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My 2015 Annual Review and Roadmap for 2016

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I’m not usually one for making new year resolutions. I find it silly to wait until the end of the year to promise positive change when it can be started at any moment. However, after reading about Chris Guillebeau and his annual review, I began to look at it differently.

An annual review is not the same as new year resolutions. For me, it’s a chance to reflect over the last year and be grateful for all the beautiful things that happened. It’s a chance to remember all the amazing experiences but also a chance to reflect on what didn’t go as planned. After the reflection, you can do a brief plan for the year ahead. I like to leave a lot of room for spontaneity so my plans only serve as a direction for the upcoming months.

Regardless of whether you like to plan ahead or not, it’s always a good idea to reflect on the past year. I’m often surprised at how much I actually accomplished and the pros usually outweigh the cons, which is always nice to see.

So here it is…

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How to Travel Around the World in Business Class for $750

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2015 has been a great year for travel. I’ve already stepped foot on three continents, witnessed a permanent lava lake erupt right in front of me, visited Japan during cherry blossom season, and went completely around the world in business class.

It was my first time at the front of the plane and I picked a good time to do it. After all, my wife and I were flying from Calgary, Alberta to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, which took us through England and Turkey. From Tanzania, we flew to Ethiopia for a month and then to Japan for three weeks before coming back to Calgary over the Pacific Ocean. It was a lot of long flights and many time zones to circle the world but having full lie-down beds on the flights made it much more bearable.

Air Canada Business Class Pod Seating

I certainly can’t afford business class tickets around the world. It’s a tough itinerary to price out but just flying to Tanzania and back in business class came to $15,000 each when I looked it up on multiple search engines. It’s safe to say that it would have cost us at least $35,000 USD to make this trip happen, had we paid for the tickets.

Instead, the trip cost just $750 CAD each. That’s because we used frequent flyer miles to “pay” for the rest. Since becoming a travel hacker a few years ago, I’ve managed to earn over 1 million miles through credit cards, everyday spending, and various promotions. However, even though earning miles is crucial, redeeming them for high-value rewards is much more important in the world of travel hacking.

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Say YES More! (And How I Went to Japan for Free)

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One of the top questions I get asked when telling people about my story is how I became so adventurous. For those that don’t know, I didn’t grow up an adventurous person. I don’t remember ever dreaming of traveling the world until my early twenties and even then it wasn’t a top priority. But from my late teens and into my early twenties, I did crave change. I wanted to try more things and explore life’s possibilities. In essence, I wanted to live limitless.

So I did. I started trying new things. I said YES more often. If something piqued my interest, I said YES! When I noticed a poster at school advertising salsa dance lessons I said YES! When I noticed an ad for Olympic speed skating try-outs, I said YES! If someone mentioned something exciting, I said YES!

And ultimately, saying YES is what has changed my life.

Whether I said YES to my ideas or thoughts or to a friend’s proposal, everything changed. Suddenly I was trying new things and meeting new people. Suddenly I was becoming more confident and becoming more willing to say YES. Suddenly, nothing seemed impossible. As long as I said YES, I could try anything. Who knows what might happen or who I might meet. Life became one huge possibility.

Life became so exciting and fresh!

I looked around at others still living a life of NO. A life of stifled creativity. A life of fear. They followed the traditional path that was laid out for them by family, teachers, government or media without ever thinking of other possibilities. They stuck to the same old patterns passed down to them and didn’t question anything. It all seemed so boring to me. It’s not like our life is a practice round for the next one. This is it. Make it happen. Live life to the fullest.

Say YES!

How Saying YES lead to a FREE trip to Japan

Back in 2009, I was lying in my bed reading articles on the Four Hour Work Week Blog when a new post by Tim Ferriss really got me excited. He was releasing his updated version of the Four Hour Work Week book. I already owned the original version but loved it so much that I knew I needed the new one. Tim’s plan for reaching the New York Times Bestseller list involved asking readers to buy hundreds of copies, which came with unique gifts. As I scanned through the options, one really stood out. If I bought 100 copies of the Four Hour Work Week ($1500 USD) I would get a ticket to have dinner with Tim and attend a private party on a warship in San Francisco. The possibilities began swarming around my head. This was my idol in the business world. Even though I had $1500, I didn’t really want to be stuck with 100 copies of the same book. With the option being available to only 20 people, I questioned it for only one hour before reaching a decision.

I said yes. I clicked on the buy now button and a few weeks later had 10 huge Amazon boxes show up at my door. It looked so strange that I had to take a picture. A few months later, I was in San Francisco partying with Tim Ferriss and 20 others who bought all the books as well as Noah Kagen, Kevin Rose and Paula Abdul.

Four Hour Work Week

Tim Ferriss San Francisco

After the party, I had to try selling the books. I began searching Meetup groups trying to find business-minded people who might be interested and ended up stumbling upon a group called Junior Chamber International (JCI). I sent them an email and they invited me to come make a proposal at the their next meeting. When I showed up, I gave them a quick speech about the books and then sold a few copies. Then one of the guys made me an offer. He told me that a student membership was $50 per year (I was a student at the time) and that he would buy four copies if I joined the group. Since everyone was young and inspired, I said YES.

Next thing you know, I’m taking free public speaking courses, attending meetings and eventually taking a free trip to Japan. I didn’t realize  how big JCI was on the international level but when the world congress was announced in Osaka, Japan, I knew I had to go. Since JCI Calgary is a non-profit organization who does work in the community in exchange for funding, my trip was fully paid for. 10,000 people from all over the world attended this event.

One YES turned into:

  • Meeting my idol Tim Ferriss
  • Partying on a warship in San Francisco with mega-entrepreneurs
  • Joining JCI and improving my public speaking skills
  • A free two-week trip to Japan

Since saying YES, my life has changed dramatically and for the better. So many things have happened and I’ve experienced more than most people do in a lifetime. It doesn’t stop with the Japan trip either.

Since saying YES!, I have:

I could go on but I’d rather just give you some advice – SAY YES!

The next time you have an idea for an adventure or a business – SAY YES!

The next time you see an advertisement for something that interests you, whether it be salsa dancing or public speaking lessons – SAY YES!

The next time you feel like it’s time to do something new, SAY YES!

The next time you feel like you should ask someone out, SAY YES!

The next time you feel like losing fat and building muscle, SAY YES!

Say YES to Life. As cheesy as that sounds, it’s very powerful. Say YES and watch the opportunities unfold before you.

or Say NO and continue living exactly as you have without ever opening yourself up to a new world of possibilities.

Everything is a choice and the choice is yours.

I hope you make the right one.

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I’d like to hear from you. Has saying YES changed your life? Is there something you’re going to say YES to after reading this post. Share in the comments below!

If you haven’t signed up for the VIP list, I highly recommend making that happen. You’ll get resources for traveling more and spending less while building an incredible life. You’ll also get exclusive content and deals. Sign up BELOW! Say YES!

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My First $5000 As a World-Travelling Lifestyle Entrepreneur

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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!

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Thanks for reading!

 

 

How I Booked a Flight from Canada to Mexico, Colombia and back from Bolivia for $27

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One of the major powers of travel hacking comes from high-value redemptions and I decided to get really creative with our (my wife and I) points for our upcoming five-month trip to Mexico and South America.

After racking up a little more than 500,000 frequent flyer miles in 2013, I had to start putting them to good use. Since we were already planning to go to Mexico for our wedding, we decided to continue south and backpack through a good part of South America.

Using Aeroplan, the cost for a return-trip to Mexico City in economy class is 40,000 points. However, it’s only 50,000 points to go to Colombia, Ecuador or Bolivia. Peru is 60,000. Because the flight is international, Aeroplan allows one free stopover and one free open-jaw. Another bonus, though they won’t tell you this, is that you can have a couple of layovers in cities on route as well.

Let the travel hacking begin.

I did all the research I could do online via Aeroplan.com but because the trip involves an open-jaw, I had to call in and book through an agent, which costs $30 per person. No biggie.

I told the agent where we wanted to go and had them research the same itinerary that I had already researched online. We wanted to fly to Cartagena, Colombia with a six week stopover in Mexico City. From Cartagena, we wanted to do an open-jaw and fly back to Canada from Bolivia rather than Colombia. This would give us almost four months to backpack down through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia without the need to come all the way back to Colombia.

As I had already researched this part, I knew it was viable. We didn’t have many options for the return date from La Paz, Bolivia but we made it work. I’m not sure why Bolivia is less points than Peru but I’ll take it!

After getting the itinerary sorted out, I noticed that the return flight from Bolivia had a connection in Mexico City. Thinking it would be nice to see my family-in-law one more time before heading back to Canada, I asked for a 21-hour layover in Mexico City on the way home. When I made the request, the agent told me I would lose my stopover. Luckily I knew this wasn’t true and I was able to tell her that this wasn’t the case.

I explained that a layover is less than 24 hours and thus, not considered a stopover. I also told her that I did this before with a 23-hour 57-minute layover in Chicago on a previous trip.

Suddenly, it became possible and we had our 21-hour layover in Mexico City on the way back.

It was settled.

zihuatanejo
Looking down over Zihuatanejo, Mexico from an infinity pool

We booked the flight departing from Calgary, Alberta to Mexico City where we would stay for six weeks. During this time, we will visit family and drive to the coast to get married on the beach. We will then leave Mexico City and fly to Cartagena, Colombia where we will then spend almost four months backpacking through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia before flying back to Calgary from La Paz, Bolivia in late June. To sweeten the deal, we were also going to be taking a 21-hour layover in Mexico City on the way home, which was enough time to say hi and bye again to my family-in-law and pick up anything we left behind. We’re pretty excited about this trip. We’ll be hiking to Macchu Picchu and eating delicious Peruvian food, hiking to the lost city of Colombia, scuba diving in the Galapagos, and volunteering at an animal refuge in Bolivia. This is going to be a trip of epic properotions.

The total cost for myself was 50,000 points + $327 in taxes and fees. I used 50,000 points from my Aeroplan account and then paid the $327 with a Scotiabank American Express I received a few weeks before. What was cool about this particular American Express is that it came with a $300 statement credit after spending just $100 on a travel-related expense. It also included 15,000 “Scotia” points, which were worth another $150 in travel credit.

Since taxes and fees from a flight is travel-related, I passed the $100 threshold and then called to have the $300 statement credit used towards the bill.

$327 – $300 statement credit = $27 out of my pocket.

That same card also came with 15,000 points, which in this particular case were worth $150 in statement credit. I used this credit to help pay for my $27 and the rest towards Karla’s ticket.

All in all, I used an array of credit card bonuses and travel hacking to get this incredible trip for just $27. Actually, with the bonus points, my flight was not only 100% free but I had $123 leftover for my wife’s taxes.

I’m writing this post from Mexico City at the moment. Next weekend, we’ll take a road trip to the beautiful beach area of Ixtapa, which is where we are getting married. After that, we’ll come back to Mexico City and probably drive down to Oaxaca to see another amazing city in Mexico before heading to Colombia and continuing on our South American journey.

That’s it!

Have you ever travel hacked your way to a cool destination? Let me know about it in the comments below.

If you’re from Canada, I’ve created a membership site just for you that not only teaches you everything there is to know about travel hacking but also sends you all the deals for earning points so you don’t have to do any research whatsoever. It’s been featured in the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail. Check out Canadian Free Flyers by clicking here.

If you’re from the U.S.A, I’m currently working on a guide that will teach you everything there is to know about travel hacking from America. Click here to sign up so you can be notified when it’s ready and get an exclusive discount for being first in line.

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10 Tips for Traveling the World with No Money

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Okay okay, I know what you’re thinking. Bullshit.

To some degree, you might be right. You do need some money to travel. But not much. In fact, most of the people I have met seem rather broke. However, they are living an incredible life. Some are living that life for just a moment while others are doing it long-term, including families with children.

One of the most important things to remember is that you don’t need to be rich to travel. In some ways, being rich might even hinder the experience, since you’ll likely be coming at it from an angle of luxury and status. If you think travel is only about beach resorts and 3-star restaurants, this is likely NOT for you, unless you’re trying to open your mind to new possibilities.

I’ve stayed in gorgeous 4-star hotels and I’ve done the all-inclusive thing. If all you’re seeking is a one-week escape from life, then this probably does fit the bill. You’ll get to relax with ocean waves in the background and you won’t need to worry about anything except the timing of the next buffet meal. It won’t be all that different from home because you’ll still be mingling with other people just like you who may even be from the same city or the same country. It won’t be an adventure. It will simply be relaxation time, which is fine.

However, if you’re looking to experience travel from a life-changing point of view, then you’ll need to ditch the resorts and high-end hotels and opt for the more independent and adventurous route. You’ll want to meet locals and dive into the culture, not-to-mention the ocean for an up-close and personal look at life under the sea. You might be wanting to zip-line across jungles or look for wild elephants along the river bank. You might just be looking to meet very interesting people, hike to minority villages and simply expand your mind in a way that only independent travel can provide. [Read more…] about 10 Tips for Traveling the World with No Money