Do you daydream about quitting your job and traveling around the world? What about taking it a step further and building a location independent career, so you can live and work wherever you want to?

I can remember the first time someone labelled me a “digital nomad” on a major blog… Two-and-a-half years ago these were the words of Corbett Barr—back when his site was still called Free Pursuits. Corbett listed me among the top 10 Digital Nomads to Learn From, alongside Tim Ferriss and Rolf Potts—two truly incredible writers who inspired me to follow my own path in life—as well as huge A-list bloggers Chris Brogan and Mike Elgan, and big names in the travel blogosphere including Christine Gilbert from Almost Fearless and Chris Guillebeau of Art of Nonconformity fame.

I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of the label at first, although I was immensely honored to be among such incredible company. I was excited! Reading Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek and Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding had been a turning point in my life—those two books opened my eyes to whole new possibilities and put a fire under my ass to create a life of my own design, and try my hardest to enjoy every moment of it.

Not long after in late 2009, Jonathan Mead used me as a case study in his manifesto The Zero Hour Workweek, which played off of the ideas in Tim’s book, but took them even further to encourage people to build businesses that basically allow them to get paid to be themselves. Soon I was being interviewed about my live-and-work-anywhere lifestyle, and people started calling my story inspiring, and asking me about my travel experiences and advice for overcoming travel obstacles.

Sometimes I’m a bit embarrassed by the buzzwords (digital nomad, location independent… and lifestyle design… there’s another one!) but eventually I embraced the title Corbett had bestowed upon me. Who’d have known that just two years later I’d be running a business course called Digital Nomad Academy with the help of Corbett himself and several other hugely successful remote-control entrepreneurs I look up to!

Like many people, sometimes I feel like the small (but growing) online niche we’re in is a bit too cliquey, too markety, and sometimes people get big egos, or they feel under pressure to maintain the appearance like they’ve got everything figured out and their lives are just so cool.

I know, because I’ve been there… but I’ll be the first to tell you, nobody has it all figured out. I’ve been broke as a joke many times along my journey, I’ve been stuck up a creek with no paddle many times on my travels, I’ve experienced immense business failures, I’ve been stabbed in the back, I’ve been discouraged. But, this is an incredible life we’ve all been given, and I’m grateful for the amazing adventures and obstacles I’ve experienced. I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything.

I’m even more thankful for the people around me who have helped fuel this adventure. It has its ups and downs for sure—I was defrauded and went through several down months. I wasn’t confident everything might not collapse at times. I took a break from blogging and let some of my friends use this platform to share their writing and their projects with you (I see no point writing unless I actually have something to say, but once I conquer the challenges laid out in front of me, maybe then I’ll have something of real value to share about them).

But despite the challenges of living an unconventional life, I have no plans to quit traveling, meeting new people, and having new experiences anytime soon, to stop experimenting with my own businesses, to ever go back to a 9-to-5 if I can avoid it, to move back home, or to stop blogging about this weird journey. Living life your own way, you will definitely be confronted with setbacks, and the journey will be more challenging than living according to someone else’s prescribed path. But it is absolutely, 100% worthwhile. 

My girlfriend and I are fortunate to live for now in one of the most beautiful regions in the world, in a three-story townhouse surrounded by forests and beautiful limestone mountains, all for a fraction of what it would cost back in California.

Emily and I recently spent a week in Singapore, and it was the most fun I’ve had in months! We were trying to decide what country to visit for a renewed visa and I decided I really wanted to visit old friends there. She teases me that I can’t travel anywhere unless I know someone there, and when I thought about it, I realized it’s not far from the truth.

Undoubtedly when most people think about travel, they tend to think of places, monuments and landmarks like the Acropolis of Athens, the Roman Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower, London’s Big Ben, Bangkok’s reclining Buddha, Krabi’s mountaintop Buddhist temple, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Each of these are fantastic places I’ve been able to see on my travels. But what really has made my travels remarkable are the people I have met and the experiences I’ve shared with them.

I became very close with my French professor in high school, who was also a huge influence on me (as far as my interest in travel, culture, art, music and languages). The very first time I traveled outside the U.S. was a trip with some classmates to France, and what made it special was the wonderful family I lived with for a week on the Mediterranean coast in Cannes, as well as the time I spent with Mssr. Hodgins and my classmates wandering around Paris.

London is probably one of my top three favorite cities in the world to visit. Although I really enjoy wandering around on foot through London and sightseeing, it wasn’t the London Eye or the Houses of Parliament that kept me coming back… it was because I first traveled there on my own to visit my cousin Ian, who spent a year as an exchange student there, and it was the fun crowd of college students I got to know—James, the Toms, Sarah, Dav, Elaine, and many more—when I visited him for two weeks that made my experience so special.

I traveled to Spain for a three-week Christmas and New Year holiday with my friends Paul, Tim, and Ryan. Barcelona was a stunning city with great food, equaled by the gorgeous views and historical Old Town on Ibiza (and it’s nightlife), but what really made the trip special were the incredible friends we made—Meye and Barbara, two amazing women who took it upon themselves to show us all the best restaurants and pubs in town, introduced us to friends, showed us the parades and the local Catalans celebrations, and invited us into their homes for Christmas dinner!

Greece, Turkey, and Italy are infused with history, vibrant culture, and amazing sights (especially for someone who studied history at university) but what made my travels there special were the memories and time I spent bonding with family.

When I first arrived in Thailand, it was two Thai friends I met—Poon and Om—who spent three days driving me all around Phuket on their motorbike showing me the sights.

Bangkok is a huge metropolis with great nightlife, great food, a big flag on the backpacker trail. But what made it so much fun for me was the people. I got caught up there for a year and a half eating cheap street food all the time with Migration Mark, Joel, Ryan, May, Nalin, Bank, and Aum, going out partying, and running fun monthly mixer events and volunteering with Dwight Turner, Christina, Craig Gonzales, and others. I remember the first day Sean Ogle landed in Asia, and we went with my sister and my friends Chris, Ryan, and Nick to explore the ancient ruins and Buddhas at Ayutthaya, coworking with David Walsh and Derek Johanson, planning a TEDx conference with Rob, Greg, Andrew, Chris, Karla, Fluke, and more.

Travel puts me face-to-face with friends—many friends I’ve known for many years from school or work, but also many who I’ve met and become friends with through running my business online.

In Bangkok, mostly through Twitter and the Bangkok Tweetups that Dwight and I would put on, I also was able to meet in person with awesome bloggers Dan Andrews, Adam Baker, Benny “the Irish Polyglot” Lewis, Gary Arndt, Matt Goult, Jodi Ettenberg, Jonny Gibaud, Marc Gold, Ross Hill, Kevin Revolinski, Wes Nations, Ryan Martin, Mark Powers, and many more.

Warning: I’ve linked to a lot of people in this post! But I want to share each and every one of them with you (I’m definitely missing more than a few, too) not to gloat… not because I’m some celebrity, but because I’ve been blessed to meet so many truly cool people from around the world—each of them working on their own unique, interesting things—and each of them has at some point or another in my travels made a profound impact on my journey in their own small way. Because of that, I do encourage you to check out each and every one of these folks and discover how they’re making the world a more interesting place. I owe it to them to share what they’re doing.

In Bali I met Kyle and Bessie Crum doing yoga in the rice paddies, Stuart McDonald eating ribs at Naughty Nuri’s, Jez Tryner for a drink, and spent time with my friends Jerm and Vie at their lovely condo.

In Kuala Lumpur I met Nomadic Matt Kepnes while wandering around hostels, Dwight and Mark and I met our travel buddy Agnes (who drove us at lightning speed at 11pm one night to see the cozy little town of Melaka, on a whim!) through Couchsurfing, and I met Hani Khaursar, Vishen Lakhiani, Brian Wong and others on a subsequent trip when I spoke at a conference.

Phnom Penh has been home to my two friends Brittany Sims and Caron Margarete who, along with some of Cambodia’s footballers showed me the town and made me feel right at home.

Here in Krabi, I spent considerable time climbing and beach partying with my friends Alicia, James, Vanessa, Peter, Jane & Toto, and I finally met in person with my blogger buddies Carlos Miceli, Colin Wright, Adventurous Kate McCulley, Backpacking Matt Kyhnn, and Shannon O’Donnell, who’ve all stopped by on their travels.

When I traveled back to the States this year, in Austin, I met up with Markus & Ashley, Nick Reese, Jenny Blake, Ridiculously Extraordinary Karol Gadja, Where is Jenny Leonard, Andy Drish, Andrew Norcross, Thursday Bram, Technomads Chris & Cherie, and many other good folks for a week of awesomeness while South by Southwest was on.

The San Francisco Bay Area is home to a host of inspiring folks like Ramit Sethi, Corbett Barr, Amber Zuckswert, Charlie Hoehn, Lorna Li, and serial entrepreneur Rajesh Setty (and I also had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Chris Ducker there, who usually plays an Englishman in the Philippines).

Los Angeles is or has been the stomping grounds of my very good friend Ryan, entrepreneur Jun Loayza, blogger Jonathan Mead, dating coach Jordan Harbinger, my friends Dariane Nabor, Laurenne Sala, and many other cool peoples.

In past trips to Singapore, I’ve met other cool nerds (like myself) Adrianna Tan, Ziqi Koey (who also just visited us here in Krabi!), Guyi Shen, and many more.

This trip, Emily and I had an incredibly fun time together…  we did all the touristy stuff: we walked all around the city on foot, stayed on the beautiful riverfront in Boat Quay, gorged ourselves on amazing delicious food from all around Southeast Asia and beyond, we hung out at the marina by night and took in all the city lights, wandered all around the big fancy new Marina Bay Sands resort and casino, went to a Salvador Dalí exhibit, to the cinema, briefly to a concert hall, and much more. But our time together there also reminded me that one of my biggest motivators is the people I get to share it with.

It was seeing my friend and singer Shimona Kee for her birthday and enjoying the hip young local music scene, having a lovely homemade dinner with Michelle at her impressive 16th-floor apartment, having a drink, a shisha and a catchup with my old friends John Berns and Martin, and getting to meet Derek Sivers in person (the very down-to-earth, engaging, but brilliant and wildly successful gentleman who founded CDBaby) to chat about travels, businesses, failures, and planting multiple flags (BTW you absolutely must watch this fascinating, short 8-part video series by Sivers). Getting to interact with, have fun with, learn from, and learn about all these fascinating people that are all doing their own interesting things—that’s what makes travel so much fun for me.

Running my business online has meant I’ve built friendships with people all around the world. Interacting with people through Twitter alone has connected me to dozens and dozens of new people that I’ve actually become real friends and done business with.

The point is, I’m just an average dude—but because of the way I choose to live my life, the way I run my business, and the way I reach out to connect with other people out there, I’ve had an extraordinary experience making new friends all around the world. The tools I’ve used to build an international network of friends and colleagues are also available to you.

Being location-independent, running a business online, and being on the move—living my life this way has opened many doors to people and experiences I wouldn’t have back in my “normal” life, that I would have never dreamed I’d have. My passion and what drives my journey is the interesting people I meet… making new friends and having fun new experiences with them, learning from them, and growing with them. Your interests, what drives you, and the life you want to have may look entirely different to mine, but whatever they are, there are millions of people you can connect with out there in this small little world of ours. The amazing journey I have had, like many others, is only an example of what anyone could do. You only need to start opening doors.

What journey are you on? What are the people, places, and experiences that have meant the most to you along your path?

If you found this interesting, and if you’re anything like me, click here to get some incredibly awesome (and completely free) stuff to add to your toolbox and learn more about my philosophy. You won’t regret it→

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Setbacks, and What Motivates Me to Keep Exploring & Experimenting

Cody, Brooke Ferguson & Craig Gonzales in Krabi, Thailand

But It Makes Us Seem Cool!

Having friends throughout the world makes me feel pretty cool. I remember having a coffee conversation with a group of friends in Memphis, Tennessee a few years back. We were on our way to the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago and got tired of the drive, so we stopped for some drinks with a friend. While chatting, our host dropped the “My friend in Georgia…” line. The young, arrogant boaster in me had to say, “oh yeah? I’ve been to Georgia…”

“Uhm… I meant the country,” she said while rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, me too. I spent time in Tbilisi after visiting my Peace Corps volunteer friends in Moldova and Azerbaijan,” I proudly remarked.

Shit like that is cool: To know what she is talking about, and to know that she thinks she is the only one who knows what she’s talking about.

There is a very real pride in knowing people around the world. The exoticness rubs off. It is like being attracted to the Brazilian exchange student or the British au pair. We are cool by association. Being from Texas is not cool if everyone around us is also from Texas, so we glean the coolness from our association with the Spanish, Qatari, or Thai friends that we have.

In addition to feeling cool, worldwide friends make our personal and professional lives more fulfilling. We can operate business remotely, we can rely on a warm bed and a tasty meal, and we can gain powerful insight into local business markets.

My young arrogance was not simply to seem cool to other people, though that was part of it, rather it was to make me more professionally capable and more culturally aware. But developing friendships takes time and energy. Networking is hard work, and if you know too many people, you run the risk of spreading yourself too thin.

The only surefire way to do this is to spend extensive time internationally. Spending several months in a new destination seems a requirement for this sort of true international experience. Sure, on my last trip to Darjeeling I met a lovely Tibetan lady in my hostel, but she is not really part of my network. She is someone I sometimes “like” on Facebook.

Superficial, one-off relationships are not what I am talking about.

But I Chat With People All Over!

We have conversations on the web: chat through MSN and Facebook, comment and communicate on Twitter and on blogs, and expose our language skills to those in language exchange programs. That is nice, but it is not what I am talking about.

Online friends share ideas. Good ideas—intelligent and helpful ideas. Relationships you maintain with other people online can be good, but they’re different from relationships with in-person friends, true friends.

Online friends are like study buddies or colleagues that enjoy each others’ company. The communication is intellectual, idealistic, or sophomoric. However it works, it’s narrow and important.

In-person friends do share these intellectually stimulating conversations, but they also share experiences. Money blogs and relationship blogs have individuals bearing their souls, so I am not saying web friends cannot be intimate, but true in-person friends grow together. They watch football together, go tubing together, eat breakfast together, and go through relationships together. They grow through time with each other in a beautiful way. This is something online friends cannot have, really, and it is something that some perpetual travelers and lifestyle designers may not realize we miss.

We spend time building a network, responding to blogs, and chatting on Twitter. But this is only a band-aid used to fill a very real void. Our “friendship void” makes us reach out however we can. In some cases, it is to people on the web. This is a very real experience and a very real problem.

Meeting online friends in real life (Cody, Carlos Miceli, Colin Wright, Ross Hill)

[Craig's] Personal Experience

The words ‘I’ and ‘me’ get thrown around far too often in blogs, but with that said, if I want to play the game, I should at least read the rulebook. I formalized my opinion based on the following experiences:

• While I was in high school. I had a core group of high school friends. I was part nerd, part bully, part social magnet, and part crescent fresh dude. I made many friends in high school. Most of my friends went to the same colleges, universities, military, or jobs after school. They all knew each other. I went to a school where I knew nobody. I left my friends behind for the great unknown.
• I went to university and had to make new friends. I stayed in contact with my high school friends, but they kept their relationships going. Throughout the four years of college, as I built new relationships and developed strong social skills and bonds with beautiful friends, my old friends grew closer. What I left after four years, they continued for eight.
• Upon graduation, I decided to go to graduate school. I didn’t know anyone in this new city. Most of my friends stayed in either Austin or Houston, Texas. They hung out all the time. They loved each other. I still talked to them. And sometimes I went to visit them. But throughout my entire time in graduate school, my high school friends kept their lives together, my college friends kept their lives together, and I made a brand new base of friends. In graduate school, most of my friends were undergrads. (I was still in that mindset.) In grad school, I realized that I needed some life experience, so once again, I moved away, and once again, I was the only person I knew making the decision I was making. I moved to Ghana.
• In Ghana, I made new friends. Wonderful expat and local friends. My high school friends now had almost 10 years together, my uni friends had six, and my grad school friends had already been building more than two years. I had these three groups of friends to keep up with, and surprisingly, while some came and went, there was always a core group, my core 3-6 friends, that always were together. They’d vacation together, they’d movie together, they’d have mid-week cookouts together. They grew up together. They knew each other so well. Their lives were beautiful. And I kept having to etch a new social life out of my experience. I had wanderlust.
• This experience happened to me three more times. Once, after Ghana, I took a job in a new city. I knew so few people, and had to make new friends. Then, after working for one year, I moved to Thailand. I was the only person I knew in Thailand, so I again had to make new friends. Then, after one-and-a-half years in Thailand, I moved to Singapore, where I had to start the whole process again. As you can see, this is a cycle that gets exhausting, because while I have known my new friends here in Singapore for three months, my old core groups (what is it now, five core groups of friends?) have become so close that they are experts on each other. They have spent so many hours together that they can finish each others sentences.

But Is It Worth It?

You have to decide that for yourself. Personally, I am pleased with my decision.

But I didn’t know the full consequences, mainly because I didn’t take the time to rationalize the cause-and-effect of this sort of lifestyle. I know more people than some of my friends; I know a more diverse group of people, and I have a wider perspective and more things to talk about. I love it. I love it so much. I would never trade it.

But I recognize what I have lost, and what I will not have with those I care about. For many people, family and friends are everything. Not just having them or chatting with them, but being with them. Daily, weekly, or monthly.

To have a work/life/relationship balance, you need to think of more than just money and freedom. You need to think about others. A lot of the location-independent bloggers have a positive, no-holds-barred approach to living life by one’s own means. I support that 100%. But our decisions affect not only ourselves but also our family and friends. And it is essential that we recognize and are comfortable with that transition—with that life.

For me, it is worth it. For you, I do not know.

But know that there are pros and cons to everything; there is nothing wrong with having a traditional home base and taking many mini-retirements. There is nothing wrong with taking your winter trip to Vail and your summer trip to Cancun. There is something wrong, however, with wishing you could live a different life but doing nothing to get that life.

Conclusion

Living a perpetual travel lifestyle or a location independent lifestyle has consequences. For many, the consequences are too dire to live with. That is fine. For others, those consequences are small when compared to the exciting life we live. As Socrates said, a truly wise man knows what he does not know. Consequently, a truly wise nomad knows all that he gives up in order to live this life, and is validated by his decision.

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Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Nomadic, Permanent Travel Lifestyle and the “Friendship Void”

Chris’ birthday, September 17th, is always a very tough day for me because Chris passed away in a motorcycle accident on Father’s Day 2004. He was an extremely talented drummer, a member in two successful bands, he was a daredevil, he was hilarious, he was loved by everyone he met and if you ask anyone he knew they’ll say he brought a big smile to everyone’s face. Thankfully, he lost his life doing one of the things he loved the most. But I lost one of my closest friends—one of my brothers—and his family and all of the people who knew him lost a creative, bright, shining light in their lives.

I’ve known many people who have been in horrible accidents they shouldn’t have walked away from. And unfortunately, I’ve lost two of my absolute best friends by the age of 22—our good friend Kareem Khan died of complications related to a brain tumor less than a year later.

This is why I try my hardest to never do anything half-assed. Nobody knows how long they have. All that’s for sure is that you have a limited amount of time on this planet to do what you want to. Our lifetimes are short, fragile specks in the grand scheme of things, but my philosophy is to strive to make as big an impact as possible.

If you feel love towards someone, let them know.

Make a bucket list, and don’t wait until retirement to do what you want.

Remember to tell your family that you care about them.

Don’t fall out of touch with the friends who were always there for you.

Don’t neglect to thank your mentors, your teachers, and anyone who had the biggest impact on shaping your life.

If you have big dreams, take daily steps toward making them a reality.

There will never be a perfect time for anything. Don’t wait for conditions to be just right. There’s no telling when your number will be up. Stop waiting around. You might not wake up tomorrow, so fuck that noise. Go make a difference while you can, and get the most enjoyment out of your short time here.

Period, that’s it, that’s all I have to say about that.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: A Reminder of the Shortness of Life

I’ve been reading one of the most influential books of my life: Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. This 1937 classic contains the principles that led people like Andrew Carnegie, Charles M. Schwab, Thomas Edison, and many others, to great wealth and success. As a young man, Napoleon Hill met the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who instilled in him his most important business teachings. Over the course of twenty years, Hill interviewed about five hundred of the most successful businessmen and leaders in the U.S. and the world, to understand more about the common beliefs that helped lead to their great success.

What these 500 individuals had in common is also what forms the foundation for the newer book and now movie, The Secret. While they give a decent introduction to a very powerful idea, I feel that the practitioners in that film greatly oversimplify this principle which many of the world’s rich and powerful share.

After talking at length with my sister about the concepts in Hill’s Think and Grow Rich—what some call mind over matter, visualization, the “Law of Attraction”—we decided that the most effective way to describe the “Carnegie secret” succinctly is this:

You become that which you think about most.

You also attract the things and accomplish the goals that you think about most. But the first step to great success is to know specifically what you want out of life: financially, personally, socially, etc. In other words, what you occupy your mind with most prominently will eventually, in one way or another shape your reality. I find that most people I talk to, even though I love many of them dearly, don’t really know what they want to achieve in life. But if you think about it critically, the principle fits with most of what we know about life. People who concentrate solely on achieving some sort of success may fail ten times before they become a great success seemingly “overnight,” but those who don’t fill their heads with grand aspirations rarely see great success, and those who stop concentrating on their highest goals and start believing that they can’t achieve their aspirations eventually give up.

So we can see how this works both positively and negatively. Once you start telling yourself that you can’t do something, you’re right! So be careful that you don’t concentrate your thoughts on what you don’t want out of life, because eventually you will attract those things to you. This even explains hypochondriacs and placebo effects. The mind works hard to align belief with reality. Instead phrase all of your goals positively, believe sincerely that you can achieve what you want in life, and fill your mind with vivid visualizations of what it will be like when you’ve actually attained your goals.

Hill says that definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. You may eke by with a decent living without any definite major purpose for your life, but you will never excel without concrete, specific goals. Hill says that financial goals in particular should be specific, measurable, and timely. Set specific goals for how much money you want to earn, specifically by what date, for example. But the example holds true for any sort of wealth, not just monetary. And most importantly, be clear and realistic about what what you will give in exchange for that wealth, what value you intend to share with the world in exchange for your success.

Figure out what your purpose is. Decide specifically what you want in life and what you are willing to give in return for it. Visualize your success and repeat to yourself often what you intend to achieve. Then back it up with massive action, and you’re certain to reach the heights of success, wealth, and influence.

Otherwise you’ll have to settle for what falls in your lap. Sometimes that’s decent, but you can’t say you never got a chance if you don’t know specifically what you want out of life: what you want to BE, DO and HAVE. When you know what you want, you will be prepared to recognize and take advantage of the opportunities that life presents to you.

(Oh P.S. the title is a silly geek reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!)

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Secret to Life, the Universe, and Everything

Happy 44th Dad! on 12seconds.tv

Although I’m a day late and a dollar short posting this, yesterday Larry McKibben turned 44 years young, so I just wanted to wish him a great year ahead. He’s a fantastic father to my sister and me, he’s always been a great manager, and he’s fast to make friends with his silly sense of humor.

Also, I had a great conversation late last night with Jun Loayza, the young Chief Marketing Officer of Future Delivery (I’m going to have to host an interview with him soon, the guy’s got tons of incredible ideas). Jun got me signed on at 12seconds, a fairly new video network where you can record 12-second video messages to your friends, so I tested out my camera with a silly dance at 4 this morning and then dedicated the video message above to my dad!

Happy birthday, pop!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Happy Birthday to My Dad!