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How a Road Trip Across Canada Created a Passion Business

by Matt 1 Comment

bungy jumping in Washington USA

Back in 2009, I began my foray into world travel. For many years, I had been longing to go backpacking through New Zealand and Australia but kept waiting for friends to come with me. During those years that I was “waiting”, I went to college and graduated, bought a home, and even transferred into university to work towards my 4-year business degree. But during the middle of that my time at university, I had the urge to finally make my dream trip happen. I felt that I could no longer wait and so, after my third year, I left. I rented out my apartment at a major loss, took a year off from university, and jumped on a plane to New Zealand. 

During those 6 months of solo travel, I ended up both creating and crushing my bucket list, which entailed things like sky-diving, bungy-jumping, scuba diving, and hang-gliding. Before that, I was not the kind of person to strap an oxygen tank to my back and jump in the ocean with sharks, nor was I the kind of guy to strap thousands of elastic bands to my angle and jump off a bridge. But suddenly, I became a new person. [Read more…] about How a Road Trip Across Canada Created a Passion Business

LL 025: Clean Energy and Sustainability with Kali Taylor

by Matt Leave a Comment

In the 25th episode of the Live Limitless podcast, I chat with Kali Taylor of KaliTaylor.com.

Kali TaylorKali is a sustainable development professional, with a keen interest in systems thinking, social change, and youth engagement.  She has a wide range of experience including green growth advancement, climate change management, business development, project management and NGO leadership.

I met Kali after seeing her in Avenue’s Top 40 Under 40 in Calgary for her role in co-founding Student Energy, a global not-for-profit dedicated to empowering the next generation of leaders who will transition the world to a sustainable energy future.

Kali has received numerous awards for her contributions to the community including the Premier’s Citizenship award, the Queen Elizabeth II Citizenship medal, and was named one of Canada’s Top 25 Environmentalists under 25 in 2011. She was also GLOBE’s Next Gen Entrepreneur in 2014, an AB Top Young Innovator in 2016, and one of Canada’s Top 35 Under 35 Energy Leaders in 2016.

Kali currently works with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in Geneva coordinating action on the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

[Read more…] about LL 025: Clean Energy and Sustainability with Kali Taylor

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My First $5000 As a World-Travelling Lifestyle Entrepreneur

by Matt 2 Comments

It all started in Laos

My wife and I were in Vientiane – the capital of Laos. We had just come from the north where we had kayaked through the jungle, boated to isolated jungle villages and lived it up in the beautiful city of Luang Prabang. Then I got an email. It was from a Canadian journalist who had seen my site, Canadian Free Flyers and wanted to do a story on me for the Toronto Star.

Say whhhhhat.

I was so excited. The Toronto Star is the biggest news publication in Canada. How did this lady find me? Over the past year, I had created a travel hacking site for Canadians but had yet to market it. I had maybe three customers who had bought the $47 package. I was too busy backpacking throughout Southeast Asia to worry about marketing the site. I was waiting until I got back to Canada.

Muang Ngoi Neua, Laos

But suddenly, this journalist lit a fire under my ass.

I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity as it might never come again. In fact, I wanted to talk with her as quickly as possible as I know how quickly an opportunity can fade away. The next night I was on Skype, calling her on her Canadian cell phone from the rooftop of the hotel we were staying in. WiFi was shotty as you might expect and I ended up having to call her back four or five times to finish the interview.

In the end, it worked out though. In some ways, doing it from a hotel in Laos made the story better. I was living the life as a travel hacker. When I asked her how she found me, she said she was looking for Canadian travel hacking sites and mine was the only one that came up.

That’s cuz I was the only one!

That’s what had me so excited about Canadian Free Flyers in the first place. There were a ton of sites offering travel hacking advice in the United States but none offering advice just for Canadians. I started the first one, which got me in the Toronto Star. The journalist told me the interview would be coming out on October 15th, three months after the interview.

I had time to get my shit into gear.

I still didn’t have much time really. After all, my wife and I were backpacking through exotic Asian countries and the last thing I wanted to do was be behind a computer. When I could, I made sure the site looked half-professional and made sure the content was up to speed. Most importantly, I made sure there was a way for people to pay!

Over the next couple of weeks, we travelled around Laos and eventually flew to Myanmar, a country I had been wanting to visit for months! Myanmar was like stepping back in time. No franchise businesses, no ATM’s and barely a hospital. British colonial buildings in the big city were literally falling apart. Sanctions from many countries including the U.S. has kept Myanmar in the past, which may or may not be a good thing. Either way, it’s the people that make the country and Myanmar is full of the friendliest people on Earth. It really is a special place.

Bagan, Myanmar

A couple of weeks into the trip, I decided to open my Paypal account to see what funds I had. Oops. Paypal was shut down immediately and I was locked out of my account. I guess that’s what a sanction means. Suddenly I had no way to open my Paypal account and now had to prove to the company that I wasn’t laundering money for someone in Myanmar. I needed to provide actual mail with my home address, which was difficult from overseas. After about four weeks and many talks with my parents, I finally had the account back up and was warned that it would be locked for good if I did it again.

Sheesh. Give me a break.

Now that I had access to my account again, I made sure it was linked to Canadian Free Flyers for the big amount of traffic I was sure to get from the Toronto Star article.

Fast forward two months…

We had been in China for nearly two weeks. Having flown from Indonesia to China to attend my cousin’s wedding, we were now sitting in a hotel in the non-touristy town of Shizhou, waiting for the article to go live. Of all the countries to be in at this moment, China was probably the worst. I had no access to WordPress! UGH. This meant that I could not login to Canadian Free Flyers, which meant much stress for me on the biggest day of Canadian Free Flyer’s life. I also couldn’t access the Toronto Star’s website to see the article. I couldn’t access Facebook or any other social media profile either. I was screwed. I basically had to trust that everything was well. Such are the problems of a world-travelling lifestyle entrepreneur. Shit like this happens I suppose. Next time I’ll make sure I am not in China.

When we reached Beijing two weeks later, I was able to check Paypal. $5000! Over 100 people had paid for the $47 option and had created the biggest “entrepreneurial” day of my life. Up until that point, I had only made maybe $500 total during my online life. Canadian Free Flyers was my first actual online business and had just brought in $5000 in a couple of days.

View from Shanghai World Financial Center

It felt unreal. It was such a proud moment to realize that I created this money out of thin air. I had an idea and created it all by myself with no knowledge of coding whatsoever. I simply built an average website using WordPress, laid out my knowledge of travel hacking and added a checkout button.

Voila!

Three days later, my wife and I were back in Canada. The journalist had mailed me a hard copy of the newspaper, which had a full page dedicated to my story and some pictures of me on an elephant in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I was famous!

While the Toronto Star opportunity was lucky in many ways, had I not put myself out there and made the effort to get the site online, they never would have found me and the interview never would have happened. That $5000 wouldn’t be in my Paypal account.

Since then, I’ve reached out to the media myself and have been featured in the Globe and Mail, MoneySense, Metro, the Vancouver Observer, and the Flight Network. Canadian Free Flyers has since changed from a one-time fee to a monthly membership site that combines tutorials along with real-time deal alerts, which means I do all the research for members so they don’t have to.

It’s been quite the ride and it has given me the confidence to pursue other business opportunities as well as reach out to more media.

Temples of Bagan, Myanmar

Lessons learned

  1. In order for luck to find you, you must make yourself findable. Had I not taken the time to create Canadian Free Flyers in the first place, I never would have heard from the Toronto Star. If you have a business idea, you need to get it out there, even if it’s just a basic version of it. If you’d like to create a side income, you need to take action. It all starts with an idea.
  2. If you’re into the whole world-travelling entrepreneur thing, you need to take on certain responsibilities. If you’re going on a long trip but have a business, you should have everything accomplished before you go OR set time aside during your travels to actually work on the business.
  3. Be ready for opportunities. You never know when an opportunity could strike. It could be your first customer sending you a question via email or a journalist inquiring about a story. Who knows? but you better be ready for it.
  4. When it comes to travel, be aware of the countries you’re visiting and the problems you could encounter with your business. I should have done some research before opening Paypal in Myanmar. I didn’t really have a choice with China but I could have researched the opportunity to have a VPN, which would have allowed me to navigate around the great firewall of China and access WordPress.

In the end, the most important lesson here is ACTION. Reading books, taking courses and coming up with ideas can be important but action is what you’ll ultimately have to do for any chance of success. You can’t keep dreaming about it or putting it off. You need to take the first steps and start building the path to your success.

You are your greatest wall and only you can climb over it.

Did you like this story? Leave a comment below or share it with your friends and family!

Want some one-on-one coaching to get started in travelling the world or starting an online business? Visit the Live Limitless coaching page and let’s get started!

Like this article? you’ll probably like these as well:

  • 30 Tips from 30 Years of Life
  • How I Booked a Flight from Canada to Mexico, Colombia and back from Bolivia for $27!

Thanks for reading!

 

 

LL 014: An Interview with Andrew Szeto

by Matt Leave a Comment

In the 14th episode of the Live Limitless podcast I chat with Andrew Szeto.

I met Andrew in the comment section on a blog we were both reading at the time. After getting to know him better, I learned that Andrew was becoming a “full-time” copywriter while working full-time as a pharmacist. I thought it was very inspiring that Andrew would commit his free time to building up skills in a completely different field without giving up his day job. Andrew now has essentially two full-time income streams.

Besides being an all-around great guy, Andrew has become a really good copywriter and has built up his skills during his spare time. I invited Andrew on the show to talk about how he learned his new skill set, why he chose copywriting, how he found a mentor, and how he built copywriting into a full-time gig.

[Read more…] about LL 014: An Interview with Andrew Szeto

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/livelimitlesspodcast/LL_014_-_An_Interview_with_Andrew_Szeto.mp3

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Turning Text into a Business | An Interview with Peter Kao of Postertext

by Matt 1 Comment

A couple months back I was browsing through some AMA’s on Reddit, which led me to Canadian laptop entrepreneur Peter Kao, who started a cool and unique business that he can run from anywhere in the world.

His business is called Postertext, which sells silhouette posters wrapped in text from famous books. Now you can hang your favourite classic novel on the wall!

I thought it was a really cool idea so I thought I’d interview him to help inspire all you soon-to-be-entrepreneurs out there.

Welcome Peter.

How did you get such a cool idea for a product?

It was my friend’s birthday, and she’s notoriously bookish. I was thinking of what to buy for her, but decided instead that I would make something for me. I came across the text of her favorite book online and decided to illustrate a silhouette wrapped in the original words from the author. I thought it was a unique gift and so I decided to print it out and give it to her as a birthday gift. She was really happy with it, and so I thought other bibliophiles might enjoy the same sort of art prints as her.

[Read more…] about Turning Text into a Business | An Interview with Peter Kao of Postertext

World Domination Summit & What Comes After

by Matt 3 Comments

Wow.

Last week I attended the World Domination Summit in Portland , Oregon. It wasn’t my first World Domination Summit but it was every bit as spectacular.

The first WDS I attended consisted of only 500 people. This one was 3000. Six times the size in just two years.

Despite the rapid growth, it was one hell of a show. Kudos to Chris Guillebeau and his team who manage to blow away attendees each and every year.

world float world domination summit 2013
That moment before crushing a Guinness World Record

10 Inspiring speakers took to the stage over two days to dispel their wisdom and motivate all of us to chase our dreams, challenge our fears and live remarkably. The welcome party had 3000 of us take over the Portland Zoo while the closing party had us create an epic dance party at Pioneer Square in downtown Portland. We also broke a world record, took a cruise down the Willamette River and connected with inspiring people from more than 30 countries.

It was a heart-warming, energizing and soul-lifting weekend.

But what happens after?

Someone I spoke to a few days later mentioned different sales conferences they used to attend. Sales conferences are different from World Domination Summit but still filled with motivational speakers inspiring people in their particular field. She mentioned how much she enjoyed those conferences and how inspiring they were but was always disappointed in the months that followed.

I understood what she meant. She was talking about all those crazy dreams and ideas that are born during the conference but slowly wile away as time goes on. Maybe she set her short-term goals too high or maybe she just didn’t work hard enough.

This happens to many people after a conference / summit. It certainly has to me. We hear all these amazing stories from people who have been primed to give mind-bending talks. They come out on stage and blast us with an hour of well-rehearsed and coached talks that fill our hearts and souls with all kinds of dreams and aspirations. We come home ready to tackle the world head on only to realize a few months later that nothing has happened or that our goals were not reached to the extent we had dreamed.

Did we fuck up? Were we tricked?

No, it’s just us. We can be motivated and inspired all we want but unless we actually take action, we won’t see any results. If we do take action, we need to realize that we are likely to fail along the way. The important part is to not let that stop us. We must learn from it and fail again, becoming “professionals” as we go.

Don’t let that inspiration fade away. We need your project.

Chris Guillebeau world domination summit 2013

Here are some quick tips for what should come after the World Domination Summit:

1. Set some time for yourself to write down your thoughts after WDS. Try to capture that inspired version of yourself so that you can continue to look back on it when the WDS-momentum starts to fade. Jot down everything you can. Small ideas, big ideas, outrageous ideas. Everything. Use this as your starting block.

2. Get started on your project immediately. Don’t worry about it being the “right” one or not. Just get started on step one and move from there. If the idea changes, that’s fine because you’re learning as you go. If you never start, nothing happens. Even if you start with just 15-30 minutes per day, it will add up to a finished project and it will feel damn good!

3. Stay connected with the people you met during the summit and tell them about your project. This will not only help build the relationships but will also hold you accountable for getting your project out into the world. Another idea might be to form some sort of accountability/mastermind group for further accountability and collaboration.

4. As a bonus, join the World Domination Summit Facebook group. It’s a great place to stay connected with the WDS spirit and also a great place to post your project and get feedback.

Do you have any other ideas for continuing the momentum after a summit?

***

Feature photo and photo of Chris courtesy of Chris Guillebeau.

 

 

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