Matt Bowles: Hey, everybody. It’s Matt Bowles. Welcome to The Maverick Show. My guest today is Johnny FD. If you missed the first interview with Johnny, it is Episode 6 of The Maverick Show. I definitely encourage you to check that one out. We are back in the studio today. If you missed Johnny the first time and you haven’t experienced him, Johnny is a location independent entrepreneur who quit his corporate job in 2008 to begin traveling the world working as a scuba diving instructor and fighting professionally in the sport of Muay Thai kickboxing. Since then, he has made hundreds of thousands of dollars online building and selling online businesses and has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Fast Company, Entrepreneur Magazine, and the BBC. He is the author of two books about his experiences. And he is also the host of two very popular podcasts, Travel Like a Boss and Invest Like a Boss. He is also the founder of the Nomad Summit, an annual event in Chiang Mai, Thailand that attracts over 400 location independent entrepreneurs and digital nomads from around the world. Since the last episode that we did, Johnny has actually expanded the Nomad Summit so it now takes place in two different locations around the world twice a year. In 2016, Johnny made $325,000.00 online and subsequently, has refined up to a dozen streams of passive income. And over the last year, he has been living off passive income and using that to finance his lifestyle and his world travel, which we’re going to get into today. Johnny, welcome back to the show.
Johnny FD: Thank you, Matt. And that was definitely the best intro anyone has ever done for me. It’s like my life is flashing back just listening to that.
Matt: That’s awesome, man. It’s so good to have you back, man. I always love having you in the studio. I feel like we need to start. There is so much that’s happened since the last time that we did this interview. But I want to start with some of your travel experiences. You do one of the best travel blogs out there and I love following your travels and your adventures and your experiences. And maybe we can just start with one of your recent ones, which is also one of my favorite places and talk a little bit about your trip to Sri Lanka. I know it was your first time there. And it’s a place that’s really near and dear and close to my heart. One of my very, very close friends, Nilanka who is a Sri Lankan friend of mine, I was just meeting with him in Washington DC and he listened to every episode of The Maverick Show. And I said, “Man, how do you like it? What do you think about the show?” And he said, “Man, I like all of the stuff about the show. There’s only one thing. You ask your guests what are their favorite travel destinations and up until now, nobody has said Sri Lanka.” And I said, “Man, I assure you that is only a matter of time until somebody does.” And so, after I saw your travel videos and everything from there, I wanted to open up the episode, give a shout out to Nilanka and just get your take on how Sri Lanka was for you.
Johnny: Yeah, I loved it. And Lonely Planet just named it the top destination in the world to travel to in 2019. So, I’m sure because of travel blogs like mine, people going there and exploring it and finding out how cool it is and how underrated Sri Lanka is as a travel destination, it’s going to be the next Bali. Hopefully, it won’t become the next Bali in terms of just being overcrowded and expensive. But I think because it’s a bit further away from Australia, it’s a bit harder to get to, it’s always going to remain very pristine, very beautiful. And we’re really lucky to have it.
Matt: So, tell us a little bit about what you found there, what you experienced there. I don’t know if you had any specific expectations going in but you went there for a while. You really traveled around and explored the country. So, what kinds of stuff did you do there and what experiences did you have?
Johnny: So, I just spent three weeks there. And my original plan was to kind of hit up all of the tourist spots and then, decide if I wanted to come back again in the future. I like doing that when I go to new countries. I check out each place for a few days and see what I like and try to find a nomad hub, somewhere I can just set down some roots and maybe even spend a month or two there. But what happened was I fell in love with this little beach town called Weligama, which was my third stop. The first two were more kind of touristy beaches. Surprisingly, Sri Lanka is really, really popular with Russian travelers, people from some other countries. But there are no Americans there. There are no digital nomads there. There are no English speaking nomads that were travelers there. It’s a hidden gem for people from Ukraine or Russia where they have direct flights. They go there for two or three months during the winter. And they literally call it wintering because it’s freezing in Russia or Ukraine during January, February, and March. But in Sri Lanka, the weather is perfect. Life is so cheap there. The travels I’ve been through in Thailand or in Cambodia, it’s cheap. We always talk about how affordable everything is. In Sri Lanka, it was a new world. I have never been anywhere that was this fun and this awesome and this safe where you can get an amazing meal for $3.00. You can get a local lunch for $0.75. It’s insane.
Matt: That is awesome, man. And there’s so much that it has to offer. I can just remember that the beaches were totally gorgeous and incredible. But then, you go up to a city like Kandy and you go to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth and you’re seeing all – I was blown away by Sri Lanka. I just thought that it offered so, so much.
Johnny: Well, the coolest thing about Sri Lanka is in one country, you can experience different types of beaches. So, you have pro surf beaches. You have amateur surf beaches. You have snorkeling beaches. You have scuba diving. You have different water sports. You also have the mountains and the temples. But you also have things like safaris. They say that Sri Lanka has the best safaris outside of Africa. And they’re right. And they’re by far the cheapest. If you’re going to go to a safari in Africa, you’re going to spend thousands of dollars. In Sri Lanka for less than $100.00, you can rent a jeep, get access to the safari park, and you can see wild elephants, herds of wild elephants. And you have a chance of seeing things like leopards. When I went, I saw crocodiles, wild peacocks, hawks, just really cool animals that I never would have expected. And I can’t believe how cheap the whole adventure was. And it was just really nice.
Matt: Yeah. It’s such an amazing value proposition there. And I know one of the things that you do as well, Johnny, is you look for those value proposition locations where you have a really optimal quality of life to cost of living ratio. And you get an amazing experience for an incredible price. And in addition to Sri Lanka, I know you’ve been to a couple of other places. The first one I want to ask you about actually just staying in the South Asia region is you went trekking in Nepal, right? How was that?
Johnny: Yeah. Nepal is also one of those underrated travel places. Look, I’ve been to Bali. I’ve been to Indonesia. I’ve been all over Thailand and I like those places. They look great in photos. Tons of people go there for a reason. But places like Nepal and Sri Lanka are just underrated. Not that many people are going there. They’re a bit harder to get to. They feel a bit more gritty. So, things aren’t as clean or as easy. But to me, it’s so rewarding. It’s so much fun to kind of shred your own path. And I love value. It’s something that just makes me happy. If I spend $300.00 on a five star hotel, I would just expect a $300.00 five star hotel. And it’s really nice. But if any little thing is misplaced or wrong then, you’re kind of disappointed. It’s the same thing as flying business class. If you’re spending $4,000.00 for business class, you’re like man, I expect it to be really nice. But at the same time, it’s not necessarily good value. But if you find a country or a place where for $30.00 you can get some amazing experience, for $3.00 you can get some incredible food that you would never find anywhere else, you’re just like wow, I can do this every day for the rest of my life. And I can just work online. I can travel. And I can invite my friends, my family. Everybody can do this. This is attainable for everybody. And that makes me so happy.
Matt: Yeah. That’s awesome. And I know you’ve identified some incredible places in Eastern Europe as well, similar type of criteria that you look for. And I actually just about two weeks ago was in Bansko, Bulgaria. One of the things that turned me on to that location was the blog and the video that you did about that. But can you talk a little bit about Bansko and what that was like for you?
Johnny: Yeah. So, after the nomad cruise last year, I wanted a place where I could just chill and work that was in Europe but not in the Schengen zone because, as Americans, we only get three months every six months. So, it’s really not that much time if you want to spend the whole summer and be a nomad. So, I decided let’s go check out Bansko, Bulgaria. I’ve heard a lot of things about the co-working space there, the community. And let’s see if it lives up to the hype. And, at the time, not that many people were writing about. I don’t think I saw a video really about it. I just had heard through a few friends who had been to co-working in Bansko. I had met one of the founders in Chiang Mai. And I was like, okay, let’s check it out. And I spent I think one or two months there. And it was just like a really peaceful, nice place. Super cheap as well. Bulgaria is probably the cheapest country in the EU, but it’s still part of the EU. So, it’s safe, has good infrastructure. And the food is amazing. And the co-working space is actually really nice. It’s a really nice community. Bansko, I would say, is one of those places that you can go in the winter to ski or snowboard or you can go in the summer to hike or enjoy spas and just nature. And it’s another underrated place. Everyone talks about going to Berlin or Barcelona. And they’re nice. But for four times the price, you have to either work four times as much or you’re saving four times less money for your future and your investments. Is it worth it? And for me, I would much rather go to a place like Bansko and spend two months versus going to Paris or Rome or Barcelona and spend two weeks.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. And I know the other place that you’ve spent time in and that you’ve written about a lot that I have not yet been to, when you go to a place and you do this, it moves up my list very fast, is Ukraine. I have not yet been there. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what is Ukraine like.
Johnny: Yeah. So, Ukraine is another kind of unexplored place. It’s probably the least visited country in Europe. It’s the former USSR. There still isn’t that much tourism. People don’t really speak that much English there. It’s hard. It’s difficult. I don’t recommend it for first time travelers, especially if you want an easy setup. But something in me just likes the exploration. I like being not necessarily the first but one of the first to go somewhere, explore, find new places and then, be able to share this with my blog readers on www.johnnyfd.com or podcast listeners. And it’s fun. And also, being early allows me to find things that haven’t really been written about yet and be able to create these videos and travel guides and kind of just like really introduce digital nomads to new places. When I first started writing about Chiang Mai in 2013, nobody else was really writing about it as a digital nomad destination. And that’s why so many people have found it. And now that thousands of people go to Chiang Mai every winter, especially for the Nomad Summit every January, I feel like maybe I should find some other cool places to send people. Ukraine has a lot of potential. But right now, it is so early. Language wise, it is very difficult. And the only reason why I’m going to go back again this summer is I really want to learn how to speak Russian. And in basically the entire eastern half of Ukraine, Russian is the primary spoken language still. So, it’s going to be a good, cheap place for me to have roots for a few months, take some language classes, eat some really good food, and just have a ton of fun enjoying the summer and get out of there before it gets cold again.
Matt: Yeah. That’s awesome, man. And speaking of really good value destinations, too, relative on a continuum and on a scale, but I feel like right now, we’re actually doing this interview in Lisbon, Portugal, which is, obviously, not as cheap as Bulgaria or Ukraine or those kinds of places. But in terms of Western European capital cities, I feel that this is probably, for me, the best value destination in Western Europe.
Johnny: Yeah, definitely, 100 percent. And I actually think I wrote that on my blog post about Lisbon when I was here a few years ago. I think I used the words this is the better, cheaper Barcelona. And I’m sure it’s going to piss off some people but it is. The weather is just as good if not better. We have a beautiful ocean where you can surf. You have really good food. I prefer the food in Portugal than I do in Spain. Even the olives taste better. The wine is great. The food is good. And it’s so much cheaper than in Barcelona or Paris. But the quality is amazing. It’s a beautiful place and there’s so much to do. And the people are friendly. I think it’s the most underrated place in Western Europe for sure.
Matt: It is. And you can still get such an authentic experience here. Last night, I was in the Alfama District, which is sort of the old city part of Lisbon listening to Fado music. And you can go and do that. And for people that don’t know, Fado is this really amazing, dramatic Portuguese ballads. And the way that it works is you go to these Fado bars, basically, in the Alfama, which is like these narrow, cobblestone alleyways up and down stairs. And they have these bars. And you go in and it’s just they’re totally packed. So, you usually have to wait to get in. And then, you get a seat and you’re in this small, intimate, packed bar. And it’s just filled with people that will get up one at a time and sing these amazing Portuguese ballads. And you’re just sitting there drinking wine. So, it’s not really even so much like a show. It’s not like a stage. People at your table or the table next to you or the table across there, they just get up and they sing these ballads. And they sit back down and somebody else gets up. And you’re drinking wine. And it’s just like a throwback to some – you’re like where am I. It’s just an unbelievable culturally authentic experience, which I just did that last night and I try to do that every time I come to Lisbon because it’s just so amazing.
Johnny: Yeah. And aside from just the Fado bars, it feels like you have this experience in all of Portugal and even in the capital city of Lisbon all of the time. Having lunch even at – I went to a place yesterday after the walking tour. We went on one with a really good guide, super passionate, really wanted to show us her city. And afterwards, she says if you want to, you can join me for lunch. And we were on this really busy street where they had these menus in seven different languages. And I normally would never go in that because if you go into one of those restaurants in Barcelona or Italy, you’re going to get ripped off. You’re going to pay way too much. The food is going to be crap. It’s not going to be authentic. It’s just going to be a tourist trap. But I trusted her and I was like, “All right, let’s do it.” I sat down and the food was really reasonable. I think it was like maybe $8.00 for any fish dish. And, honestly, I really thought I was going to eat and then, want to go have a sandwich again afterwards. And she says, “No, trust me, it’s going to be a lot of food.” And the portions were gigantic. I could barely finish my dish. These three girls that we were with, they had ordered a seafood platter for two. And there was so much food that the four of us could easily split it. And it was just incredible. The service was good. It was authentic. It was tasty. It was cheap. And this was a tourist street. When you go off the beaten path, it’s even cheaper. It’s even more local. It’s even more authentic. But Lisbon is one of the few places in the world where it’s hard to go wrong.
Matt: It is. And I think the most underrated wines in Europe as well. Portuguese wines don’t get nearly the international billing of French wines or Italian wines or Spanish wines and things like that. But I think they are absolutely on par and some of the best value if you’re going to buy wine as well.
Johnny: Yeah. Even just the house wine is one euro a glass. And you can get a liter at a restaurant for I think like four euros or five euros. It’s insane.
Matt: So good, so amazing. All right, Johnny. I want to transition now and talk a little bit about your income generation and how you’re financing this lifestyle. And I think where I want to start is just, basically, in terms of your work strategy, your productivity strategy, your work cadence, and how you structure your lifestyle. And then, from there, we’ll go deeper into the specific streams of passive income. But can you basically just talk about over the last few years, how you’ve structured your work and travel lifestyle?
Johnny: Yeah. So, from 2008 to 2013, I had moved to Thailand but I was working as a scuba diving instructor, as a Muay Thai fighter, and I wasn’t getting paid very much. It was literally a couple of hundred bucks a month. I think I never made more than $600.00 but it was enough to live in Thailand very cheaply. I was living in bamboo huts. I was eating local Thai food. I was sleeping in the attic above the Muay Thai gym or on the dive boat sometimes. But I loved it. It was really enjoyable. And that’s when I wrote the book, Twelve Weeks in Thailand, the Good Life on the Cheap, to document it but also to hopefully kind of share what it’s like to be able to just quit your job and travel around. Unfortunately, after about four or five years of doing that, it was enough. And maybe not even unfortunately. It was a nice chapter in my life. I’m really happy I did it and I encourage everyone to do that first if that’s what they want. But in 2013, I decided I’m turning 30, I want to have a normal life. I want to start making money again so I can afford to go home once in a while and see my parents and travel to more expensive places like maybe Europe for the summer. And that’s when I really got into online business. I had published that book. Then, I had started an ecommerce store, a drop shipping store. And I started making normal money, $3,000.00 to $5,000.00 a month. Basically, what I made back in California. But what’s awesome about it was I was able to do that from Thailand. I was able to do that while traveling in Vietnam. And I decided this is the life I want. I was working a lot of the time. I was really focused on business. I was working 40 to 60 hours a week growing the businesses, starting new stores, starting other online streams of income. And I’m really glad I did it while maintaining my frugality. I was originally living for $600.00 a month when I started just to bootstrap it all. And even on my peak when I was making $30,000.00 a month in profit that one year in 2016, I made $325,000.00 take home, which is insane still. I still can’t imagine that. But it was from having two drop shipping stores, having two books, having a bunch of courses on Udemy, having a bunch of different blogs and email lists and just like really scaling it up. And I’m really, really fortunate that I had also started investing in that time. So, instead of squandering it and blowing the money popping champagne and staying in expensive pent houses and buying a car, buying a house or something, I doubled my living budget from $600.00 to $1,200.00 a month, which was a significant improvement for me. I was happier. I was able to do a little bit more but I was still able to save 90 percent of my income. And I started investing all of that and buying passive income streams. So, a lot of people talk about building passive income streams. But the easiest, fastest, most hands off way is to buy either rental property through things like the turn key properties that you guys offer or real estate funds or index funds for stocks or all of these different alternative investment strategies that we talk about in Investing Like a Boss, and be able to, basically, create a truly passive income life where it allows me to travel even more.
Matt: Yeah. So, let’s talk a little bit about that. And I want to ask you to go a little bit deeper on the passive income stuff and maybe let’s just start – a lot of people hear this term and it’s really a buzz word that’s thrown around a lot. And I want to see if you can start by clarifying what is passive income and what are some of the myths about passive income that get thrown around out there?
Johnny: Yeah. So, passive income is, basically, any money that you earn from something that you did in the past and you’re not currently working on or spending a lot of time to maintain. A couple of good examples is if you publish a book, it takes a lot of time, at some point, to write the book, to publish it, to market it. But once the book is out, you don’t really have to do anymore work, especially with Amazon shipping books for you, prompting users to leave a review. If it’s a good book, people tell their friends and it keeps spreading. Now, I think some of the myths that people have, usually, it’s either people think oh, it’s going to be really easy. Oh, I’m just going to do this overnight. I’m not going to do any work at all. I’m just going to suddenly make all of this money. That doesn’t work. You have to put in some work. You have to put in some effort and create a good product. I guess, technically, anyone could publish a crappy book really quickly. And maybe you can trick some people into buying it the first day with hype but is that going to be truly passive income for the next four years? Probably not if it’s not a good book. But if you really put in two or three months of solid effort and create a good product and create the funnels and automation around it, something as simple as a way to ask people who bought the book to leave a review and having that automated or having auto emails sent out saying if you liked this book, check out my second book. Here’s a link to buy it. Things like this can be automated and turned into a truly passive income. So, on one side, you have people who think it’s too easy too fast and the other people who think it’s not possible at all. They’re both wrong. Passive income is real but passive income takes some real work at some point. And it allows you to put in the work over a few months and then, be able to enjoy that benefit for years to come.
Matt: Let’s talk about some of the specific passive income generating assets that you have built and bootstrapped from scratch. And when you’re talking about them, maybe also talk about your work productivity regimen and how you, when you get into that mode where you decide you’re going to build a really high quality income generating business asset, what types of assets have those been that you’ve done and what kind of work productivity routine do you have that allows you to execute and build those?
Johnny: Yeah. So, I have always really enjoyed working really hard and passionately for one to two months at a time and then, taking one or two months as kind of maintenance mode where I can just travel and chill out a bit. So, I have now created over a dozen different passive income streams starting with the books. But then, actually, I would say my first other passive income stream was a course on Udemy. And it was a course that I created with my girlfriend at the time called Small Talk Network. We had taken everything that we had learned from her doing a psychology degree, from me reading different books on personal development, and we created just a cheap, easy online course on Udemy about the basics of small talk. It took us about two months to put it together, to film it, to edit it, to upload it, to market it in the beginning. And then, that has now been selling for the last five years. And in total, that course alone has earned us $11,000.00. We split that 50/50. But if you think about it, that was just two months of work five years ago that continues to make us money now because we put in the work. It was a good course. At a few different points, we set up automation like asking for reviews. Udemy does all of the work of selling it and marketing it for us, collecting reviews, getting us new students. And now, we’ve created other courses, too, both together and separately. So, on Udemy’s platform, I’ve now made a total of $20,000.00 in net profit in my pocket for something that I would spend one or two months putting together and then, not thinking about our touching for years after.
Matt: And can you talk a little bit about when you are in that grind mode, that business building mode, and you’re cranking on that stuff, how do you structure your day? Do you have morning routines? What does your schedule look like? Do you integrate fitness routines? What does that look like when you’re in that mode for you?
Johnny: Yeah. That’s actually a great question that people don’t talk about enough because, a lot of times, people meet me and they’re like, okay, Johnny does very well. Let me model what he’s doing. And they’ll see me out drinking Sangria all night. I literally had a liter of Sangria last night. I slept in until about 10:00 a.m. I had a huge breakfast. I came over here to hang out with you. I haven’t done any work. And tonight, I’m meeting my buddy Shannon for dinner. And this week, I’m just going to travel and study languages. You can’t look at what someone is doing today to really figure out what it took to get there. So, even though the next time I’ll create a new project, I’ll get back into the routine, when I’m in maintenance mode and in travel mode, that’s really the easy life. I work out when I want, wake up when I want, work when I want. When I’m building these businesses and when I was in that cash flow generating mode back in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, my daily routine would be wake up at 8:00 to 8:30 a.m. I would wake up with the sun. Immediately, I would jump up, go outside and get some fresh air. I wouldn’t even look at my phone until I left the house. I would drink a big glass of water with some pink Himalayan sea salt to boost energy. I would walk to the co-working space. And I actually had set up my life where I would move apartments closer to where I wanted to be every day. So, I physically rented an apartment within a five minute walk of the co-working space just so I didn’t have any excuses of getting lazy, about having to deal with transportation. And that walk in the morning was really nice and it kind of boost starts the energy. I would get to the co-working space and I would make bullet proof coffee that way I could start fasting. I had energy and clarity all day. And I wouldn’t get the brain fog. I would work in 30 minute batches with the to do list of what I needed to do that day. I would use apps like Work Rave or Time Out. And every 30 minutes, I would lock my screen. I would get up and go outside, do 10 push ups or 10 air squats, come back and work again. And I would do that in chunks until 4:00 p.m. And then, I would go to the gym. I was doing cross fit at the time and I did it five days a week. I was in the best shape of my life. I had so much energy, so much mental clarity. I didn’t eat a single carb or drink a single ounce of alcohol in that entire year. And it paid off. I wrote about it in Life Changes Quick. I really went into details about how that routine, that mindset, had helped me go from my first $1,000.00 to having $30,000.00 saved up in the bank and starting my journey there. How the fitness, the routine really set up success in business. So, that is what you guys need to do if you are starting out like I want to build my business not jump straight into the liters of Sangria.
Matt: I love that. I think that’s really, really significant. I appreciate you going into that much detail. Let’s talk a little bit more about some of the other streams of income that you’ve been able to develop as well. I know you do a lot of affiliate marketing. And affiliate marketing is a space where I think there are also different types of misconceptions about exactly how to do that and how to do it successfully. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you do and then, tips that you have for doing it well.
Johnny: Yeah. So, with affiliate marketing, there are so many different ways to do it. Usually, when people hear about it, they hear about a term called cost per action affiliate marketing where they’re buying ads or sending people random offers. But the type of affiliate marketing I do is really simple. I find products that I personally use and have bought myself or I recommend it. I’ll sign up as an affiliate. And then, I will create a review or some kind of reason for people to use my link. For example, when I was looking for the best USB microphone to travel with because I do a podcast, I record videos, I bought all of them.
I bought the Blue Yeti, the Audio Technica mics, the small micro mics. I wasted so much money. But at the same time, I really wanted to find the best microphone. And it was hard to find a good, honest review out there. So, I bought them all. And then, I actually created a video talking into each mic so people could hear it for themselves. I wrote a blog post about it. And I had links to each of the mics on Amazon. And I said, “If you buy these mics, use my link and that way I can get credit for referring you.” That’s an affiliate link.
Amazon will pay me between seven and eight percent of that sale if you buy that microphone or actually any other product during that day through my link. And, obviously, it would take a while to put together the blog post and the video. But now, that video or that blog post sells a couple of mics every single month for the last four years. And that’s kind of an easy example of affiliate marketing.
Matt: Yeah. I really like that approach. And I’ve started taking that approach myself because I did the same thing that you did in terms of really heavily researching, just as one example, podcasting equipment. And when people hear The Maverick Show, one of the comments people give to me is wow, your audio sounds amazing. That’s incredibly well produced. The editing in your show is good. We like the intro to your show. Your cover art is nice. Whatever it is, they’ll compliment me on that stuff. And so, I said I did spend a ton of time figuring out how to get the best in each category, find the best vendor, the best equipment, the best everything.
And so, what I did on www.themaverickshow.com website is I just simply but a behind the scenes page up. And I said here’s how I produce every single episode of The Maverick Show. This is the vendor that made our cover art. This is the vendor that edits our podcast. This is the equipment that I use. This is how I do every single thing I do if you want to use all of the same stuff. And a lot of those vendors have affiliate links, which I’ve included there. And so, exactly what you said. The only stuff that’s up there is the stuff that I use and that I believe in personally. And I’m sharing it with people.
And, of course, if they click through the link then, I’ll make something on that. But they don’t have to pay anything extra. And so, they’re happy to do that because you or I or somebody took the time to make the recommendation to share what we’re using. And they already know they like what we’re using because they complimented us on it in the first place. And they could just go and buy it and it’s a way to compensation. So, I like that model a lot.
Johnny: Yeah. I really love it. And I’ve now done that not just with the physical items that I’ve ordered but I’ve done that with software I use like my favorite VPN, my favorite Word Press hosting platform, my favorite ecommerce hosting platform, the online courses I have personally taken to learn how to do things like create a drop shipping store or create an online course. And if I liked the product enough to pay for it myself and use it and I’ve gotten value from it, yeah, of course, I’m going to share that. And the nice thing is with this affiliate model is, even if I never got paid for it, I would probably recommend it to somebody if they asked.
But would I spend four hours creating a blog post and video explaining exactly the pros and cons and how to do it and how I learned about it? No, I probably wouldn’t have time for that. So, it’s really a nice way where someone can get a really good guide or recommendation and then, not have to pay any extra. And, actually, people will message me all of the time on Facebook saying, “Do you have an affiliate link for XYZ product or course because I want to give you credit because you mentioned it somewhere?” And if I do, I’ll send it to them and say thanks.
And this has been one of the best models out there. I think some people kind of take advantage of it by saying oh, well, what if I just don’t buy the mic and I just make up these reviews or I leave some specs online. And a lot of people do that. And that’s why affiliate marketing sometimes has a bad name. People are just like I’m going to recommend the five most expensive ones without ever using it themselves. But this is why followers of The Maverick Show or the Travel Like a Boss podcast and Johnny FD, they come back time after time for years and years is because they know if I’m going to recommend something that it’s something that actually works and they’re going to get value from.
Matt: I want to also talk to you about content creation that you do and the way that you monetize your You Tube channel and the way that you monetize your blog. And one of the things I think is so important that you demonstrate, I think, really, really well is the importance of having incredibly high quality, substantive content and the ability for that to build an audience as part of this whole equation. And I’m wondering if you can talk about the blog and the You Tube channel, what you do, how you monetize it, and tips that you have for people for what are the keys to doing that well.
Johnny: So, Key No. 1 is just enjoying doing it. If I didn’t enjoy blogging or creating You Tube videos, I wouldn’t do it. I would just do something else. And I think when people try to force themselves to do something they hate doing, it’s going to take 10 times longer and the quality is not going to be good. But when people go to www.johnnyfd.com and they read my blog posts about Nepal or about Lisbon, sometimes, I don’t even have any links in there because there was nothing to sell. If there is something I can get credit for, if I can refer someone to a tour that I did and I can get 20 percent for sending them, I’ll happily include that link.
But if I did a free walking tour with Elena Bica who doesn’t have a program, I’ll still recommend her just because it’s a good product. And I think that’s a big secret is when I create blog posts or create a video, I will share what I want to share just like I would to a friend or a family member. And, in fact, that’s the main reason that I do it is because I hate repeating myself all of the time. People ask me like, “Oh, Johnny, I’m going to Chiang Mai, I’m going to Thailand. Can you give me some recommendations?” And I spent hours telling them over instant messenger.
And I decided I’m just going to write a blog post, send them that link, and say, “If you have any other questions, ask me.” And normally, they just respond back like that was amazing. That was everything I wanted to know.
Matt: That’s awesome. So, let me ask you this. With all of the different streams that you have set up and all of the different things that you do, if somebody is trying to get into the game and to start building these income generating assets, I feel like one of the challenges that I see people run into is the sort of shiny object syndrome. Somebody is really successful doing this blog and somebody is really successful doing this You Tube channel and somebody is really successful doing the drop shipping and somebody is really successful in writing this book or making this course. And, of course, somebody is successful at everything.
And so, when somebody goes into it, on the one hand, they see your end vision as what they’d like. I’d like to have 12 separate streams of passive income that are generating to me every single month. But I feel like one of the challenges people run into is that shiny object syndrome and sort of diffusing their energy too sparsely so they’re not doing any one thing well enough. And I just want to ask you how do you sort of advise people to approach the building multiple streams but yet not diffusing themselves too widely so that they don’t do any of them successfully?
Johnny: So, even though it’s nice to have multiple streams of income, I honestly only did it for two reasons. One is I’m generally just excited and curious to do new things. Luckily, I was smart enough to finish one before starting another. And I think that’s the biggest problem people have. They kind of start doing something and then, they don’t monetize it. For me, my goal was I’ll spend two or three months creating something. I’ll automate it as much as I can and kind of 80/20 rule it. And as long as it’s making money automatically then, I’ll move on to the next thing. I won’t do it in the middle. But the other part was, honestly, out of fear.
And I was like what if my book stops selling or what if Udemy shuts down or what if this. So, that’s why I kept creating different ones to diversify. But what I’ve realized is, at the same time, there are downsides to that where I could have made a lot more from each stream if I had focused on it and not had all of these things to juggle and deal with. So, what I would recommend to people is to start with one thing and get it to 99 percent good. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But have it set up making money, automate it as much as you can, grow it as much as you can and then, decide do I want to just do this again?
Do I want to scale this one up? Or do I want to move on to something else?
Matt: Yeah. And you and I are both podcasters, which is another potential income stream. And I want to ask you about that for people that want to get into the podcasting game. You’ve been into it a lot longer than I have. You’re really well established and well known in the space. And I want to ask you just about podcasting, in general. What tips do you have for what really makes a great podcast? What are the keys that people should really focus on to make an amazing podcast?
Johnny: So, it’s such a hard question because, for me, I really love doing both the Travel Like a Boss and Invest Like a Boss podcasts. But it’s not set up in the best way to make money. And if I just wanted to make money, I would create some kind of sketch show. I would have a ton of guests, short episodes that are more for entertainment than really learning. And that actually makes it really easy to produce a top ranking show because you have a good system. You have a good formulation. You have your guests actually marketing your show for you.
You have a built in revenue model because a lot of times the guests are actually paying you to be on the show just to get that exposure. The guests are the ones doing all of the work. But for me, I would be bored out of my mind if I had to interview people I didn’t care about and ask them the same stupid eight questions and act super excited for every guest, even though I didn’t really care what they were doing. For me, the podcasts we do, I really enjoy it. And to be honest, we don’t make that much money from the show, even though I think if we really focused on more of the entertainment value, we could.
For me, both podcasts are a way for me to talk to people I like to talk to anyway. It gives me an excuse to sit down with them for an hour, ask them all of the questions that I’d want to know. And it helps grow my other businesses. It’s a great networking connection. And it’s just fun. It’s something I really, really enjoy doing.
Matt: Yeah. I agree with that 100 percent. As listeners of The Maverick Show will know, I’m obviously extremely selective about the guests that come on the show. And most of the interviews are one to two hour long, long form, in depth, substantive conversations with interesting people. And for me, that’s the same thing. These are people, literally, that I would love to be having that 90 minute conversation with anyway and I would be and we’re just turning the microphones on and letting other people hear it.
Johnny: Yeah. And I think the people that we attract, our listeners, are people that we would want to hang out with, people we would want to network with. And for me, that makes it the best show. However, if you guys want to just make money from the show, do a 20 minute format, 25 minutes max, have a set list of 8 questions, and just blast them out so you can have episodes released daily. You can have 70 shows a week about XYZ.
Matt: Can you give, Johnny, a couple of examples of the types of guest that you have on Travel Like a Boss, for example, and some of the things that you’ve learned from your guests over the years?
Johnny: Yeah. So, the No. 1 thing I’ve learned is how many different ways there are to make money online. We’re literally had doctors and dentists that created online businesses. We’ve had Jiu Jitsu instructors. We’ve had people doing all sorts of different traditional online business, outsourced business. And I think what I want to learn from every single person is there are so many different ways to do the same thing and follow different passions. And everything generally works. It’s not that I want to do every single business that we’ve talked about. We’ve had over 220 guests now on Travel Like a Boss and probably 150 different business models.
For me, my path was publishing books, drop shipping and then, online courses. I’m very happy about that. That’s my passion, my love, what works really well for me. I’m 100 percent sure that it works because I’ve done it and I’ve met so many other people who have done it so I know it will work for someone who wants to get into that path but it’s not necessarily what I recommend for everyone. Some people already have a skill.
If you’re already a doctor or a lawyer and you have a skill people are wanting to pay for, it doesn’t make sense for you to spend three months to learn how to start ecommerce when you can just create either an online course or create online coaching or virtual calls for things like being a second opinion dentist, which is something I didn’t even know existed. It was literally if you want a non-biased opinion from a certified dentist to look at your x-rays and tell you if you actually need a root canal or they’re just trying to upsell you a root canal, you can call, book an hour slot or a 20 minute slot, pay X amount of money and then, potentially, save yourself a lot of pain and a lot of money.
Matt: That’s awesome. Can you talk a little bit about your Income Boss course, which I think is the latest course you created and really what is in that course? Who is it for, who is it not for? And what can people find in that course?
Johnny: So, the course was originally called Earnest Affiliate because I wanted people to learn how to monetize their blog or online brand earnestly through affiliate marketing. The problem was nobody could spell earnest or affiliate including myself sometimes. So, I bought the domain www.incomeboss.com, which took a lot of time and a lot of money. But, at the end of the day, it was something that I was really proud of. And the course is, basically, how to monetize an online brand or blog or any kind of traffic that you have online through the type of affiliate marketing that we do and that we talked about.
And it shows all of the case studies. So, I’ve shown all of my top performing affiliate models, the partnerships, how I signed up as an affiliate, where I get the traffic from, the top performing blog posts, the top performing reviews. I show how to build the traffic, at least how I did it and how other people can do it, too. So, it’s really like a case study course. If someone already has an email list or website or some kind of online audience, it’s something that people can go through and within a week, they can monetize and start really making money from their own site. Unfortunately, most people don’t have a site or lots of traffic yet.
So, then I had to go in and create all of that from the beginning and say this is how you start a blog. This is how you start creating traffic. This is how you start getting traffic. This is how you put together good content. So, it’s now become a really good course. So, people really love it. But it’s a lot of work. It’s not something overnight someone can start making money on.
Matt: Yeah. I think that’s really important because there’s so much stuff that’s out there where people are selling and marketing things to teach people how to get rich really quick online and do this lifestyle. And like you said, you showed the pictures of traveling and drinking Sangria and all of this kind of stuff, which you’re actually doing. And then, there’s, I think, a lot of misrepresentations about exactly how easy it is to get there. So, I do always appreciate from you, Johnny, that you come with that candor and those disclosures.
But I think for people that are serious about it, what we’re going to do is definitely link up the Income Boss course link into the show notes at www.themaverickshow.com. You can just go there. We’re also going to put all of the links to Johnny’s blogs and You Tube channel and everything where there is an amazing amount of substantive content that’s totally free. So, you can definitely check out Johnny’s stuff there as well as his podcasts and that kind of stuff. So, all of that will just be in one place at www.themaverickshow.com. Johnny, I also want to ask you about personal brand building.
One of the things that’s interesting as I travel around the world is I run into people that have heard of you. They many have never met you. Most of them have never met you but they know Johnny FD. They know you as a nomad sort of icon. I’ve literally had people refer to you as a nomad legend and they’ve never even met you. But they’ve heard the podcast, they’ve read the blog, they’ve seen this kind of stuff. And you’ve really made a substantial impact as I don’t know if you refer to yourself as an influencer or whatever type of term you want to use but in this particular space. You’re a major, well known figure.
And I want to just ask you about your strategy for personal brand building and what types of tips or advice you might have for other people.
Johnny: So, a lot of it comes down to just time. I’ve been traveling and working online after reading The Four Hour Work Week since 2008, which is longer than 99 percent of people. I have also been blogging very transparently about everything I’ve been doing ever since the word blog really started existing. I actually had something called Zanga before I had my blog spot. I’ve just been doing it for a long time. And because I’m so open about everything I’m doing, it’s allowed people to connect and follow the journey for so many years.
And I think that is really kind of the big secret is sharing openly what you’re doing, what is working, what is not working and doing it through channels that you enjoy publishing on. So, if I wanted to make more money, I would send more emails. But I just don’t like doing it. I like writing a blog post, a mega blog post once every two weeks because it takes me a long time to put it together. I like creating one or two really long, cool travel videos. I just created a 19 minute video recapping this last nomad cruise. It would be better, I guess, in a way, at least short term wise, if I was just kind of more of a flashy Instagram influencer type person.
But first, I’m not that good looking. And I’m not going to just gain a ton of followers for superficial stuff. The people that follow me it is because they trust me because I’ve been doing this for so long. I give good, honest recommendations. And because I’m transparent about both the good and the bad. The downside to that is a lot of times, people don’t take the time to read my book or listen to podcasts. And they’re just like they see the photo of me on the beach with the Sangria and laptop and they’re like oh, F this guy or he does online business. Yeah, it must be a scam or it must be whatever.
And in the beginning, it used to really get to me. And this is some advice I want to give everyone who wants to build an online presence. In the beginning, nobody cares what you’re doing and what you’re saying because nobody knows who you are. But once you start getting a bit of traffic, 100 percent of people will hit a point where they’re going to get a lot of negativity. And the hard part is everything online kind of gets blown out of proportion. You have people who just think it’s funny to be a troll or to be negative. There are people who they’re unhappy in their own lives and they want to put down others.
Or they just want to say online business doesn’t work because I tried it once for two days and it didn’t work for me. So, it can’t work for you because if it works for you that means I’m wrong and I’m a loser. So, it’s hard to get over that. But, at the end of the day, as long as you know you’re putting out good, honest work and that you’re helping other people and not that you’re going to help every single person succeed because there’s just not enough time in the world. But, in general, if you’re putting out good content that you’re proud of then, just keep going, keep going, keep going at it and realize that you can’t please everyone.
There are a lot of people who are like I don’t want to travel like you, Johnny. I want to stay in nice hotels only. I only want to fly. I never want to take a train or bus. I only want to go to big landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and that’s not me. That’s not my style. So, it’s trying to make them happy and being someone I’m not. I just do my thing and I talk about it openly. And if people want to follow along, I’m sure there’s always going to be enough people that are like this type of traveling that Johnny does, this type of business that he does, the frugality with it, this is what I want. And this is who I’m going to follow.
Matt: Yeah. I think that’s super important. The authenticity piece of it is incredibly important. And I think you’re right. The extent to which you’re authentic and you’re you and you’re transparent about everything and you just document it all openly and share and show exactly what you do, I think, is a huge contributor to the amount of following that you have developed. And let me just ask you about that just in terms of your personal preference with regard to travel. And let me just start off with a very broad question and just ask you why do you travel, in general? What do you get out of travel? What does travel mean to you?
Johnny: I think the reason why I travel so much is that I almost got stuck in a world where this wouldn’t have been possible. And when I say almost, there was probably a 99 percent chance I would have continued living in California, working the same job, living in the same square couple of miles. And that would have been it. I would have one vacation per year for one week usually to Las Vegas. And that’s it. That would have been my life. And if it wasn’t for me really stretching my boundaries and trying to figure out what makes me happy and making a lot of mistakes on the way, doing a lot of stupid things, I never would have stumbled upon this life.
Literally, I think the way I found The Four Hour Work Week is I was like I’m unhappy with my life. What could make me happier? Maybe learning how to pick up chicks would make me happy. So, I read some self-development books about that. And then, I realized this is a bit stupid. Maybe learning how to use pick up lines in bars is not going to make me happy in life but maybe this Rich Dad, Poor Dad book is the key. And then, that was cool but maybe this Four Hour Work Week book is going to teach me something. And then, that really kind of led me down a path where, accidentally, I ended up in Thailand and I found scuba diving.
And that was the first time ever in my life where I was like, do you know what, none of that other stuff mattered. The things I thought mattered, really cool clothes, going to clubs, just impressing other people that wasn’t it. What makes me happy is nature, animals, seeing new places, eating different food, the variety of life, and getting to know cultures. And ever since I found that I was like this is what I want. And now, when I travel, that’s why I do it. I don’t do it just to put a cool photo on Instagram. I’ll take a cool photo and also put it on Instagram to share it but that really isn’t the reason.
The reason why I go to these random places is that this is the one life we have to live. And there was a huge chance I never would have experienced it. But because I was lucky and fortunate enough to have found it, I don’t want to give it up.
Matt: That’s amazing. And now that you’re at a point where you’re really financially stable and you can afford to travel anywhere in the world for as long as you want and have any experiences that you choose, what is your current choice in terms of travel cadence, in terms of lifestyle design? How much do you travel? How long do you stay? Now that resources are no longer a challenge as they were when you were first in Thailand and could only afford to live in Thailand, now that you can afford to live anywhere and travel the world, how are you choosing to design your lifestyle?
Johnny: One thing that I heard is a good quote is you can technically afford most things but you cannot afford everything. Nobody can. So, even though I have enough where if I wanted to, I could go to more expensive places like Paris or London or to these hot spots, if I go there and I stay in a five star hotel or even just like a nice hotel, it would either make me have to work more or be able to travel shorter or to have enough money for future savings or be able to give to my parents to help them out. So, what I really like doing is, at least for now and things might change, is I like to travel on kind of like a medium to low budget where as long as something makes me happy, I don’t care how much it costs.
And the better the value is, usually, the happier it makes me. So, when I go to a country like Poland or to Ukraine or to Thailand or to Sri Lanka and Nepal and things are just cheap anyway, and I’m 100 percent happy then, that’s what I do. So, for now, what I do is I like to go places for usually two or three months at a time to really get to know a place, to settle down, to live like a local. I like to travel carry on only like you’re a big fan of as well and you’ve kind of mastered just to kind of free up my life. And if anything, I still feel like I have too much stuff. And then, from there, I want to take side trips and kind of explore destinations.
For example, when I go to Ukraine, my goal is to stay there for three months, learn Russian, but then, take little side trips on the weekends to Georgia or to Kazakhstan or something and that’s kind of close by or to Belarus and have a little bit of stability while still having that adventure.
Matt: Awesome. The other thing I want to definitely make sure that we talk about is the Nomad Summit, which is yet another thing that you do and are really, really known for founding and building the Nomad Summit up to over 400 people per year that come to Chiang Mai to attend it in January. I was super honored to be one of the speakers in 2018. And that’s how you and I really got to know each other well and connect. And that was actually my first time in Chiang Mai, which was amazing because my first time in Chiang Mai, I walk in, I speak at the Nomad Summit, I was just blown away by how well and how professionally organized it was.
You personally had us submit our speeches way in advance. You had us personally do a full run through rehearsal. So, the whole speaker organization was top flight. And then, the entire event organization in terms of these experiences and the whole thing, it was just a completely professional operation. And it was amazing for me because, of course, then I got on stage in front of 400 people, did my talk, everybody knew who I was. And, of course, all of a sudden, I had never been to Chiang Mai before and now, I had 400 new friends that wanted to hang out and go to lunch and all of this kind of stuff.
So, it was really, really a very special experience for me. And both Chiang Mai and the Nomad Summit are kind of merged for me now in terms of how fantastic that was. But I know you’ve been continuing to build and expand the Nomad Summit. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and where you’re taking it now.
Johnny: Yeah. So, the reason why I love doing the Nomad Summit is exactly what you mentioned. It’s a reason for people to go to Chiang Mai every single year to reconnect with old friends, to see the city again, to enjoy amazing Thai food, the great weather in January, to meet other people in person who go to these events. The biggest difference between just being a virtual nomad online and hanging out in Facebook groups or Reddit or on You Tube comments is, for whatever reason, online people are often very negative. There are a lot of trolls on there.
There are a lot of people who say things don’t work or the digital nomad lifestyle isn’t obtainable while you go to a live event in person, especially a paid event, and you realize that 95 percent of people are very successful. They’re very happy. They’re very positive. They’re very optimistic, very open. And they’re like this is the world I want to be in. I want to be in the real world and not just in the digital world, even though we are working online as digital nomads. So, I like these groups to connect people, to stay in touch with people but the live events are really refreshing. And this is why I go to the nomad cruise every year.
This is why I host the Nomad Summit. It’s because I want people to get together with other like minded people and be successful, learn from the best, learn from people who are already successful. Everybody who spoke at the last Nomad Summit was making over $100,000.00 in profit online. And to be able to learn from a dozen people who through the keynotes and the workshops who are that successful and be able to have access to them and meet them is really inspiring for people who are just starting out.
Matt: Yeah. And I think it’s really significant, too, what you mentioned about the nomad ecosystem in terms of these recurring events and things like that because you and I will see each other multiple times a year. You and I have now been on two nomad cruises together, which is somewhere between 200 and 500 people on a boat that goes somewhere. It’s basically like a business conference on a boat for nomads with people doing talks and workshops and presentations on things ranging from entrepreneurship to travel hacks to different stuff. You did a presentation on passive income on this last one.
I did a presentation on minimalist packing strategies and how to travel the world with carry on luggage. It’s all of that kind of stuff but it’s great because you get to see people. You and I see each other multiple times a year now because we are in this nomad ecosystem where we go to these events and we know lots of other people at these events. But we’re also meeting tons of new people at these events, which is totally amazing.
Johnny: Yeah. It’s fun. At the end of the day, it’s a fun way to meet other like minded people, especially if you’re from somewhere where there are not that many people who dream about traveling the world, working online, and being an entrepreneur. Come to one of these events. Come to Cancun this October. It’s going to be the weekend of October 12, the Nomad Summit Cancun. And then, stay for a week, two weeks, or a month after because we’re going to head down to Playa del Carmen to co-work, to basically live in this new nomad hot spot, eat tacos, drink tequila, go scuba diving, and do all of this cool stuff.
And then, come join us again in January. It’s going to be the weekend of January 18 in Chiang Mai. And you’re going to meet 400 plus digital nomads that either wanted to go to Chiang Mai, go back every year, or just use it as an excuse to start their nomad journey.
Matt: Yeah. And I think it’s really great for wherever you are on the spectrum or continuum. I’ve been traveling the world now and running my business full time since 2013 as a full time itinerate nomad. I’ve lived in 51 countries, I think, now just since 2013 with no permanent base. But then, at these events, there are also a lot of people that I will meet that are trying to get into the nomad lifestyle. And it’s exactly what you said, Johnny, which is that a lot of people, they’re normally in their regular life surrounded by people that don’t do this. They’ve never heard of anyone that does this.
And they will often times say that either you can’t do it, you shouldn’t do it, or something like that. And so, to get into a space where you’re surrounded by hundreds of people who are not only encouraging that you can and should do this if you want to but they have also done it. And there are a lot of different paths to how you can do it from whatever your standpoint is.
Johnny: Yeah, definitely. So, I highly encourage every single person to put it on their calendars, their to do lists to go to these live events because I promise it changes your life. It’s another world. It’s a gateway to real friendships, real business relationships, and a real opportunity to be able to live, work, and travel unlike anyone else.
Matt: So, your now doing two nomad summits a year. One of them is the original one, which continues to happen every single year in January in Chiang Mai. And then, you’re doing an additional one in the fall every year, which is somewhere outside of Thailand.
Johnny: Yeah. And this year, we’re choosing Cancun, Mexico because it’s right next to Playa del Carmen. But Cancun has the airport. It has the bigger hotels. And I love Mexican food. I love the Mexican culture. I love the weather. I like the beaches. I want to scuba dive there. I want to travel there. And so many other nomads have said the same. But we never really have the time or reason to go to Mexico. So, hopefully, the Nomad Summit is going to be the reason why we all go there and then, we can see maybe this is the next Chiang Mai but with great Mexican food and a nice beach.
Matt: That’s awesome. And what I love about the format, too, of the Nomad Summit is it was literally a two day event like the actual Nomad Summit was a two day event. And so, it was a day of speakers and content and networking and indoor conference. And then, the second day was, basically, a DJ pool party for like the entire day, which was just totally amazing. So, it’s just a two day event with those two pieces. But then, after that, this last year in Thailand, you guys went and did an extended meet up for anybody that wanted to stay and hang out and basically build community, right?
Johnny: Yeah. So, we took trips to the waterfalls. We all hopped on a plane down to one of the islands to go scuba diving, to walk dogs on the beach, to spend days on a boat. It was really fun. And I really encourage everyone to stay a week or two or even a month after.
Matt: That’s awesome, yeah. It’s a really, really quick way to arrive somewhere where you literally know no one and to have an immediate community of fun, interesting people that want to hang out and do interesting things. So, that’s awesome. We’re going to link up, in the show notes, to the direct link where you can get all of the information about the Nomad Summits and get tickets for that if you want to go, check the dates, and get all of the details on that. So, that will all be at www.themaverickshow.com in the show notes. And Johnny, at this point, are you ready for the lightening round?
Johnny: Let’s do it.
Matt: Let’s do it. All right. What is one book that has really influenced you over the years that you would recommend to people?
Johnny: Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki on the mindset of buying assets and not buying liabilities.
Matt: Awesome. What is one app or productivity tool that you’re currently using that you’d recommend?
Johnny: The best app is just to go into your notification settings on your iPhone or Android and turning off all notifications. That way, you’re not getting pinged every time someone likes your Instagram photo or send you a message on messenger. Turn all of that off and that way, you can just focus and be present. So, the best productivity app is the lack of a productivity app.
Matt: If you could have dinner with one person, public figure, author, celebrity, someone that’s currently living today that you’ve never met and it’s just you and that person for an extended three hour dinner conversation, who would you pick and why?
Johnny: I’d want to have a private dinner with Donald Trump and just ask him, “Hey, man, are you being serious or are you just trolling all of us?”
Matt: That’s a really good answer, man. I have not heard that one before. Awesome. If you could go back to when you were 18 years old and give your 18-year-old self one piece of advice knowing everything that you know now, what advice would you give to 18-year-old Johnny?
Johnny: It’s hard to say because I’m very happy with who I am today with my friends, the people in my life, and what I’ve accomplished. And a lot of that has been because it’s been a rough journey. And I don’t know if it was easier if I would still be the same person today. But if I was going to give that 18-year-old Johnny some advice, it would be don’t try and impress others. Really just be yourself because you’re good enough. And I think this is good advice for everyone out there is you guys are good enough the way you are. Accept yourself. Love yourself today but keep striving to be better because we can all be better as well.
Matt: That’s awesome. All right. The last question. I want to close it out with of all of the places that you have been, there are still a lot of places in this world that you have never been. What is currently at the top of your bucket list, places you’ve never been that you most want to go, one or two places?
Johnny: So, the travel destination is going to be the country of Georgia and also Kazakhstan. But then, my top adventure destinations, I want to go scuba diving in Raja Ampat and then, in the Galapagos.
Matt: Awesome, man. Amazing. Well, Johnny, I want you to let people know how they can get a hold of you, read your blog, listen to podcasts, find out more about everything that you’re up to. Where do they go?
Johnny: Yeah. It’s been super fun. The easiest thing is to subscribe to both the Travel Like a Boss podcast as well as the Invest Like a Boss podcast since you guys obviously like this in a podcast. If you want to know more about me, either read one of my two books, Life Changes Quick or Twelve Days in Thailand, or just read my blog, www.johnnyfd.com. And I hope to see all of you at the next live event. Go to www.nomadsummit.com and you can get tickets there. Or you can sign up for the email list for the next event.
Matt: Awesome, Johnny, thanks for being here. Always a pleasure, my man.
Johnny: All right. You, too. It’s been fun.
Matt: Good night, everybody.
Announcer: Be sure to visit the show notes page at www.themaverickshow.com, for direct links to all of the books, people and resources mentioned in this episode. You’ll find all of that and much more at www.themaverickshow.com.
Announcer: Would you like to get Maverick Investor Group’s white paper on real estate investing for digital nomads, how to buy US rental properties from anywhere in the world and finance an epic international lifestyle? Just go to www.themaverickshow.com/nomad. The report is totally free and available for you now, at www.themaverickshow.com/nomad.
Announcer: Do you want to learn how to travel the world for a year plus with carry on luggage only and look good while you’re doing it? Go to www.themaverickshow.com/packing to see a free recorded webinar and learn exactly how Matt does it. He shows you the luggage he uses, the specific items he packs, and the travel brands he likes most. Even if you’re just looking to go on shorter trips but pack more efficiently and eliminate your checked luggage, you won’t want to miss this. You can watch the free recorded webinar at www.themaverickshow.com/packing.
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Duration: 67 minutes
