This is a list of sales representatives who work for manufacturing companies in China. This list is inside Alibaba’s messenger app. You tell factories what you want to buy and then negotiate the price. What does each salesperson…
I was walking alone in Bosnia, in the countryside far from the capital city of Sarajevo. It was night, and I had a few kilometers of walking to reach the small village, a collection of ~100 unpainted houses on the…
5 years ago, I had no idea how to make money online, but I wanted travel right away. I loved my first year as a digital nomad but it was the most financially stressful, emotionally taxing year of my…
Inevitably, when someone asks how long I’ve been traveling, they look at my backpack. “Wow, so many years living out of that backpack! How do you do it?” I didn’t think much of this question, until I realized…
Multitasking may be a problem, but Dual-Tasking helps you reach your goals faster. I purposefully dual-task every day. Dual-Tasking: The brain does one thing while the body does something else. Yesterday, I hiked through Rila National Park in…
This year I started to write, every day, one thing I did well and one thing I would improve on tomorrow. With 200+ days, I ran text analysis for the most frequent words and phrases that lead to the…
I didn’t want to book tickets to the Roman Colosseum or the Vatican Museums because they cost $25 each last minute online. I’d already walked around the Colosseum, and through St. Peters Square, so I wasn’t sure it was…
Everyone with an online business talks about ‘Platform Dependency’, and its potential risks. “Google can blacklist your site overnight.” “Facebook can block your ad account without notice.” “Amazon’s algorithm can revoke your selling privileges.” While all of these…
Walking up the stairs… I felt terrible. It was late, 1AM, and I was in Germany. “I’m here to learn German, to speak German… but I’m speaking hardly any at all. Why?” That day, I’d spoken to 40+…
Have you ever shared a refrigerator with a flat-mate, seen a large, juicy steak, and one week later, seen the untouched meat covered in mold? Delicious food is now a moldy mess and you end up scrubbing the plate…
Everyone wants to be ‘free’, but slavery isn’t the problem so what do they mean? Very few people seek ‘true’ or ‘total’ freedom; the ability to move mountains, breathe underwater, jump to Mars, or create new worlds in 7…
I, and a lot of people, dream of being financially ‘set for life’. But, I did some thinking, and no matter what your ‘number’ is, whether relatively small or whether it begins with a B, ‘set for life’ isn’t…
Walking between Chinguetti and Oadane in the Sahara desert takes 5 days. Walking through sand is a good mental challenge, without the required technical skills or altitude complications of mountain climbing. After walking 100kms through the desert, here are…
Digital nomads are positioned to benefit most from a knowledge of global affairs. The country-agnostic view differs drastically from the ‘My-Country-And-Everywhere-Else’ perspective. Always mobile, we see the opportunities of distant places and the drawbacks of our own home. Less…
Like Los Angeles, Dubai is a city of dreams. Some are fulfilled, while others shrivel like a raisin in the hot desert sun. For those at the top, dreams have come true. Sheikh Mohammed and his predecessors have…
I met two Chinese men on my journey south from Lalibela (Northern Ethiopia) to the capital city of Addis Ababa. I don’t speak Chinese, but I tried a little, they thought my attempts were funny, and they invited me to…
A lot of e-commerce vendors plan meticulously for Black Friday. They create deep Black Friday/Cyber Monday discounts and spend 3X their normal advertising budget because shoppers are deal-hunting. For consumers and businesses alike, it’s a mad rush. But, I…
Almost every digital nomad has one… that selfie taken at Machu Picchu. 5,000 visitors come to Machu Picchu every day and most of them will take ‘The Selfie’. Many will check MP off their Bucket List of “100 Things…
High profit business models that attract entrepreneurs lose their attractiveness over time. If it makes a lot of money, and if other people can do it, red ocean competition is coming. Margins and profits drop for everyone, and only…
Watching snippets of the Facebook trial, Senator Dan Sullivan caught my attention with the often repeated statement: Only In America. Sullivan: “From the dorm room, to the global behemoth you now are, only in America, would you agree with…
I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro last week… and I was not prepared. No Acclimatization – I flew from Zanzibar where I had been snorkeling below sea-level, started the climb the next day, taking the shortest trek possible, 5 days. Few…
There are some clear problems with most (not all) of the courses that teach various business models on the Internet… There is only 1 ‘sales event’ where the student pays full-price for the course, before knowing if it will…
Last November, I blew all my savings to take a trip to Antarctica. We crossed the Drake Passage in a boat and spent nearly 2 weeks with twice-daily landings on the continent. (All Videos Here) In addition to allowing to…
Many long-term travelers go crazy after 5 years of constant movement. The ‘digital nomad’ lifestyle grants you a lot of freedom, but shallow friendships, repetitive conversations, constant change, lack of stability, and feeling like you’re on non-stop vacation for…
I just bought some British Petroleum stock. Having just sold an e-commerce company, I was looking for a ‘good’ place to put some money. It’s location independent. It’s passive investment income. The 6% dividend yield will likely pay out…
Whether you win the lottery, find a box of gold in the basement, get a bonus at work, earn a commission on a ‘whale’ sale or sell a business… from time to time you will receive big chunks of money…
There’s a booming market for buying and selling passive online businesses. Everyone Wants Passive Money Without Doing Anything Or Needing To Be Anywhere. Anyone can buy these businesses on Flippa, Empire Flippers or other Internet business marketplaces. Amazon…
3 years ago, I left home and flew to Asia to begin my career. I had just been fired from an internship in the USA and I dropped out of college. The most important decision of my career was…
Setting my own deadlines was stressful. A goal with a deadline is a chance to fail where previously no failure was possible. You’ll need to make a big commitment in order to reach a big goal by the deadline….
It’s no fun running an unprofitable business, but it’s not wasted time. Even if you’re not making money, and even if you’re losing money, you’re still making progress towards your final goal: Owning a large, profitable business. (The goal for…
I’m not quoting exact statistics here but you’ve all heard the general consensus… “80% of businesses fail in the first 5 years.” “Two thirds of businesses go bankrupt within a decade.” We’re continually beat over the head…
“A man smoking his own cigarettes had given up faith in his ability to carry on.” In his book ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’, Viktor Frankl describes his years spent in concentration camps in Nazi Germany. In camp, cigarettes…
I went bungee jumping in Baños two days ago. Here’s what I was feeling before, during, and after. The Hours Before Walking To The Bridge Waves Of Nausea I wrote down that I simply felt “like s**t.”…
I went 3 days without sleep last weekend. Saturday morning to Monday night, I didn’t go to bed. I’m really glad I ran this little experiment. Here are my thoughts from last weekend, both the good and the bad of…
Are you starting at 0? Do you have no money, or at least not a lot? Maybe you have no business experience. Maybe you don’t have many skills. Do you wish you had a powerful network, but all…
Warren Buffet knows how to analyze an investment. He understands the numbers and knows where to look for the landmines. Robert Kiyosaki is a real estate investor. He also knows how to analyze a deal. Their knowledge is useful…
BLAM! As soon as they fire the starting gun only the racers who have trained for years and have the perfect body type will be in the lead. But there’s an easy way to cross the finish line before…
You use a lot of currencies when traveling around the world; Turkish Lira (3.08 per USD), Thai Baht (35 per USD), Lao Kip (8,100 per USD), Chinese Yuan, Mexican Pesos, Honduran Lempira and the 1 Vietnamese Dong shown above. …
Two weeks ago I wrote a post about when you should (and shouldn’t) invest large sums of money in your business. This post discusses a related point; an interesting benefit of starting off in business when you’re nearly broke. Yes,…
Many of the large companies we see every day got wealthy via arbitrage; finding cheap labor and resources from around the world and then re-selling them in the United States for 10x the price of production. It’s how Apple…
For anyone who’s never made a cent of ‘location independent’ income, I’ve got a great way for you to start. Freelance writing. Maybe you’ve never been a freelance writer before? Neither was I, but now I count startups, corporations, and…
Last January I flew to Europe with my family for some skiing in Austria. Shortly afterwards I was on a plane to Bangkok. I had a few pairs of clothes, about $1,000, and big hopes for the coming year. …
This post is a little hard to write. I need to admit ‘I was wrong‘ if it’s going to be an honest post. Since this blogs inception I’ve been dead-set on telling people to quit the job as…
Most people gain a few pounds on vacation. Nobody wants to think about their beer consumption on their 3 weeks off and with the focus on ‘relaxation’ the predisposition is definitely to pig out vs. work out. If…
Two weeks ago I went through a rather stress-inducing 3-5 days. (It actually turned out to be 4.) I just received payment from a client through my business, Graphic Design Experts. This payment was very welcome, because I was running low on cash in…
Last Thursday was a silent victory…. (And I had no idea.) For a long time, I had been telling myself that I wanted location independent income. Up to that point, however, I hadn’t done much to help myself move in…
Corona has put many businesses on forced vacation… but if you’re in e-commerce and you’re slowing down due to the crisis, you’re making the wrong decision. For many businesses coronavirus is a reason to slow or stop operations, but…
Every week, I’m making the same mistake. Sunday: Think, write goals for the week. Monday-Saturday: Check them at the end of each day. Plan tomorrow. Sunday: Most goals were totally ignored. Some of the ignored goals/tasks/objectives are not…
You don’t need a cult leader or a religious fanatic. You’re probably creating your own superstitions every day, simply by trying something new. The Superstition Creation Process 1. Idea “I’ll try that.” 2. Don’t think through what your ‘trying’ process…