have just done it and tested it and gone to the next idea if it didn't work. And to be honest, like the chance of your first idea of working is so low, especially if you've never done anything entrepreneurial ever in your life, you know, 80, 90% of businesses fail. And most of them are the first business that someone has done, you know, but the more, the more actions you throw out there, the more businesses you open, the lower, the chance of failing the subsequent ones are right now.

So the interesting statistic on that, because that's a really shitty statistic, like if you want to be an entrepreneur, but the interesting one that doesn't get mentioned is actually how much more likely you are to have a successful business if it's your fifth. And I don't remember the specific percentage there, but it's like, if it's your fifth business, you have a much, much, much, much higher chance of it succeeding. They feel it, that's all the confidence people need. So if you're my audience listening to this right now, just take that first step. You know what I mean? Don't don't Slack stop lagging and do something. Yeah. I wanted to ask this question here on a personal level, before I forget here, you were just mentioning a couple of minutes ago, how you were at a point where you were depressed, then you did didn't couldn't think of any ideas.

So I don't know how to move forward. Did you end up doing something similar to that 12 startup idea? Or how did you move dirt from one pile to another? Yeah. Good question. Um, how did I, I don't really, how did I get out of that? Um, I think I'm just a sort of person where like, if I don't have ideas, if I don't have that creative touch, if nothing like that is happening in my life, I don't know what the hell to do. And there was a point where I just didn't have any of those, some of the things that I've been working on and investing a lot of time and energy in, you know, didn't work out. Um, and so I was just kind of like, and it was also this, um, yeah, what I started doing was I started offering a service.

Um, and it was just at, I realized now looking back, it was shitty timing because what ended up happening is that my projects collapsed in like November and no one's going to be buying services over Christmas. Everybody waits, you know, for like, I'm not gonna like sit down and like come up with new ideas over the holiday season. And so between Thanksgiving in the us and then Christmas and all this kind of stuff, like nothing happened. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm terrible. Nobody wants to talk to me. I suck, you know, all this kind of stuff. And then the moment July hit, I started closing projects left and right. And it was just like, and now looking back, it was like really crappy timing. Do you know what I mean? But, um, I think that's what happened was I, I decided that I wanted to, um, I decided that I wanted to like learn coding cause I think it's cool.

And like I thought that I wanted to become a web developer, um, and kind of like lean on that and I've built some websites afterwards. It's not what I do now. It's not something that I think I'm built for. Um, but it's cool because now I know how to do that. And I think I just started, like, I want to learn this skill. And I just started working on that when I had nothing else to do and, you know, build some websites after Christmas and stuff like that. So basically took action at some towards something that you thought was interesting and it's better than not doing anything. Right. I mean, there's tons of people right now during quarantine, just twiddling their thumbs or playing video games or watching Netflix all day or, you know, just wasting time in some form or another, maybe they're drinking their life away. I don't know. There's tons of different things, but they're not taking any action towards their future.

And they're going to come out of this quarantine, not being any closer to their goals than they really want to be. You know, it's like, and I know it's going to happen. I'm going to see so much of it happen. I'm going to see what people that I know people I've never met and, uh, yeah, it's, it's infuriating. So just make a move for anyone who's listening. Just take that first step or work towards something. Anything, it doesn't matter if it's leading anywhere, even as long as it's moving you into some direction.

Yeah. I mean, I think what's happening right now in the world is clearly very shitty. Um, you know, and like there's a lot of pain and a lot of people are going through like a really hard time and, you know, I like, I feel very sorry for them. And, and I'm, and I'm sorry that they're going through this, but, uh, the thing is that the last time we had something similar to this was the Oh eight recession. And none of what we're talking about right now existed in Oh eight, Jack diddly, squat, none, none of this, none of, none of what we've been living for the last X number of years existed. True. Um, you know, one of the people like I I've had this conversation with like, so some people was like, you know, like, you know who Pat Flynn is. Right. Of course,

Great guy,

Pat Flynn and await was worse when he lost as a, as an architect. That's right. And so really shitty thing happened to him. But because of that, now he's Pat Flynn from smart, passive income who goes like a million plus 2 million. I don't even, he doesn't publish his income reports anymore. But last time I checked that they were plus a million a year. Yeah,

Definitely. And, and back then, when he first started to, he didn't have access to all the things that we have access to. Now, I remember watching some of his like first YouTube videos and they were so shitty. They were just like done on this virtual chalkboard that he put together and write some stuff down. And I couldn't even read the writing and he's changed. He's gone from there 10 years ago to who he is now, you know, four for a big book for books that he's written. I think one of them was like in New York on the new York's list. I know he's got like multiple streams of income. He just created his first actual invention product that he put up on Amazon, which I thought was super cool. I mean, the guy, the guy's loaded and he's humble too, which I love about him.

Yeah. So like, I always tell people it's like, this is like, like these periods are really difficult, but the people that can figure out how to like ride out of them well are going to be the next Pat Flynn's are going to be the next Airbnb because Airbnb came out of the recession, you know, all of these, like, I mean, Facebook was nothing in the way, you know what I mean? Nothing in general terms, but like none of these things that are like huge in our lives, like just go down the list like Uber, or like, you know, recession and post recession. So like the amount of opportunity that's going to be created by what's happening right now is going to be immense. Don't forget that all of these businesses that have never thought about remote services are all of a sudden now going, Oh shit, this online thing is really important to my business. I was speaking with somebody recently who said that she is like, has tons of work right now from restaurants that are needing to upgrade their websites because they, they need their websites for people to order online. So I think, especially in like remote work, all of like, like this field is about to blow up. Um, and like there's so much opportunity just get in it, understand, learn, talk to people and you're going to see opportunities and you're going to see business ideas and problems that you can see

100%. I mean, there was some statistic about, I'm sure you've read this. Almost every digital nomad that I know has read this some form or another, like there's going to be over a billion digital nomads in 2030. And now I think that's going to be sped up way faster. Like I think we're going to probably reach that number within the next five years, the way things are going.

I think in the, I think in the next 10 years, what we call digital nomads is not going to be like, I don't think it's going to be a thing. I think they're going to, like, I think so many companies are going to become way more remote friendly. You just saw Facebook, Twitter, um, that are going like fully remote. Or I think Facebook's like looking to go partially remote in the next five years or whatever. Um, Noah Kagan, um, you know, I was talking to him, um, he had like a group call with a bunch of people and he was saying that like in their company, they had a conversation and like, they're going to be getting rid of their offices most likely, or they're considering getting rid of their offices and just having a much smaller office, um, that like a few people can go to if they want to, um,

That transitioned from like normal work to remote work. And then from there you have a whole like niche lifestyle around traveling and then doing remote work. And that's where the digital nomad aspect comes in. So, I mean, the amount of remote workers are probably going to be way more than the amount of digital nomads. So if we're going to have a billion digital nomads in the next five years, we're thinking like twice as many remote workers probably in the world, which means like more than half of the companies in the role to be remote in a few years. And if anything like this pandemic has opened up the world's eyes to how important that is to actually start working remotely and how companies can really stall and break down if there isn't some sort of remote system to work.

Yeah. I think remote companies have an inherent, like leg up on the competition. Like let's, I mean, two big ones is lower overhead and like you're going to win the best talent all the time is if you don't make them go into a fucking cubicle, like you just are smart people don't want to be told to go to a cubicle period. You know, so understanding how to be, how to be a remote company that is able to utilize those benefits while also not allowing the negatives of remote work to creep in and still being able to function at a high level. I think that like we are reaching that point of there being so many users being, so there being so many remote companies that eventually like those solutions are gonna, you know, be like, are going to be like the solutions are going to be created and are going to become like common.

Yeah. Universal. It would be interesting to see the way that that works. And I think in some weird way, it might even be in terms of like labor. Like I was thinking of this the other day, you know, how on Upwork and on Fiverr, we can find like cheaper labor from like different countries, like the Philippines or Thailand, or, you know, just hire like maybe a Filipino VA or something like that. And it's like five bucks an hour that I feel, I feel like it's going to be so much more diluted that finding cheap labor from different countries, which is not something that many people know about. If you're not into the whole remote work scene in the first place, it's going to be so diluted that the prices will be brought up for freelancers and especially for smaller businesses. You know, like for example, if we're talking a big digital marketing business, they're probably hiring people that are charging 50, 60, an hour on Upwork without breaking the sweat. But if someone just started a smaller company and they're just starting to maybe outsource their work for the first time, and they would probably end up looking on Upwork for somebody that's from India or from the Philippines, just to get some cheaper labor. And I think that that little bridge right there between growing into a bigger business and scaling your business in a cheap way and having a business where you're just by yourself, that bridge is going to be a little harder to cross.

Um, yeah. Um, it's interesting because I think a lot of that cheaper level work is actually going to be replaced by like some sort of automation sooner than you think. Um, I mean, in terms of things like there's these like softwares that are becoming so intelligent now that like I've heard of agency agencies that are like running productize services that are like literally glued together and glued together, not in a negative term, but glued together by like Xavier. And so like there's so many, you know, like we're hearing about all these crazy softwares that can do this really amazing stuff, Xavier, like air table, like a lot of these things that are like becoming very, very intelligent that are going to eventually replace, um, the smaller pieces. Right. Yup. And so, and you know, and then now there's like all these productized services, which can offer you a really great service that a lot of these cheaper people would have filled.

So you've got things like design pickle, for example, that will give you like unlimited designs for some like 400 bucks a month. You know, there's all of these like things that you can now almost like substitute like a word freelancer by either a productized service that's eventually going to become some sort of full fledged product, um, or a full automation, like something like with like a Zapier. So I actually like, um, Navarro Ravi con is really correct on this that, um, eventually we're going to have is a ton of automation, a ton of robotics doing a lot of like the low level tasks and what you're going to be left with are people who need to level up and do the things that that automation cannot do. And those are gonna be really highly paid tasks that are going to function much more like a gig economy where you have like, you know, he talks about a future in which, uh, you know, everyone is a gig economy worker and everyone has a specialized skillset. It's much more entrepreneurial. It's much more like freelancer base. And you do really large projects that are high charging because no one else can do them and everything lower is handled by some level of automation. Um,

And so then you have to send me that link. Who's this guy again, you said,

Um, [inaudible], he's like one of those like, um, like profits, so to say in like Silicon Valley, um, he's been on like Joe Rogan. He's been on Tim Ferris. Uh, yeah, he's been on Tim Ferriss too. Um, and he has like, he had this, a huge tweetstorm that now he's turned into pot into a podcast. Um, so if you just search like novel and a V a L E R you'll come up with this podcast. Um, so he kind of like describes this future in which, um, like you do a $20,000 project for two months and then you can like leave and go do whatever it is that you want to do. And he essentially describes a digital nomad lifestyle without calling it that. Right. Um, and because you're going to have these platforms and marketplaces like an Upwork, or maybe Upwork in 10, 15 years where, you know, the demand is there. You're not worried about, you know, going off for two months, you know, to learn to surf somewhere. And then knowing that when you come back or, you know, you decide to be in a work season, there's going to be another project for you.

That's interesting. I haven't actually looked at it that way. It gave me a fresh perspective there. I'm definitely going to research more into that, but it totally makes sense. I mean, the world's going in a direction where you would have never imagined it was going about 10, 20, 30 years ago, especially with the introduction of the internet. I mean, it's changed everything and people are just now starting to realize how powerful it is even though it's been around for 30 years. So it would be extremely interesting to see how that goes and it's going to happen in our generation, in our lifetime as well. So that'd be really cool to see now, before I close this podcast off of it here, I wanted to ask you one final question. And, uh, this is something that I ask every digital nomad out of all the four years that you've been traveling ever since you started working remotely. And I don't know if you've been with your fiance that entire time or not, but the entire time that you've been traveling, how has your perspective of life in people changed from that moment? Years ago to now?

I think when I was, you know, living and working here all the time in Cincinnati, like I really thought that the world was Cincinnati, even though like, I, I realistically knew it wasn't, um, my perspective has really changed on, and I, I have difficulty saying this like publicly, because I, a lot of people like, like, like have struggles and hard lives and stuff like that. But I look at life as a playground. I look at it as like one large video game, and you can either choose to have this wide open, like, you know, those like video games, like, uh, more of the Warcraft or whatever. We have

Sandbox type games. Yeah.

Either choose to play that game in one tiny little corner of this giant map, or you can go and play it everywhere. And to me it doesn't make sense. Like, there's so many ideas, there are so many things going on that like, if you just live in this tiny little bubble, which most people do, because that's what living in a city is in one Jew, geographical location, you have a much lower chance of being intercepted by those ideas. You know, like I'll talk to somebody down the street and I'll mention Amazon FBA and they have no idea what the hell I'm talking about while I can't think of somebody that I wouldn't mention it to an art community that would like, at least know what it is. Right.

You know, so you're saying, or it's much easier to find inspiration when you're around in the world versus staying home at one place

And opportunities as well because, uh, opportunities come in the fringe, right? Like, so if, and like, if the closer you are to the fringe and the closer you are to those crazy ideas, the better you're going to be at, like the more like opportunities gonna come your way, because you're going to hear about new ideas. First. Like I have a friend who was telling me about how he heard about Bitcoin, like eight years ago in a caffeine Chiang Mai. And somebody sat down over coffee to explain to him about this crazy new thing called cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. And he just dropped a little bit of money to him, you know? And he's like, you know, it doesn't hurt to drop a few hundred dollars into it. Now it's worth a lot more than a few hundred dollars, but that's because he was hanging out with a fringe.

Yeah. I get what you said.

Daddy would have been talking about that, you know, eight years ago or whatever,

You know, ironically enough, when you mentioned that, I feel like that's not always 100% the case in this day and age anymore with the internet, connecting everybody, being able to do something like this with you in me, somewhere with you and Cincinnati and me in Texas, or yesterday with someone in Hungary and me over here, or like public forums that are international all over the world, or things like Reddit, or, you know, just, just random mingling spots like that. I feel like in this day and age, you don't have to get up off your ass to really find or hear about things that you've never heard before. For example, I live in Houston and like that guy in Chiang Mai back when I was young, my first year of college, which was what was that like nearly 10 years ago now, nine years ago, uh, I overheard somebody while I was having a smoke outside, talk about Bitcoin.

Right. And this was right before it exploded. It was still for pennies then. And when this guy bought it, he bought it for fractions of pennies. And all I remember is within that year, it exploded from pennies to like 300 bucks. And that guy left school never heard from him again, deleted all his social media. Like, I don't know where he is now. I haven't seen him. I haven't heard him from an ages. Uh, but if I wasn't sitting there at that right time, I would have never heard him. You know, now me thinking, okay, what do you said, yeah, you met this guy or that guy met this guy in Chiang Mai all the way halfway across the world. Like I met someone like that right now in Houston, in a city like that, which I would have never guessed what happened, you know?

Um, but when I ended up doing my own research on Bitcoin, after he told me about it, I saw it all over the internet as well. Like you, you find what you're looking for, you know, like if I'm going down this street and I start thinking every car on the street as a Camry, then I'll start really thinking every car in the streets at camera. And I won't notice other cars that much. It's, it's kinda the same thing. Like if I'm on the internet, I might catch little glimpses of things over here on Reddit or little glimpses of things over there on a Facebook group. And it might catch my interest. It might not, you know, but since it's also connected, I feel as though traveling opportunity can come to your door instead of you having to go out and find it on the fringes while you're traveling. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I mean, I do agree with you. I think it's becoming much easier. Um, and it just comes down to like, like I, like, I think it's worth it to, to take the extra step. Right? So you're comparing that you're having these sorts of conversations now, you know, with somebody in Hungary, but you're doing a podcast, you took an extra step, right. You're breaking down that, that, that door. Right. I think the same thing happens with like, um, joining communities. Like I'm a big fan of paying for communities because you're immediately, like you're putting yourself with other people who are willing to pay for a community to learn something or to be around a certain type of person that immediately levels of the conversations that you're going to have. Um, and so maybe that's a new version of something that you could only experience 10 years ago by paying for a ticket and going to Thailand. Um, now there's newer versions of doing it. Um, I think that there's still, I mean, I'm the biggest fan of remote work and all of this stuff, but I'm still, I think there's still a level of,

It is a level of exactly, exactly trust

And conversations that happens over beers that you can't quite recreate her call.

That's what I was just going to mention the collaboration, the connection aspect that you can get with somebody to trust that you can get somebody like I wouldn't meet somebody over the internet and make them my business partner partner the next day. But I would do that if I really connected with the person in real life the next day. Let me,

Yeah. A perfect example. You know, kind of like going for full circle is Nathan, who we talked about at the beginning of the, you know, from foodie flashback or like I met him in Mexico where I lived for two years, uh, two years, two months, um, this, this year. And like over two months, I got to know him really freaking well. And like, you know, we've had conversations that we wouldn't have never had over zoom and some of those conversations had ideas in them, but it took being together in that place. And you can recreate that online. But I do still think that putting yourself physically in the places where the people with those sorts of ideas hang out is like,

No, I'm definitely not downplaying the whole aspect of how much benefit there is when it comes to travel. Otherwise I wouldn't be a digital nomad myself. I humanly try to press that idea on other people. I try to press that philosophy of travel and how much benefit it can bring to your life, not just through business or connections, but through overall life quality, mental health for your relationships, all of it, you really start to understand the important things that way.

And like, I mean, you know, kind of like what you were saying is like, I just see there's so much opportunity out there that I don't even know what to do with myself. Like, and it opens up your world. I mean, you know, we've been talking about like everything in a digital sense, but like, let's not talk about a digital sense. Like there are so many great, like on the ground, like investment opportunities all over the world that you a would have no idea about if you only hung out in the U S absolutely be like, you wouldn't know like how to like, like, like take action on them. If you actually didn't get to go there and like, hang out. Like, I have friends who bought a timeshare in a mountain resort in Georgia because they went to Georgia and they were like, displaces dope, real estate, super cheap. Let's invest because it's clearly going to go up and like, they're doing great. You know? So it's like, these are the things that you'd have never, ever seen. The playground's lead have never got the play. And if you didn't, if you weren't a digital nomad, if you weren't location dependent and have the ability to go to these new places and to spend some time there.

Absolutely. So moral of the story there is travel because there's more opportunity and more beauty in the world and it just makes you into a better person. And that's, that's a good note to end on. Thank you so much for coming on today. Mitko. I had a lot of fun. That was really good. Mean pleasure. Thanks for listening. Before you go, I wanted to remind you to

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