The Internet Has Unlocked the Door to Your Dream Life With Riley of Livin' That Life I TNE042

Riley Bennett from Livin That Life is one of the longer known and visible figures in the remote working and digital nomad space. 5 years ago back in 2015, Riley started a Youtube Channel and his own Amazon FBA business after a 2 week vacation in Thailand. 5 years later, Riley is living his dream life of traveling the world, has hit nearly 60 thousand subscribers on Youtube, and owns a 6 figure business. What was the one key factor to his success you may ask? The internet. The great equalizer. Join us as we dive into Riley’s story and how you, my incredible listener, you too can have the internet unlock the doors to your wildest dreams. 

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Riley's World Class FBA Master Class

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Facebook Group - Nomadables - Perfect to meet fellow online entrepreneurs, remote workers, and digital nomads.
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Transcript

The Internet Has Unlocked The Door to Your Dream Life With Riley of “Livin That Life” | TNE042 Transcript

Intro-
What’s the reason that stops you from living your dream life? I want you to think about this with me for a second. Imagine your absolute dream life. The pinnacle of if you could do anything, you would pick this one thing. Now, ask yourself, what’s stopping you? This is a question that Riley and I sit down to discuss on today’s episode of The Nomadic Executive.

Rile is one of the longer known figures in the remote-working digital nomad space. Five years ago, back in 2015, Riley started a YouTube channel in his own Amazon FBA business after a two-week vacation in Thailand. Five years later, Riley is living his dream life of traveling the world, has hit nearly 60,000 subscribers on YouTube and owns a six-figure business. What was the one key factor to his success, you might ask? The Internet. The great equalizer. 

Join us as we dive into Riley's story and how you, my incredible listener, you too can have the internet unlock the doors to your wildest dreams. 

Before we get started, I'd like to ask you to please hit that subscribe button and leave a rating or a review. Every subscriber, every review gets us one step closer to becoming more visible and helping another person who needs this one bit of inspiration, or that one bit of information to change their life forever. Your review may just be the reason someone else gets their life changed. A real butterfly effect. With that being said, here we go. 

You're listening to The Nomadic Executive hosted by Omar from nomadables.com. Join Omar as he sits down and speaks with leading online entrepreneurs, remote workers and digital nomads about everything from business strategy to travel and lifestyle design. Together, we're here to help you achieve a life of happiness, health and freedom. And now here's your host, Omar Mo.

Omar:
Tell my audience a little bit about you. I mean, I've done a little bit of my own research but-- 

Riley:
Yeah. I guess I've just been a digital nomad for the past October. So, next month will be six years living abroad, mostly in Southeast Asia fueled by my Amazon FBA business. I now have an Amazon marketing agency too, have an Amazon course. 

And of course, I have my YouTube channel and podcast that I've been doing. Kind of document documenting my life, interviewing digital nomads. I have over 100 episodes. Interviewing other digital nomads and remote entrepreneurs and all that good stuff.  And then earlier this year, I also started a second podcast just about Amazon marketing, Amazon FBA and that's called FBA Lifestyle Podcast. It also has a YouTube channel. And so yeah, digital nomad life, you know. 

Right now, I'm just chilling in Istanbul. I'm here because I have a visa appointment at the Indonesian embassy here in Istanbul next week. Hoping to get my business visa to be able to enter Bali soon. So, it's kind of a workaround because there's no tourist allowed, you know, anywhere in Asia. So that's kind of the plan right now. 

And for the past month and a half, we've been posted, me and my best friends and business partners in Croatia, Split Croatia. I have a couple of recent videos up about that just because Croatia is open to US tourists. So, it's one of the few places that's open to US tourists here and Turkey as well. So yeah.

Omar:
Did you come to Istanbul to specifically just get your visa? Is that what it is? Is it one of those things where you had to leave the country because your visa ran out, and then you got to get it renewed, and then come back or--?

Riley:
No. I would have stayed in Croatia, if they had an Indonesian embassy there but they don't.

Omar:
I see.

Riley:
So, this was the nearest place that is open to US tourists that they have an Indonesian embassy, so that's why I'm here. 

Omar:
So, you are going to actually go now to Indonesia and open up a business that's based in Indonesia. Kind of like opening up an LLC in Texas, for example.

Riley:
I like to call this Indonesian visa; it should be called a business exploration visa. It's for investors and people who want to go there for a while to explore business opportunities. So, you don't have to open a business. It's quite straightforward. It's more like a business exploration visa. 

Omar:
Sounds like just another way to stay there longer.

Riley:
Pretty much, yeah.

Omar:
It's funny, everyone that I meet that lives in Southeast Asia is always finding these creative ways to somehow extend their visa here or stay a bit longer there. The last person I had on as a guest told me how people would leave the country and make these like six-hour trips of leaving the country. Like the nearest country, like I think it was like Turkey or Vietnam, I forget which country, and then they'll stay there in the airport and then come right back on the next flight. And that counts as them leaving and coming back. I found that really interesting.

Riley:
Yeah. Yeah, I've done that a couple times, specifically in Bali. Flown to the KL airport, stayed there for a couple hours and flown back on the next flight. Just chill at Starbucks in the airport and it's just like normal workday, except it's only like a one- or two-hour flight between KL and Bali.

Omar:
That's funny, man. So how did you get your start? Let's hear about that. You've been digital nomading now for six years, you've been around quite a few places from what I've seen. How did you start? Like, was it just on a whim?

Riley:
Well, it all starts, um, it started with a study abroad, I'll say that. So, it started with the desire to travel the world. So, my best friend who I grew up with and my business partner in our Amazon business, he did a two-month semester abroad in Thailand. For his last semester in college, we both went to Washington State. We both went to all schools together growing up, including college. And me and my couple other friends, we had already graduated the semester before. So, it was during this summer, Parker basically did an extra semester at the end of college just to do a study abroad, you know, basically for fun. 

But ended up changing the course of our lives. We went to visit Parker for two weeks, it was our first time out of the country, and I remember two weeks went by and we're heading back to the airport and I was like, I was just getting used to it. Like, oh my god. 

If you’re in Thailand, Phuket and Bangkok and stopped at Hong Kong in a way as well, and just culture shock that first two weeks. And anyone who's traveled to like Asia for the first time, it's two weeks of like culture shock. Just getting used to it, you know. How to, you know, walk around without looking at your phone and the map and having you say the basic shit, how to order. Just getting the vibe of it. 

And then two weeks was passed, and just went home and had that, you know, post vacation depression. Like, go back to the job, I was doing door to door sales and Parker felt the same way. He was like, two months? That was way too short. That just blew by. And he was like, are you down to like get a job and work abroad for like a year? And I'm like, yes, let's do that. 

So, his study abroad program was through the hospitality program. And so, they were like kind of interning or whatever at big resorts, like all around Thailand hospitality industry. So, he's like, I can hook us up with one of these and get a job easy. So, we're like, yeah let's do it. So, we both went back home to Seattle where we're from. And we're like, alright, the mission is to figure out work abroad opportunity in Thailand or even somewhere else, wherever. We’ll work, save up money for like a year, and then we'll blast off. 

And we got this one-bedroom apartment, super cheap. Just to save money, I slept on the couch for a year. It was like a one-bedroom studio, had like one of the sliding dividers for Parker's room, bed area. I slept on the couch for a year.

What ended up being so crucial is, I actually worked for Comcast at the time. That was my door-to-door hustle. Signing us up--

Omar:
What happened to your degree? Did it not work out?

Riley:
My degree was biochemistry but anyway, that's another story. Not using that. I just wanted to make money after college, you know what I'm saying? Like, I decided I didn't want to be a scientist in [inaudible 09:40]--

Omar:
You know, it's funny, I'm in the same boat. I took Geology in University and I don't think I'm ever going to do anything with that ever again. Like, fourth year, I realized I hate Geology.

Riley:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I realized about two years in, I don't want to be working in a lab with white lights, no natural light in a lab coat squirting pipe pads for multi gazillion dollar pharmaceutical.

Omar:
Yeah. And then the cost sunk fallacy is like finish up University. I mean, what's the point of you doing those first two three years, you know? So, you go ahead and finish it anyways. 

Riley:
I know. I have videos and podcast episodes about the college paradigm. I have an article for anyone listening, who's interested, it's called College Alternatives. You can just search College Alternatives, Living That Life--

Omar:
I'll go ahead and throw a link for that in the show notes.

Riley:
Anyway, ended up signing us up for just the Wi-Fi only package, no TV. So, we plugged our Apple TV into the TV and started just streaming YouTube videos and actually, what we started streaming, working in Thailand, living in Thailand. So, went down that whole wormhole. And you could probably guess, found a YouTube channel and this was Johnny FD’s YouTube channel. He's chilling in Chiang Mai. Even on my podcast and, you know, multiple times now. And he's just doing e-commerce on a laptop, digital nomad in Chiang Mai, co working space. Like, what is this? And we're like, working in a hotel, teaching English. Let's do that.

And so, we discovered the first digital nomad on YouTube. It happened to be Johnny and his podcast is Travel Like A Boss podcast and so many nomads found that podcast too as well. They got the same light bulb, discovering what digital nomad is. So, Johnny is one of the OG’s and then luckily, he announced, shortly after following him, that he's going to have a conference in Chiang Mai, all about digital marketing and e-commerce. So, we're like, perfect. We're going to that conference, no matter what. 

So, this is early in the year 2014. We're like, let's do it. We got our tickets to the conference, which was going to happen October of 2014. Out kept knocking doors and saving up money and Parker’s working at The Marriott Hotel in Bellevue, where we’re from. We just saved up money, October came around, saved up about 8k each round. We're like, alright, that can give us six months of living in Chiang Mai. About 1000 bucks a month, you can live there pretty nice. Blast it off, sold as much as we could on the [inaudible 12:08] app, sold my car. Blasted off to Thailand, went to the conference, met some guys that were crushing it selling on Amazon. And so, we started doing that. 

Omar:
You just met some people that were doing Amazon FBA and you're like, this is for me, this is the thing that I'm going to be doing?

Riley:
Yep. Yeah, yeah. We met a couple of guys who were specifically crushing it doing the private label method, creating their own brand, the private label through Alibaba blah blah blah, listing on Amazon. We had a drop shipping store, the Shopify drop shipping, a high ticket drop shipping site. At the time, it wasn't really making money. We're frustrated. Saw these guys crushing with FBA, pivoted to doing FBA private labeling, launched, started taking off within six months, started making, you know, enough money for us to stay in Chiang Mai and stayed and never went home. 

Omar:
It's funny. Like when you meet a lot of, I guess, online entrepreneurs, they have the, you know how there's like cookie cutter business models. Like, drop shipping and Amazon FBA and these like business models that anyone can get started on low barrier of entry. And if you put in the hustle, you put in the work, you can grow into something. A lot of entrepreneurs that, I mean, that I've interviewed and that I've seen like big names, a lot of them maybe started with that. But then, they'll drop it to kind of get the business acumen from it and then grow into like different things like agency models, or completely different things like software companies or, you know, big blogs, travel blogs, things like that, you know. 

But it's funny that you said with Amazon FBA grew that into something and then from there, pivoted but not only pivoted, but outreach like branched out into like an agency and a podcast and a YouTube channel and etc. You kind of built around that and it worked out for you. So that's kind of, it's interesting to see that.

Riley:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you're saying it's a, um, these kind of like Amazon FBA and drop shipping. Like with my course because I was, I started vlogging. After Chiang Mai, I started vlogging, and travel blogging, whatever. And in my YouTube channel, one of the most common questions was, okay, what do you do, how do I live that life too, how are you traveling full time? So, that led me into creating my Amazon private label course. 

And the way I describe it sometimes is like these kind of proven business models, like do some market research, private label a product using Alibaba, launch on Amazon. It's kind of proven low business models. I almost refer to them as just business projects. Because by doing the whole thing, you learn all aspects of digital marketing through the process. So even if you're a newbie, you're going to learn. It's like a six-month or twelve-month college course in digital marketing because you're going to learn market research, you're going to learn SEO, logos, branding, supplier communications, logistics, copywriting, graphic design, you know, crunching numbers and profitability, how to create LLC. All this. So, we are kind of former--

Omar:
It's funny. Online business has a lot of overlap when it comes to skills. I mean, just like you said there.

Riley:
Yeah. And so like, yeah, I think of it as a, you know, as a business project. You know, not everyone’s business, you know, always is successful, of course. That's business. But it's, you learn by doing, as opposed to like in college, you learn theory and like if you get a business degree in college, you don't even start a business.

Omar:
That's true. 

Riley:
So, yeah. 

Omar:
That's really funny that you say that, you know. And when people think of online business, they think of like how difficult that's going to be and they think of, I don't even know where to start, you know. But when it comes to an online business, there's so many different skills that come together. Like you said, copywriting and graphic design and all that. They come together. And you can learn from basically any cookie cutter business model out there and kind of start your own thing, and you did that through Amazon FBA. 

Before we actually get into Amazon FBA, and how that worked out for you, and your journey through that, it’s funny that you said that you started with Johnny FD, you know. I think, I definitely heard of that guy because three years ago, I started my own journey, you know. And it's funny now that we're in coronavirus times, I think the situation we're in right now is changing the whole digital nomad sphere into this one thing that a group of sub sect of people know, into something that's completely mainstream now. That remote working and digital nomading, and all this thing is becoming mainstream and that everybody is now finally starting to understand what's going on and what's happening. You know what I mean?

Riley:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're just early that everyone's—yeah, it's funny these days. It’s like everyone is forced to work from home. It’s like, welcome. 

Omar:
Exactly. And now in my opinion, I see it happening in like a year or two years from now that there's going to be so many more digital nomads, remote workers that are going to pop up on the scene, and all the people that originally knew who the original people were are going to be far and few in between. And it's going to be interesting to see that transition.

Now, going to Amazon FBA business now. I mean, at this point, you've been doing it for a really long time and you definitely know a lot more than most people. I remember I watched that YouTube video of you three years ago and you were just starting out on your journey there and I was like, I remember thinking to myself, I was like, man, this guy randomly just went to Chiang Mai. I didn’t even think he had a set plan before and he just started this Amazon business. Like if he can do it, I can do it too, right. I thought that to myself. 

But when I started my journey, I wasn't a full-on digital nomad. I was getting remote jobs and stuff for a little bit, freelancing for a little bit before I started my own business. But with you, you started that right off the bat. So, for someone who's a complete beginner, let's say, who wants to start doing fulfillment by Amazon or anything related to Amazon, what kind of advice could you give them?

Riley:
Well, I mean, yeah. First, decide that that's the business model that you want to do. So, I'm going to assume that you already want to, and then yeah, start doing it. You know you can either learn through YouTube, or you can get a course, or pay for a mentor, you know, and do whatever you want to do. And then learn it and get down to it and do it.

Omar:
Could you break down the business model a little bit? I mean, I'm not really much aware of the way Amazon FBA works, besides the fact that you have like a warehouse that you source some stuff, and then you pay like a monthly fee or something, and then they ship it out. But that's all I really know.

Riley:
Oh, okay. Got it. Um, yeah. No. The private label via FBA business model is basically where you create your own physical product brand and usually, that's sourced through a, you know, where everything is sourced to China, and you find suppliers. The most common website is alibaba.com. So, you will, let's say you want to launch, you know, coffee cups, you'll go to Alibaba and you want to create a brand about coffee cups. Go to Alibaba, type in coffee cups, look around hundreds of different models, pick one that's unique that you think can do well on Amazon. 

Of course, before this whole process, you got to do a deep dive market research project on Amazon and you're trying to basically find holes in the market. Find underserved markets where you can create a brand and using tools like Jungle Scout that give you a search volume of keywords on Amazon. So, you're basically trying to create a brand and put it in on Amazon, where there's already a bunch of existing traffic. Because half a ship, bottom line, is on Amazon. 

So, you create your own physical product brand. How do you source that? Go find a manufacturer on Amazon who's already making it, customize it if you can, I found that's very key. If you can make it customized different than everyone else on Amazon, make it unique in some way, you're going to set yourself up for better success. You send the supplier your logo in Adobe Illustrator format, they'll print it on the product, you send them the PDF of the packaging, they'll print that out. And you order like 200 or 1000 or 200 units on Alibaba. It's got your packaging inserted in there with QR codes so they can put in their email address to register extended warranty blah blah blah.

You create your own physical product brand and your supplier on Alibaba can send that directly to Amazon's warehouses, called FBA for Fulfillment by Amazon. And a supplier can send all the boxes directly to Amazon's warehouse, there's dozens of them in America. And through your Amazon seller account, it will tell you which one to send it to. 

And the FBA thing is part of what makes the business model so sexy and automated is because Amazon is shipping the products to the customers 24/7, automatically. You're not even notified. I literally have robots working for me right now, picking and packing my product and sending it off to customers all around America. 

And so, as the as the seller, you don't have to have boxes with you. You can be anywhere in the world and it can be totally run online. And then, the majority of your traffic comes from inside Amazon, people searching for your coffee cup related keywords. And if your product is good enough, it gets good enough reviews, it will be there on page one for your specific keywords. And so, because of that, you don't really have to drive any outside traffic. I don't have to do any Instagram ads, or Facebook ads, or I don't have to even have to have a website. All your traffic is just inside Amazon. Amazon's giving you all the traffic, you know, and Amazon basically takes a 30% cut of your sale. So, if you sell for--

Omar:
That includes FBA or just for sales, specifically? Does that include FBA? Like the 30%, is that included from the fee from FBA, or is that just what Amazon takes after sales and that doesn't even include FBA?

Riley:
That includes FBA. So, FBA. There's the storage fee and then there's the Amazon referral fee. Overall, everything together ends up to be about 30% of what they take if you're selling via FBA. 

Omar:
So, that's thinner margins than I would think, compared to something like drop shipping for example. So, if you're going to take like, let's say like a $50 product or sell it for $50 and get it for maybe like $10 from Alibaba let's say, and they take 30%, you're still looking about, what, 10% margins? 15%, maybe?

Riley:
Are you talking about for drop shipping?

Omar:
No. For Amazon FBA. When it comes to your profit.

Riley:
Oh, profit margin?

Omar:
Yeah, profit margin.

Riley:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. For FBA, with my products, it's been around between 30% and 40% overall gross profit margins.

Omar:
Are they more high ticket? Are they more like around $100 sell points or like--?

Riley:
No. Typically in the private label game, it's typically between like the $20 and $50 range. 

Omar:
That's pretty good. 40% profit margins. You're doing really well there. When it comes to--

Riley:
40% is good.

Omar:
It is. It is, definitely. I mean, compared to the average.

Riley:
Yeah. I saw Jungle Scout. They had a little survey. It was like the average private label person is like somewhere around 30%. Like, you should, I tell people you should definitely try to be above 30%. If you're going to really smash it and have a really custom product that, you know, you're not worrying about competition too much, shoot for 50%, but 40% is like, you're doing great. 

Omar:
Absolutely, man. Now, there's two things that I realize about Amazon, right. One, it's pretty review-based, right. So, the more reviews that someone gets, the better, the more higher it's going to be ranked, the more people are going to see it, the more people are going to want to buy it, right. Simple social proof. 

Which is funny also because the other day, I found this guy who literally reaches out to people who don't have any reviews on Amazon, and don't do this by the way, to my audience. Well, you can. I'm not going to be the moral police here but it's up to you. It's actually kind of smart. 

But what the guy does, he reaches out to people and he ask them saying, Hey, I'll leave you a really detailed nice review if you let me test out your product. And like all these people that are selling things that have less reviews like anywhere from $100 or less, we'll send him out this product, and he will leave like this really nice detailed review and that'll be that. And they'll give it to him for like a dollar, two bucks, you know what I mean.  So, this guy's just like hoarding up on these expensive items for super cheap and leaving these reviews, which I think is kind of funny. But that's just a little tip that I learned from this guy. 

Now, onto what you do for your reviews. Like branding as you think, right, as a social proof that comes around with reviews on Amazon. So how do you manage to get more reviews? Do you do some sort of system where you reach out to other people to quickly rack up on some reviews when it comes to your products? Do you just get them organically? Like, what do you do?

Riley:
Yeah. The latest and greatest method is, well, ever since 2014 when I started, it's all been all about giveaways and people used to do giveaways through Amazon 99% off coupons. They blast these 99% off coupons in Facebook groups and Facebook ads, blah blah blah. But Amazon changed the rules a few years ago. Any shopper that uses a deep discount coupon on Amazon can't leave a review. So, every seller just pivoted to doing deep discounts via rebate after purchase. So, it's all about rebates after purchase. All the savvy sellers do it. It’s the best way.

Omar:
Interesting. I did not know they had a rebate after purchase thing. That is a little secret tip right there.

Riley:
Well, it’s not through Amazon. The seller handles it. The seller handles the whole thing. So, my agency actually offers this. We have an email list of 20,000 real people, they opted in to receive a deep discount deals, and we blast Amazon launch promotions free after giveaway deals out to this list. And as long as you say review is not required but highly encouraged, as long as the review’s not required, so it's not incentivizing the review, then it's totally legal.

Omar:
So when it comes to that, how many people do you find actually leaving reviews percentage-wise, you think?

Riley:
For this list that we use, it’s over 50%. This is the highest I found.

Omar:
That's awesome, man. Congratulations. A very nice method there.

Riley:
Yeah, yeah. I do it for all my products, all my clients too. So, yeah.

Omar:
Awesome, man. And the other thing is like when you say private labeling items, right. When I think private labeling, and excuse my ignorance here, but when I think private labeling, you take an item and then you kind of like build a solid brand around it on social media. But you know how people start apparel stores for example, like they start a clothing brand. They’re probably using print on demand like everybody else out there but what they do separately is that they customize, they have this logo and this brand, and they built like a solid Instagram following around it, and there’s like celebrities wearing this clothing bubble and that's what makes them successful, right, the marketing around it. 

So, when you do private labeling for your things that, for your objects or your items that you're selling on Amazon, what kind of branding are you doing specifically for it?

Riley:
Um, what kind of branding? Well, we create a brand name, we make a sexy logo, sexy packaging. Yeah. Is that what [inaudible 28:26]?

Omar:
I mean, is it as simple as that or do you also make social media accounts for it and stuff? Like, or is it simply--

Riley:
Oh, you mean like outside--?

Omar:
Outside. Like, literally marketing for it.

Riley:
Yeah, you mean outside stuff. Yeah. No, we don't do any marketing there. And that's the thing about the Amazon, private label via FBA, and that's why the 30% Amazon cut makes it worth it because you're paying for all of your traffic. You don't get any outside traffic to our Amazon listings. Do the traffic comes from inside Amazon's search engine which is, you know, one of the biggest in the world.

Omar:
That's super interesting. So, doing this, like specific-- what's the word that I'm trying to, how do I put this the way that I want to put it. Specifically, just taking an item, right, and building a private label around it. Like for example, I have this wallet, right. Let's say this wallet is just generic wallet that you find from China and someone's selling this on Amazon, right, and it just says brown wallet. And then you on the other hand, come and say, this is a wallet made by the Livin That Life brand, right. And you brand it, and you probably put the logo on there, and you have really nice packaging for it. Do you find people buying more of this branded wallet versus like a normal wallet simply because there's a brand on it, even if they don't know the brand as a household name?

Riley:
Good question. No. People on Amazon don't buy usually because of the brand, they buy because of the function of the product and what the product is. So, my whole spiel on my course ever since 2015 or 2016 when I launched my course, is based on what I found to be successful in my product launches, the more unique your product is, that's going to be why people buy it is because you have unique functional features that other listings on Amazon for similar products don't have. So, that's why I'm always harping on customization, I'm harping on combining two things into one, I'm harping on adding unique functional features. Even if it's something small to improve the product and makes it better, that's where it's all about. 

So, it's that and combined with deep dive Amazon keyword research, and you're trying to find specific keywords that there's an existing flood of traffic to, every day on Amazon and you're trying to put your product in front of that specific keyword. For example, the wallet, you're never going to, it will be done just to go source any wallet and launch it on Amazon sale, people are going to type in wallet and they're going to buy mine. No, there's 100 pages of wallets. But if you get into the sub niches, or the niches within the niches, I call them, search for wallets, you would target a keyword like leather wallets with zipper, or wallets for biker shorts-- I have no idea. I'm making this up-- or carbon fiber computer wallet. I don't even know what that is, I’m making this out of my ass. 

That's some small, small niche you got a niche, niche down so you can be like, I can be on page one for that keyword pretty easy. Just a good search amount, a good search traffic for this keyword. Not too much competition. Let's go stores on Alibaba for that, let's make a dope brand around that and that's going to be our bread and butter that, these very specific keywords.

Omar:
Interesting. So, that's straight up Amazon SEO then.

Riley:
Exactly. It’s an Amazon SEO play, this whole thing.

Omar:
That's cool. So now, at this point, now that you've been doing this for a few years, how many products do you have selling? How's the business going?

Riley:
It's going good, it's going good. We've probably launched about a dozen to fifteen products. We probably have like five of them still selling out. Doing well that are our bread and butter.

Omar:
And you just kind of restock once in a while once, once you kind of let it go to sewing machine then, right. You just restock here and there, put it in the fulfillment house and then just keep going. It doesn't take up much of your time.

Riley:
Yep. Yeah, exactly. Once the listing is live, it's like-- I mean, you have a VA, you know, or the inventory and all of that but once it's live, it's like so relatively passive and so that's why it makes the business model sexy. Just launch one product. It's either successful or it's not. If it's not, then just don't order more. But either way, if it's successful, it just sits there on Amazon, you don’t have to do shit. Just order more when it's time to order more and move on to the next product and start thinking about the next product. 

Omar:
Awesome, man. There's a lot of value bombs in there right now that you gave to my audience. Thank you for that.

Riley:
Yeah, of course.

Omar:
So, now this gives you time to kind of focus on your course, and your agency, and your podcast, and your YouTube channel and all that, right?

Riley:
Yeah. My YouTube channel just—I didn’t even started as a channel, it's just a place to put my vacation videos. So yeah, I've been a creative person my whole life. I used to make music in high school I used to make like comedy mixtapes in middle school. I've always been a recording and a creative type so when I was out living in Chiang Mai, I was naturally just like vlogging. It actually started on Snapchat, just doing daily vlogs on Snapchat and became known as you know, the guy who's in Chiang Mai on Snapchat blah blah blah. People seem to follow and enjoy it. 

So, the next year, about a little pocket vlog point shoot camera, just started doing vlogs on that. Would do one like official edit every week and just upload that to YouTube. Digital Nomad Chiang Mai, Digital Nomad Thailand. Do that digital nomad keyword, people start finding me. Visit Chiang Mai blah blah blah and started yeah, that's kind of started my YouTube channel.

Omar:
Sweet, man. So, what are you going to do from here on? Are you just going to carry on with what you're doing, kind of build your brand around you or what's the plan?

Riley:
Yeah. Just getting started--

Omar:
Not to put you on the spot.

Riley:
No, man, of course. That's what it's all about. Yeah man, you know, life's all about pursuing what excites you. So, you know, I'm doing, I'm living my dream. You know, back at the beginning of the story, this was literally our so, we wanted this so bad, we wanted Johnny's life. Just to be able to kick back, live life, live your daily life on your own schedule, be able to sleep in and whenever you want, take a four-day, five-day, seven-day weekend whenever you want. So just continue, you know, building our businesses, continue traveling the world, making dope videos, you know, love podcasting. You know, and everything I just said ties right into you know, my biggest influences, which are you know, Tim Ferriss and the four-hour workweek so that--

Omar:
Every digital nomad I've ever met in my life will say that.

Riley:
Yeah, exactly. So that's a course, that's a piece of the puzzle, you know, that came into our lives, somehow, you know, of course. You know, in the beginning stages we had the whole four-hour workweek poster on the wall, target monthly income, find your muse, all that. So, the four-hour workweek philosophy is that book is my life, you know. Pursue what excites you, build multiple streams of online income and automate them, you know, have them independent so you have multiple streams of income, you know, use technology to automate an outsource so you can focus on what you love doing, which is not work in this definition. 

So, you know, I love doing podcasts I love making videos, I love traveling the world, I love experiencing other cultures, I love food, have so many street food videos, I love learning languages. The world's so big and so fun and interesting. Just continue doing what we're doing, continue living that life, you know, having fun and just enjoying life, you know what I'm saying? You know, you only live once, YOLO. You got to live it up, you know before you just--

Omar:
You just said YOLO?

Riley:
YOLO, man. Because that’s it.

Omar:
I haven't heard that since 2015. It’s true, though. It’s true.

Riley:
It's just a basic thing and we all need to remind ourselves. It’s like, it's just you remind yourself, you're going to die. You could die in an accident if you get hit by a bus, you could die from COVID, there could be an asteroid, whatever. You got to live your life. This is our one chance on this amazing, flourishing, beautiful, delicious planet that we live on. You got to live it up.

And this is the first generation in history that we can do what we're doing. We can work, have our careers, build our careers from anywhere in the world. I can be an [inaudible 37:12]. I was just in Starbucks, there's Starbucks all around the world. I can be in Croatia, it doesn't matter. This is the first generation in history that we can actually travel the world full time and do whatever we want to do. Everything can be done remotely and now everyone's forced to do it, do it remotely because of Corona, but just take advantage of the times. 

Like, that's my message like to like to young cats and like ambitious, you know, young cats, this, this has never been possible. Take advantage of the planes, the iPhones, the MacBooks, the Starbucks, the Wi-Fi, the internet Wi-Fi globally. Like Zoom, we have Zoom, we have Shopify, we have Amazon, we have Facebook, and Instagram ads we have TikTok. You can do anything you want now, there's no excuses. Save up some cash, follow YouTube, follow the influencers, read the books, read the Click Funnels. You have no excuses. There's just limitless opportunities.

Omar:
I share that excitement and enthusiasm so deeply, man. That was awesome. I'm always screaming that from the top of the heavens too, man. That's amazing and it's very, very true. And you know, as you're saying that, something I recently read, I'm not sure how many people are aware but they're going to start doing Wi-Fi from satellites soon, apparently, so that you can get Wi Fi from even the Amazon.

Riley:
I was thinking [inaudible 38:34]. I was like it’s not Skynet, it’s Starlink.

Omar:
It’s pretty much Skynet.

Riley:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Same same, right.

Omar:
Let's see what [inaudible 38:46] from those terminators.

Riley:
Soon there’s going to be Wi-Fi. You can be on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean, that they already have this. I just saw some YouTube video about these digital nomads. They do sailing throughout the ocean, they already have satellite internet.

Omar:
What's the channel?

Riley:
I want to do it--

Omar:
Do you know, is it Sailing SV Delos?

Riley:
I don't remember but they have a baby.

Omar:
Yeah, SV Delos. SV Delos. 

Riley:
Okay. 

Omar:
So, get this, SV Delos, right. I was, whenever I was digital nomading, my first year in Australia, I was in Melbourne. It was like my first three months in Australia. And I'm on the beach, right, and they have like this Wednesday Bonfire slash Drum Circle thing in St. Kilda on the beach. And I just remember being there one night and there was this beautiful girl just on the beach, right. Never seen anyone like her, just had something about her. And I went up, and me and my friends were around there. I went up to go talk to her and we just started talking, sat in the sand for a bit and talked for like an hour. And she told me she just came off this boat that had been sailing around the world. And she said, here, follow the YouTube and stuff. And I followed it, it was SV Delos, right.

And this was three years ago when I found this person, and I found the person who used to sail and she just came off the boat. And now, it's this couple, it's the main original people in the boat. The guy, his brother, his wife now, who wasn't his wife before three years ago, and now their baby. But I've been following this channel on and off, like I watch videos here and there for three years now, and I've been wanting this guy in my podcast for ages. I'm sure I'm going to get to that point. Eventually, I'm going to have it on, man. But just to tell him that I met a person that sailed with him for like two years on that beach, that one beautiful night in Melbourne. How sick is that? What a small world.

Riley:
Yeah. I just pulled up the channel. Yeah, this is the video that I’m talking about.

Omar:
Yeah. SV Delos, man. It's so dope. That's such a sick dream. Like, that's been a massive dream of mine to do for quite some time.

Riley:
Yeah. Yeah. And limitless possibilities and it's only getting to see-- he's already doing it, the internet from the middle of the ocean. But yeah, Starlink’s just going to make it easier. Yeah. Interesting times.

Omar:
Interesting times, my friend. Let's close this podcast off with one final question here. There's usually two but I think you just answered one for us with quite enthusiasm and quite a lot of passion there. And that question was, what piece of advice would you give my audience that wants to get started, but I think you already worded that perfectly. So, let's move on to the second question. 

Riley:
Absolutely, yep.

Omar:
Let's move on to the second question and the final question here for the podcast. This one's more of a personal one for you. How do you feel like your perspective of life and people has changed over the past six years, ever since you started this journey, when you set off on that two-week vacation for the first time?

Riley:
Yeah. Um, well I think I was born and raised, you know, a naturally passionate person. I'm passionate about so many things but living abroad has just escalated that, you know. I'm even more passionate about traveling the world. I love people even more. And one thing traveling the world does, and I think, you know, you can relate is you realize most people, we're all the same. We just want to enjoy life, enjoy food, family, friends, you know, good coffee. Just make a living and take care of our family, you know. 99.9% of people are great people, loving. We just want to make a living and enjoy life. That's it. Everyone's the same. 

Traveling is, people think it's dangerous blah blah blah. It’s not dangerous. You're just tuned into the boob tube. You're turned into the TV. That's what's making you think the world is dangerous. The world is perfectly safe, guys. Like, get out there and yeah. Just living abroad, it's just heightened my passion for life.

Omar:
Awesome. Fantastic note to end the podcast on, man. That was a fantastic episode. Thank you so much for coming on today, Riley.

Riley:
You're welcome. My pleasure, man.

Outro-
You made it to the end of the episode, Nomad fan. If you got any value from this episode or you’re just a kind and awesome person, please go ahead and leave a rating or a review. Your reviews help this podcast be found my more people, which ultimately means more people in the world will be inspired or guided by the content. 

Other than that, next week’s episode is amazing, to say the least. We’ll be featuring a vlogger and influencer that is massive in the travel space. All I’m going to say is that one of the stories that he tells us is about the time that he blew his hand off and had to go to the hospital to try to salvage it.

You’ll want to hit that subscribe button to hear the full story on next week’s episode of The Nomadic Executive. Cheers and speak soon.

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