Podcast appearances and mentions of matt kepnes

First, jump inside ​Copywriting Course​ to review every page of your site with me today.Second, checkout this interview with Matt Kepnes, known as ​Nomadic Matt​...he's the founder of the most well known personal travel blogs on the internet. He's wrote a book called How To Travel the World for $75/day:Full notes posted here.

Nomadic Matt in the house! Longtime travel blogger and author Matt Kepnes stops by to talk travel and his new book, How To Travel the World on $75 A Day.

#594: Ever wonder if you could afford to travel for months at a time? According to Nomadic Matt, who's visited more than 100 countries over the last 19 years, you can see the world on just $75 a day. That's about $27,375 per year, less than many people's current cost of living. Matt Kepnes, better known as Nomadic Matt, joins us to challenge common assumptions about travel costs. He explains that long-term travel can actually be cheaper than staying home. When you're traveling, you shed many regular expenses that eat into your budget back home, like car payments, home insurance, and utility bills. The key is to "travel like you live," as Nomadic Matt puts it. This means using public transportation instead of taxis, shopping at local markets, and seeking out free activities — just like you might do in your hometown. It's not about staying at five-star resorts, but experiencing destinations authentically while keeping costs reasonable. Nomadic Matt also breaks down several travel myths. The old advice about booking flights on Tuesdays? Outdated in today's algorithmic pricing world. Using incognito mode to get better flight prices? No evidence supports this idea. He does confirm that booking round-trip flights often costs less than one-way tickets, even if you don't use the return portion. For those interested in credit card points, Nomadic Matt recommends choosing cards based on your specific travel goals rather than chasing the most popular options. Consider which airlines you use most and what perks you'll actually take advantage of. The pandemic has transformed travel in significant ways. While prices have increased and some budget travel services have disappeared, new opportunities have emerged — especially for remote workers who can now take advantage of digital nomad visas to live abroad while maintaining their income. Whether you're planning a two-week vacation or dreaming of becoming location-independent, Nomadic Matt's practical advice shows how international travel is more accessible than you might have thought. Timestamps: Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising run times. The provided timestamps are approximate and may be several minutes off due to changing ad lengths. (0:00) Intro to Nomadic Matt and $75/day budget (1:00) Modern hostels aren't grungy anymore (3:00) Origins of the $75/day travel budget (5:00) "Travel like you live" approach saves money (8:50) Mix accommodations based on trip needs (9:40) Choose travel cards matching your specific goals (16:40) Use points before devaluation happens (20:00) Best booking times for flights (37:00) Social media's impact on global travel (42:00) Overcoming language barriers easily (48:30) Post-COVID travel costs and changes (56:20) Remote work visas for long-term travelers (1:02:40) Why travel costs less than staying home (1:05:50) How location independence evolved from unusual to mainstream Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A Note from James:Is it possible to travel around the world, live around the world, do remote work anywhere you want, and spend just $75 a day or less? When I was younger, I wish I'd tried this. Back then, you probably could have done it for even less, maybe $30 a day! Today's guest, Matt Kepnes—better known as Nomadic Matt—has spent decades traveling the globe on a budget. Ten years ago, he wrote How to Travel the World on $50 a Day, and he's just updated it with How to Travel the World on $75 a Day or Less. It's definitely possible. I'm even sharing this episode with my daughters because there's a perception that travel is too expensive. Matt has tips on everything from finding cheap flights and accommodations to securing remote work opportunities. Travel opens your mind without the stress that comes with age and responsibility. If you travel cheaply, you'll not only have amazing experiences but also become more successful and open-minded. I wish I had traveled more when I was younger—I didn't think I could afford it, but as Matt explains, you certainly can.Episode Description:Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt, returns to discuss the realities of traveling the world cheaply in 2025. With inflation and changes since COVID-19 dramatically affecting costs, Matt explains how traveling on just $75 a day is not only possible but easier than you think. You'll learn practical tips for finding cheap flights, affordable accommodations, and even ways to make money while traveling. Matt also shares personal insights into how decades of constant travel impacted his life, friendships, and perspectives.What You'll Learn:How flexibility with travel dates and destinations can drastically reduce your expenses.Practical tips for securing international flights at a fraction of typical costs.Simple strategies for reducing daily living expenses abroad (accommodations, meals, transportation).Realistic job ideas and online resources to help you earn money while traveling.How long-term travel impacts relationships, personal growth, and life decisions.Chapters:[00:00] Introduction: Traveling the World on a Budget[02:00] The Impact of Inflation and COVID on Travel Costs[04:00] The Rise of the Digital Nomad Lifestyle[07:00] Money-Saving Travel Tips[08:00] Finding Cheap Flights and Accommodations[14:00] Living Cheaply in Different Countries[19:00] Matt's Journey: From Corporate Job to World Traveler[27:00] Making Money While Traveling[31:00] Easiest Job for Travelers[32:00] Journey to Becoming a Travel Writer[34:00] Advice for New Travelers[36:00] Favorite Travel Destinations[37:00] Impact of Sharing Economy on Travel[39:00] Challenges of Long-Term Travel[43:00] Global Perceptions of American Travelers[49:00] Why America Leads in Innovation[51:00] Top Countries to Move to in Europe[53:00] Resources for Aspiring Travelers[55:00] Conclusion and Final ThoughtsAdditional Resources:How to Travel the World on $75 a Day by Matt KepnesGoing.com (Flight Deals)Workaway.info (Work Exchange Opportunities)Blablacar (Ride Sharing)Travel Ladies App (For Female Travelers)Nomadic Matt's WebsiteDie with Zero by Bill PerkinsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“The most difficult part about traveling the world isn't actually the logistics of a trip—it's finding the courage to go in the first place.” —Matt Kepnes In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Matt talk about how his travel style has changed over the years, and how fears affect people’s travels (1:00); strategies for saving money on the road (10:30); and strategies for finding activities on the road, and where to start a long-term journey (19:30). Matt Kepnes (@nomadicmatt), commonly known as “Nomadic Matt,” is a travel blogger and the New York Times bestselling author of Travel the World on $75 a Day and Ten Years a Nomad. Notable Links: The Vagabond's Way, by Rolf Potts (book) Levison Wood (explorer) Van Life before #VanLife (Deviate episode) Home exchange (lodging service) Trusted Housesitters (lodging service) Travel Ladies (lodging app) EatWith,com (hospitality service) The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel's 2017 album Lumber. Note: We don't host a “comments” section, but we're happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

We've just wrapped up four episodes from my time in Iceland – a country that's as jaw-droppingly beautiful as it is expensive. But is there a way to travel this pricey paradise on a budget? That's the question I'll be tackling today with someone who knows a thing or two about affordable travel. I'd already heard the rumour, so in Reykjavik I set out to find out just how expensive it is and we start the episode back in Reykjavik where I walked into a supermarket to check the prices of random things. And then, I'm thrilled to welcome Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt, back to the podcast. He's one of the most well-known names in travel. He's the New York Times bestselling author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day and the creator of the massively popular blog, NomadicMatt.com. Over the years, he's inspired millions to see the world without breaking the bank. And now, he's back with a completely revamped version of his iconic guidebook. Now called How to Travel the World on $75 a Day. It's not just an update – it's almost an entirely new book, reflecting how travel has changed since the pandemic, with fresh tips, destination advice, and even new ways to save. Order the book here: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/how-to-travel-the-world/ #TravelOnABudget #NomadicMatt #BudgetTravel #Iceland #IcelandTravel #AffordableTravel #TravelHacks #Backpacking #Globetrotter #TravelPodcast

Vi har netop afsluttet fire episoder fra min tid i Island – et land, der er lige så betagende smukt, som det er dyrt. Men er der en måde at rejse i dette kostbare paradis på et budget? Det er spørgsmålet, jeg dykker ned i i dag med en gæst, der ved en ting eller to om billig rejse. Jeg havde allerede hørt rygterne, så i Reykjavik satte jeg mig for at finde ud af, hvor dyrt det egentlig er. Vi starter episoden tilbage i Reykjavik, hvor jeg gik ind i et supermarked for at tjekke priserne på tilfældige varer. Og derefter er jeg begejstret for at kunne byde velkommen til Matt Kepnes, også kendt som Nomadic Matt, tilbage i podcasten. Han er et af de største navne inden for rejseverdenen. Han er New York Times-bestsellerforfatter til How to Travel the World on $50 a Day og skaberen af den enormt populære blog NomadicMatt.com. Gennem årene har han inspireret millioner til at se verden uden at sprænge budgettet. Og nu er han tilbage med en fuldstændig opdateret version af sin ikoniske guidebog. Den hedder nu How to Travel the World on $75 a Day, og det er ikke bare en opdatering – det er næsten en helt ny bog. Den afspejler, hvordan rejseverdenen har ændret sig efter pandemien og indeholder nye tips, opdateret destinationsrådgivning og flere smarte måder at spare penge på.

Iceland is full of surprises – from quirky Christmas traditions to a strict showering culture and an unexpected Eurovision obsession. In this episode of The Radio Vagabond, I talk to Alda Sigmundsdóttir, Helga, and Asbjørn about what Icelanders really think of tourists, the country's fascinating language, and why some locals act like ‘shower police' in public pools. We also uncover hidden gems in Iceland, the real truth about Icelanders and their love/hate relationship with Eurovision, and why so many travellers make the same mistakes when visiting this magical island.

In this week's episode we unravel life beyond borders with none other than the legendary Nomad Matt. Listen as we delve into the life and lessons of Matt Kepnes, exploring the secrets to crafting a life on the go.Matt, a trailblazer in the travel industry, shares his invaluable insights on navigating the nomadic lifestyle. Through the transformation of a creating a side-hustle travel blog to developing a full-time business, we discuss Matt's evolution of life on the road all while scaling and paring down his business. Matt lays out a blueprint for aspiring globetrotters. Discover the lessons that have shaped Nomad Matt's extraordinary journey, gaining wisdom from his experiences around the world. Whether you're a seasoned traveler, an aspiring entrepreneur, or simply someone with a passion for adventure, this episode is your guide to a life well-traveled.Tune in for a dose of wanderlust, practical advice, and the inspiration to embark on your own journey.TOPICS DISCUSSED:How to divide your time for a work/life balance as a travellerFOMO is real, no matter where you are in the worldGrowing & scaling a businessPossibilities in today's travel industryRESOURCES:Connect with Matt -Nomadic Matt's BlogThe BOOK that inspired Matt: The Old Man & the Sea by Earnest HemingwayNR Cocktail Bar in NYCEPISODE DETAILS:10:37 - One of the surprises in travel is to learn the what is the same, but the how and the why are different?11:54 - Something to consider when creating online business is to know that gonna take a lot more work than you think it will be. And it will probably take more time than you imagine.12:33 - If you desire to create a life of more travel, don't negate the 9-5 that allows you to work from anywhere. Having a steady income can be much less stressful than creating a business of your own.16:50 - When stepping in to the travel hacking world the first thing is to think about what your goal is and then aligning your spending and your card type to get the points for that goalSupport the showLet's CONNECT! Subscribe to the Newsletter

“The truth is that our travel anticipations, and our memories, have a way of holding only the most striking parts of an experience—the parts that don't cause burnout.” —Matt Kepnes In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Matt talk about travel journaling, and a journal Matt has designed for travelers (1:15); why travel burnout happens, and how Matt first experienced it on the road (4:30); why rest days are important to a journey, and why one shouldn't over-plan one's days on the road (10:00); how lingering in places allows you to develop a deeper relationship to those places, and how digital nomads can balance work and fun on the road (16:00); and how to create balance in your social-media habits as you travel (23:30). Matt Kepnes (@nomadicmatt), commonly known as “Nomadic Matt,” is a travel blogger and the New York Times bestselling author of Travel the World on $50 a Day and Ten Years a Nomad. Notable Links: The Vagabond's Way, by Rolf Potts (book) Keeping a travel journal (Deviate episode) RememberYourTravels.com (travel journal) Experiencing Norway by hammock (dispatch) Paris Writing Workshops (Rolf's class in France) Digital nomadism (location-independent lifestyle) The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel's 2017 album Lumber. Note: We don't host a “comments” section, but we're happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

You can travel the world and work productively at the same time. Our guest is a NYT bestselling author, traveled to over 100 countries and built a successful business at the same time. Matt Kepnes, also known as Nomadic Matt, shares his best tips for travel hacking and how to be productive while traveling. Thanks […]

In the fourth and final episode of our special mini-series on travel, Lilah talks with Matt Kepnes, the creator of the popular travel blog Nomadic Matt. Matt has been traveling the globe for nearly 20 years, and he's written about it in his books How to Travel the World on $50 a Day and Ten Years a Nomad. Over the years, Matt has amassed a knowledge of all the best ways to see the world without spending a fortune. And on this episode, he shares those tips and more.--------------Want to stay in touch? We love hearing from you. We're on Twitter @ftweekendpod and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap.--------------Links:– Matt is on Twitter and Instagram at @NomadicMatt– The Nomadic Matt blog: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/ – Matt on how to earn points by paying your rent: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/bilt-rewards-review/ – 11 cheap places to travel on the US dollar: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/cheap-places-to-visit-on-the-us-dollar/ – The flight deal websites Matt recommends are Scott's Cheap Flights and Holiday Pirates -------------Special offers for FT Weekend listeners, from 50 per cent off a digital subscription to a $1/£1/€1 trial can be found here: http://ft.com/weekendpodcast--------------This episode was produced by Zach St Louis. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on the podcast, Mitko (@mitkoka) is joined by Raimee Iacofano (@Raimee I.), or as you may know on social media Raimee Travels. Raimee has been working remotely for the past 6 years in roles related to the content, social media marketing, writing, and video production. She has worked for the hugely popular blog NomadicMatt, helped create the My Travel Journal with Matt Kepnes himself, and currently works as the Head of Content for Onomy where she helps empower young adults with the important information they need to navigate adulthood through creator-led, educational content.Raimee is also a popular travel and remote work content creator with over 20,000 followers on Instagram and over 130,000 followers on TikTok. During this episode, she shared the story of how she landed her job working for Nomadic Matt, how to build a remote career and stand out from the competition, and how to balance work while also traveling around the world.

I'm so excited today to be speaking with two amazing travel and remote work experts, Matt Kepnes and Dan Andrews. Matt is the founder of the successful blog, Nomadic Matt and is a New York Times bestselling author of two books. Dan hosts the successful podcast, Tropical MBA, co-founded Dynamite Circle to connect and empower digital entrepreneurs, and also founded Dynamite Jobs.  Both of our guests have spent years as digital nomads. This episode is a bit of a departure from our typical shows but I think it holds some golden lessons and amazing insights for us all.    Learn more at www.luxtravelinsider.com   Connect with me on Social: Instagram LinkedIn

David Cooper talks to the people behind the stories. The ins and outs of travelling on a budget with Matt Kepnes, travel expert and New York Times best selling author. Italian-Australian comedian Joe Avati on headlining the Vaughan Pizzafest in Vaughn, Ontario. The 35th National Spelling Bee of Canada Championship is on Sunday, June 12, so we catch up with its founder Julie Spence and test David on his spelling abilities.  Things go off the rails with comedians Carson Pinch and Taylor Davis as they describe their upcoming show Carson & Taylor Promise to Do a Bunch of Flips  

Traveling to a new country is a great time to start a travel blog so that you can share all your experiences with your friends and family back home. If you love traveling and want to share your experiences and tidbits with the world, you'll thrive as a travel blogger. Passion is contagious, and it's the most significant driver for building an authentic travel community. This is truly a dream job.Matthew Kepnes, also known as Nomadic Matt joins our hosts, Andrew Jernigan and Allen Koski in another episode of The New Nomad. The three nomads share their experiences in places that would make your imagination run wild. They talked about the travel community and how it would help nomads in their journeys. Tune in and listen to why a travel blog is a good way to document and share your love of travel, also brings about the potential for income. [7:06] How to succeed in travel blogging[9:02] A true-blue traveler's favorite place is everywhere[15:55] The virtual world is here to stay[18:24] Finding a travel group to explore with[20:15] Exploring the uncomfortable[23:44] Why do people gravitate toward natureGUEST BIO:Nomadic Matt (otherwise known by his real name, Matthew Kepnes) is an American travel blogger and one of the most experienced backpackers in the world. He's visited over 100 countries and spent nights in over 1,000 hostels. His blog, the Nomadic Matt's travel site, attracts upwards of 1 million visitors every month, and he's also written a number of books, including New York Times bestseller How to Travel the World on $50 a Day.Matt Kepnes Links:LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/matthew-kepnes-949056137Website: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nomadicmatt/?hl=enFollow Insured Nomads at:Instagram: @insurednomadswww.insurednomads.com

Not only is Matt Kepnes, better known as Nomadic Matt, one of the world's leading travel bloggers, but he is also a New York Times Best Selling Author, experienced backpacker, and hostel connoisseur. He has helped thousands travel for less and we're so pumped to have him back for season 2! Find us online!https://www.nomadicmatt.com/https://thenomadicnetwork.com/https://travelcon.org/ (Use code Jeff for $50 off at check out!)https://chubbydiaries.com/https://www.instagram.com/nomadicmatt/https://www.instagram.com/chubbydiaries__/https://www.facebook.com/Chubbydiariestravelhttps://www.pinterest.com/chubbydiaries/_created/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEAMJe2-AwcKjE_iq1HMhzwWe'd like to offer a special thanks to Roy, our audio editor, for helping make this episode possible!

Matthew Kepnes runs the popular travel blog, Nomadic Matt, and also writes a successful newsletter. In fact, Matt's newsletter is one of the biggest I've had on the show. His book, How to Travel the World on $50, is a New York Times Best Seller.After a 2005 trip to Thailand, Matt decided to leave his job, finish his MBA, and travel the world. Since then, he's been to nearly 100 countries, and hasn't looked back. Besides being a New York Times best-selling author, Matt's writings have been featured in countless publications. He's a regular speaker at travel trade shows, and is the founder of FLYTE, a non-profit organization that sends students overseas to bring their classroom experience to life.I talk with Matt about his unique approach to running his business. While others are building online courses, Matt has shifted to doing more in-person meetups and events. We talk about his newsletter, and we also talk about growing your Instagram follower count, scaling a business as a solopreneur, and much more.In this episode, you'll learn: When & why you need to start outsourcing day-to-day tasks Matt's email opt-in strategies and tips to get more subscribers The most important metric about your email list How to quickly get more followers on Instagram Links & Resources Blue Ocean Strategy Matador Lonely Planet Blue Ocean Strategy book Pat Flynn Women In Travel Summit Traverse Cheryl Strayed ConvertKit TravelCon FinCon Podcast Movement World Domination Summit Hootsuite Tim Ferriss Seth Godin OptinMonster Seth Godin: This is Marketing Rick Steves Nathan Barry Show on Spotify Nathan Barry Show on Apple Podcasts Matthew Kepnes' Links Matt's website Follow Matt on Twitter Matt's Instagram The Nomadic Network Nomadic Matt Plus Episode Transcript[00:00:00] Matthew:When I started these courses back in 2013, there wasn't a lot of folks. Now you have so many people with courses, so many Instagrammers and TikTokers selling their stuff. It's sort of like, is this worth the time to really invest in it when my heart really isn't in it? How can I maintain 400K in revenue a year? Is that the best use of our resources? The answer is, not really.[00:00:33] Nathan:In this episode, I talk to my long time friend, Matt Kepnes, from Nomadic Matt.Matt's got a travel blog that's wildly popular, and he gets into that—shares all the numbers. He's probably one of the biggest newsletters that I've had on the show, so far.What I love about him, in particular, is how thoughtful he is about his business model.Most people are just adding more courses and figuring out how to grow revenue; honestly, what's now fairly traditional ways, and it's quite effective. Matt takes another approach. He gets into in-person events and meetups. We get to talk about why in a busy, crowded online world, he's actually going offline.I think that Blue Ocean Strategy he references, the popular book by the same title, I think it's interesting, and it's something worth considering when some of the online strategies don't work. We also get into a bunch of other things like growing his newsletter. Like I said, it's quite large.Then, also growing an Instagram following. Instagram is not something that I'm going to actively pursue, but it's interesting hearing his approach of what you do if you're at 5,000 followers on Instagram, and want to grow to 50,000 or more.So, anyway, enjoy the episode.If you could do me a favor and go subscribe on Spotify or iTunes, or wherever you listen if you aren't subscribed already, and then write a review.I check out all the reviews. Really appreciate it. It helps in the rankings, and I'm just looking to grow the show.So, anyway, thanks for tuning in today. Let's go talk to Matt.Matt, welcome to the show.[00:02:06] Matthew:Thanks for having me, Nathan. I've been trying to get on this podcast for ages.[00:02:10] Nathan:Well, don't say that, that'll make people think they can get on just by asking. Really, you came to my house and stayed in my cottage on the farm, and then you're like, “Yo, have me on the podcast!” And that's when I was like, “Absolutely.” But if anyone just asked, that would not be a thing.[00:02:26] Matthew:No, I just mean I finally—I'm excited that I'm worthy enough in my blogging career to be on.[00:02:33] Nathan:Oh, yes.[00:02:35] Matthew:I've made it.[00:02:36] Nathan:Yeah. It's only taken you, what, a decade and a half?[00:02:39] Matthew:13 and a half years. Slow and steady wins the race.[00:02:43] Nathan:That's right.I actually want to start talking about that side of it, because I've been in the blogging world for 11 years now. But even I feel like things changed so much in the first couple of years, even before I entered into the world. So, I'm curious, going back to the early days, what were the prompts for you to come into the blogging world and say, “Hey, I'm going to start publishing online”?[00:03:10] Matthew:Yeah. You know, it was a very haphazard, there was no grand plan. Like I had Zanger when people had Zeno's, which is, you know, a personal blog, way back, you know, 2003, whatever. And so what, I went on my trip around the world in 2006, I just kept updating this Zynga. You know, it was called, Matt goes the world and it was just like, here I am friends here I am.And then, you know, everyone was really excited in the beginning. And then after a while I got sick in my update because the know their back of their office job. So I kinda just forgot about it until I came home and January, 2008 and I need money. And so I started a temp job, and I had a lot of free time and I really just hated being back in the, the office with the walls and everything.And so I was like, I need to earn money to keep traveling. And so I started the website really as with the goal of it being an online resume, you know, it was very bare bones. I used to share a travel news, have an update, like tips and stories from my trip. And then there was a section where we're like, hire me and it had my features and, you know, the guest blogs I did, I used to write for Matador travel.So just as a way to sort of build up, a portfolio of like, Hey, Yeah, freelance writing because I'm wanting to read guidebooks, you know, I wanted to write for lonely planet. That was a dream, right. The guidebooks. And so just the blog was a way to hone my skills and just get in front of editors to be like, Hey look, I do right.You know, here's where I've been, you know, and, and sort of build that base. And eventually that became a thing where I didn't need to freelance. Right.[00:05:03] Nathan:Was it called nomadic Matt from the beginning.[00:05:06] Matthew:He was, yeah. I B two names, nomadic Matt. And that does the world. Right. Because I like the double entendre of it. Right. Even though, but just cause I have a weird sense of humor and all my friends were like, you can't do that one. You gotta do nomadic Matt. It was really good because it's much better brand name, you know, in the long run.But again, I wasn't thinking about that. Right. I wasn't thinking like, oh, I'm going to start this brand. You know, I gotta think of a clever name that people can remember. It was like,Oh a place where people can see my work.[00:05:39] Nathan:Right. Okay. So now 13 and a half years later, what's the, what's the, the blog and newsletter look like. and I want to dive into the business side of it because I think a lot of people build successful newsletters, audience-based businesses, but don't make the leap to like something bigger than themselves.And so I want to dive into all those aspects of it.[00:06:01] Matthew:13 years later, it's seven people. We just hired a new events coordinator to help. my director of events, Erica, coordinate all these virtual in person events that we're going to kick off again. I have a full-time tech guy, a full-time director of content. We changed his title, but like three research assistants, because.I picked a niche that like is always changing. Right. You know, you have a fitness website, how to do a pull up. It's just, that's it,[00:06:37] Nathan:You ranked for that keyword. You're good to go.[00:06:40] Matthew:Yeah. Like how to do a pull up, doesn't change what to do in Paris or the best hospitals in Paris, constantly changing, you know? so it takes three resources, distance.Plus my content guy, me that basically keep up the content and then I have a part-time, graphic designer and part-time social coordinator.[00:07:00] Nathan:Nice. And how many subscribers do you have in the list now?[00:07:03] Matthew:We just called it, so it's a two 50 because we just, cause I haven't shaved it off in like five years or so. So we basically everybody that hasn't opened the email in one year where we're like, you want to be on.And like 2% of them click that button. And then we just got rid of the other 90%. It was like 60,000 names.[00:07:30] Nathan:Yeah. So for everyone listening, two 50 in this case means 250,000.[00:07:35] Matthew:Yeah.[00:07:36] Nathan:Just to clarify, I 7% businesses off of 250 subscribers would be remarkable. That would be just as impressive, but that's not what we're talking about here. going into, so a lot of people, talk about or worry about, should I prune my list or that kind of thing?What were the things that went into that for you? That's a big decision to, to prune 60,000 people off a list.[00:08:00] Matthew:I think it was probably more, maybe I want to say six 60 to 80 I somewhere around there. we were pushing up against our account before I went to the next billing step.So that's always a good impetus to prune the list, but you know, I I've been thinking about it for a while because. You know, I I really want to see what my true open rate.Is You know, like, okay, I have all these people and we were sending it this, I have multiple lists, but the main weekly list was like, 310,000-315,000 but it's been so long since we called and we have so many emails there and I just really wanted to get a true sense of like, what's our active audience.And so between, between that and, pushing up against the next tier price tier. Yeah. it yeah. It's cool to say like, oh, we have 300,000 300, you know, rather than 250,000 Right. But who cares? Right. I mean, at the end of the day, it's just a vanity metric, right? Yeah. It sounds cool. I get a million emails. Right. But if you only have a 10% open rate, You really only have 100,000.[00:09:20] Nathan:Right. I think that the times that it matters is maybe when you're selling a book to a publisher and that might be the only time that you like that dead weight and your email us actually helps you.[00:09:33] Matthew:Yeah. Like if you're, or you have a course, you know, are you trying to promote your numbers, but people would probably lie about that stuff too. yeah, so like, it really doesn't matter because all that matters is like, what's your true audience? Like who Who are the people that are really opening your stuff?[00:09:50] Nathan:Yeah. So let's dive into the, well, I guess really quick, I should say I am a hundred percent in the camp of, like delete subscribers, like do that once a year, that kind of thing. Clean up the list, go for the highest number of engaged subscribers, rather than the highest number of subscribers. It's just[00:10:06] Matthew:Right.[00:10:07] Nathan:To track.[00:10:08] Matthew:And, and I think you would know better than me, but isn't this a good. Like signal to Gmail. And you know, when you, you don't have a lot of dead emails, just go into a blank account. It's never getting opened or marked as spam or whatever.[00:10:24] Nathan:Yeah, for sure. Cause a lot of these times, there's a couple of things that happen. One is emails get converted to spam traps. And so it's like say someone's signed up for your email list six years ago And, they haven't logged into that email account for a long time.Google and others will take it and convert it to a spam trap and say, Hey, this email hasn't been logged into in six years.And so anyone sending to it, it's probably not doing legit things now you're over here. Like, no that person signed up for my list, but they're basically like you should have cleaned them off your list years ago. And then if that person were to ever come back and log into that Gmail account, do you remember like, oh, just kidding here, have the, have the email account back, but they're basically using that.And so you can follow all the. Best practices as far as how people join your list. But if you're not cleaning it, then you will still end up getting these like spam hits and, and other things. So you absolutely clean your list. Let's talk the business side, on revenue, I don't know what you want to share on the, on revenue numbers, but I'd love to hear any numbers you're willing to share.And then the breakdown of where that comes from, whether it's membership, courses, conferences, that sort of thing.[00:11:35] Matthew:Yeah.So there's like the pre COVID world and the post COVID world. Right. You know, like,[00:11:40] Nathan:Yes.[00:11:41] Matthew:Cause I work in travel, so like, you know, pre COVID we did over a million and like I was probably gearing up to like in 2020, like one, five, I think I were going to get a little over one five. and again, you know, this is, I work in the budget travel side of things, right.So like it's going to sell a lot of $10 eBooks to get up to seven figures. salary books are 10 bucks. and so. Postcode during COVID week, I think in 2020 made like half a million. and this year we'll probably get up to three quarters,[00:12:23] Nathan:Okay.[00:12:24] Matthew:K.[00:12:25] Nathan:He was coming back,[00:12:26] Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. and I think next year we'll, we'll get back over seven and then basically like how to go from there.You know, so maybe 20, 23, I might get to that one, five that was going to get to in 2020. most of the revenue now comes from ads, and then affiliates. we did, we did do a lot on courses, but then I, one of the things that, you know, a big pandemic that stops your business, allows you to do is really look at the things you're doing because every.Zero. So it's like when we start back up, is this worth investing time in? And so the answer is no. So we dropped down from, I think, peak of doing like $400,000 a year and horses, and this year we'll do maybe 40. and that's mostly because we just leave it up as like, you can buy this, we update it every six months.If it needs, it's basically like a high that blog course get all my numbers and tactics and strategies in there. but we don't offer any support for it. Right. It's just, you're buying information. and so it's very passive in that sense, but it's not like a core business where we're really moving and we were doing this pre COVID is moving into events and membership programs.So like we have pneumatic map plus, which gets you like all our guides, monthly calls and sort of like a Patriot on kind of thing, but like free.[00:14:03] Nathan:That cost.[00:14:04] Matthew:Five to 75 bucks a month, depending on what you want. So it's 5 25, 75. Most people opt for the five, of course. And it's really geared to like, get the five.But you know, that brings now, I think like three or four K a month. and then we have the events, which is donation based, but there's just like another two K a month. And so this is like, since COVID right. So like, that's say call it 50 K a year of, of revenue that we've added in. They didn't exist before.And now I know you're, you can compare that against the loss of the courses, but we had been phasing those out for years. and so that's really where we want to grow is bringing in more, you know, monthly revenue for that. Right. You know, Once we started, it's easy and we're gonna start doing tours again and, you know, so more high value things that don't take as much time.[00:15:08] Nathan:Right. So on the core side, I think a lot of people listening, maybe they have an email list of five, 10, 15,000 subscribers, and they're like, Hey, the next thing is to launch a course. And they're hearing that's where a bunch of the revenue is. And so it's interesting you moving away from that. So let's dive in more.What, what made you look at the core side of your business and say, I don't want to like restart that in a post COVID world.[00:15:33] Matthew:Yeah, there's just, there's a lot of competition, right? So like, I think it was like a blue ocean, red ocean strategy, you know, to think of that book of, you know, Blue Ocean Strategy. Right? One of the reasons we went into events is because a lot of our traffic comes from Google. And so it's a constant battle of always trying to be one or, you know, in the first couple of spots.Right with every blogger in every company with SEO budget, but there's not a lot of people doing in-person events or building sort of a community in the travel space. So I looked at that of being like, okay, there are a lot of people doing courses and they love doing courses and they're great teachers, you know, they're, you know, you get folks who know like path when, you know, low, like everyone, all these teachable folks, you know, they, they love that stuff.That's not where my heart really was. And so thinking of like, this is a red ocean now, because you have, when I started this, these courses back in 2013, there wasn't a lot of folks. Right. But now you have so many people with courses, so many Instagrammers and tic talkers selling their stuff. It's sort of like, is this worth the time.To like really invest in it when my heart really isn't right. Like how can I maintain your 400 K in revenue a year?[00:17:02] Nathan:Right.[00:17:03] Matthew:What's it going to take, you know, is that the best use of our resources? And the answer is not really, you know, let other people do that. Who love it. I mean, you want to buy my information.It's it's solid stuff. Right. Everyone loves the advice, but to really create like a cohort, like your class, which is sort of like the new version of courses, you know, like, whether it's a month or three months, it's sort of like, you go with this like cohort, right. My heart really wasn't into it because we can invest more in doing events and conferences and really in-person stuff.Especially now that everyone's really excited to do stuff in person again, with a lot less competition. It's easy. It's easy to start a course, but there's a lot of capital investment in doing events that we have the resource to do that, you know, somebody with a 10,000 email list might not.[00:18:03] Nathan:I think I see a lot of people going into courses in, particularly as you alluded to cohort based courses where they're doing it, like, Hey, this is a whole class that you're doing, you know, you're doing the fall semester for the month of October or whatever it is, I'm doing it, doing it the first time and really enjoying it because it's a new challenge they're showing up for their audience.It's just, it's super fun on that, doing it for the second time and going, huh? Okay. That was way easier and way less. And then the third time they go, I don't think I want to do this anymore. Like if the money is good and I just don't enjoy showing up at a set time for a zoom call or whatever else. So it's interesting of watching people jump on a bandwagon and some people it works for really well, and that is their strength and they love it.And then other people that I'm going to like, look, the money's good. And this is this just, isn't what I want to spend my time on.[00:19:02] Matthew:Yeah. You know, I've been doing it for, you know, seven, eight years now and I just sort of lost the passion for, you know, I think it's, I like when people take the information, they succeed with it. But I think after a while you start to realize, you know, it's sort of a 90 10 rule, right? You, 90% of your students, aren't really going to do anything with it.And it's not your fault. It's just because they become unmotivated or, you know, so we tried to switch to the cohort based to be like, okay, this is the class weekly, weekly calls.You know, come on, come together and you still get this drop off rate. That's, you know, sort, it gets this hard and you're like, all right, I've been doing this for eight years, you know, like moving on.But I mean, if you have the love for like pat loves it, you know, like you've got a whole team about it, he's got all these cohorts stuff that speaks to him where I think I'd rather do stuff in person that[00:20:01] Nathan:Right.Well, let's talk about the in-person side. Cause you did something that most people think is really cool and almost no one realizes how hard it is. I think I know how hard it is because I've attempted the same thing and that starting at a conference where everyone's like, you have this big online following, like what you just need to, you know, you have hundreds of thousands of people you just need, I don't know, 500 or a thousand of them to show up in a suit, that's gotta be easy.Right. And so they go and sort of conference, it's wildly difficult. And so.[00:20:33] Matthew:Difficult.[00:20:34] Nathan:I'd love to hear what made you want to start the conference and then yeah, how's it. How's it gone so far?[00:20:40] Matthew:Made me want to start the conference was I really don't think there's a good conference in the chapel space. Yeah. And there are good conferences in the travel space that are very niche and narrow. you know, like there's a woman in travel summit.That's really great. There's one in Europe culture verse, which I liked, but that's like a couple of hundred people there. Wasn't like a, something to scale, right. With wits, which is women to travel is like 300 people. There was, this is no thousand person, 2000 parts. And like mega travel conference for media that has done like, you know, the conferences we go to where it's like high level, you know, people coming outside of your immediate niche to talk about business skills.You know, there's, you know, In the conferences, there are, there's always the same travel, like it's me and like these other big names, travel bloggers over and over and over again. I want to take what I've seen and, you know, from social media world to, trafficking conversion, to mastermind talks, you know, to take all these things that I had gone to, we were like, let's bring it together for travel.Let's create a high level, not a cheap, like hundred dollar events, like, you know, with major keynotes who get paid to speak, because you know, in a lot of travel conferences, you don't get paid to speak, right? So you're high. You're going to get, you know, Cheryl strayed that come to your event for free.That's not waking up to do that. You know, I, you know, and while I can get nice deals from my friends, you still got to pay people right. For their time. And, and so that allows us to have a larger pool of people to create the event that I want to do. Because we will also get into the point where why should somebody who's been blogging for five or six years, go to travel blogging conference app when nobody is at a more advanced stage of blogging than you are, you know, nobody understands SEO better than you do, right?So like after a while you get into this, just drop off of people being like, do I want to fly around the world and hang out with my friends? So I wanted to also create an event where that I could go to and learn something is that I knew that would attract some of the other OJI, travel bloggers.[00:23:06] Nathan:Yeah. So how the, how the first one go, like what was easier than you expected and what was much harder than you.[00:23:14] Matthew:The first one went really well. We had 650 people, and you know, the next one we had 800. But now we're closed because of Kobe, but we're going to do one in 20, 22. And hopefully we get 800 again, things that shocked me, people buy tickets and don't show up. Right. That's weird. Right. Cause I was like, okay, we have 700, you know, I expected maybe like a 5% attrition rate, you know?So like I sold my 750 tickets, but then like six 50, those 600 showed up because the other 50 of those speakers, right. I was like, wow, that's a lot of no-shows for not achieving conference, you know? And so we plan, you know, a 10% attrition rate now.[00:24:04] Nathan:And you just mean someone who doesn't even pick up their badge? Not even, they didn't come to share us rates keynote, but just like they didn't show up to anything at the conference.[00:24:13] Matthew:Yeah, they just did not show up to the conference at all, you know? And. So that was a shock me. I mean, I know I work in travel and, you know, people get last minute of press trips or they, you know, they buy their ticket and they can't come cause, or they got stuck in the Seychelles or whatever, but I did not expect such a high level of no-shows. Because the food here's another thing, food costs a lot of money. Right.You know, I, I fully understand why the airlines took one olive out of your salad. Right. Because it's one olive, but times a million people every day it's actually adds up. Right. So like you think, oh, well it drinks five bucks.That's cool. We'll do a happy hour. Okay. Now times that by a thousand drinks Write, you know, times two, because everyone's drinking two or three, at least two. Right. So then you're like, okay, that's a $15,000 bill that you ended up with. you know, when everyone is all set up. Tax and tip hotel.It's crazy. It's like, okay, these fees, you're like, oh, I got to spend this like, yeah. Okay. Here is your lunch bill 50 grand.But then there's this fee that fee, this fee, this fee like Jake had like 65. You're like, all right. I guess I got a budget for that too. So that was, that was really weird. Like high is the lunch cost, $40,000, you know, and actually hotels, overcharge, and they add a bunch of fees and yeah, you can get them pretty quick.[00:25:46] Nathan:So if you were, if I was starting to conference. They have 50,000 people on a email list or a hundred thousand. And I'm like, Matt, I heard you started a conference. I'm going to do it too. What advice do you have for me? Like what are the first things that you'd call out?[00:26:03] Matthew:It's going to cost like three times more than you think. pricing. Where I went wrong in the second year. Right. So like we've lost money the first two years doing it, but I expected to lose money. It wasn't because I was investing in this long-term thing. Right. But we're at where I lost more money on the second year is that I really factor in flights as well as I did, like I kind of low balled it.And so I always think he should. Oh. And I also invited, I kept inviting people without really seeing, like, where was I? on my like speaker fees. Right. So like really creating a budget and then sticking to it. And even if that means not getting some of your dream folks, to a later year, but working up the food and beverage costs first, because you know, you go to the hotel and they're going to say your F and B, you know, is $90,000.And if they never going to hit that, no, you're going to go way. You're going to blow cause you got to get them to say, what are all the fees? You know, like, okay. You know, if I have a 300 person conference and I want to do two lunches, what does that look like?Plus all the taxes and fees,[00:27:23] Nathan:Okay, well, you, the launch price and you'll, you'll pencil that into your spreadsheet and they'll fail to mention that there's mandatory gratuity on top of that and taxes and whatever[00:27:33] Matthew:Yeah,And whatever, you know, plate fee there is. Right. So you gotta factor all that in and then look at what you got left.[00:27:40] Nathan:It's like when you're buying a car and you have to talk in terms of the out the door price in[00:27:45] Matthew:Yeah.[00:27:46] Nathan:The sticker price,[00:27:47] Matthew:Yeah. I made that mistake when I bought my car last year, I was like, oh 17. And I was like, wait, how did 17 go from 17,000 to 22? And like, well,[00:27:56] Nathan:Right.[00:27:57] Matthew:Thing that I was like, ah, okay,[00:28:00] Nathan:Yeah. Do you think w what are some of the opportunities that have come out from running the conference and has it had the effects of your community that you've hoped? It would,[00:28:10] Matthew:You know, this is a very, blogger faced event, you know, more than just travel consumers. but it's definitely allowed me to, you know, meet folks like Cheryl Austrade, you know, great way to meet your heroes. Is there pay them to come speak at a conference? so, you know, I, I know Cheryl, like, that's cool.The becoming more ingrained in sort of the, the PR side and with the demos and the brands, because, you know, on the website, I destination marketing organization.[00:28:44] Nathan:Okay.[00:28:45] Matthew:So they're like, you know, visit, you know, Boise visit Idaho, we call them a DMO. And so like since I don't really do press trips on the website, I don't know a lot of them really well.And so this has been a way to be, become more ingrained on that sort of industry side of events and not live in my own. and that's helpful because now I know all these folks, when we want to have meetups that might be sponsored when I do a consumer event, which is next up. So get these folks to come for that.So it's just really been good, just professionally to meet a lot of people that I would normally just not meet simply because I go to events and they were like, Hey, come to our destination, we'll give you a free trip. And like, you have a policy. And so I don't get invited to as many things as you would think.[00:29:37] Nathan:Yeah. Why, why do you have that policy? What do you like? What's behind it. And why is that different from other travel bloggers?[00:29:45] Matthew:Hi, it mostly stems from my hatred of reciprocity. You know, like if you, if I go on a free trip and it sucks, like I then create, it's awkward. If I have to go like hot, like, Hey, you suck. And I have to write this online. Then it creates a lot of bad blood that gets talked about, you know, it's a very small industry.People move around a lot, so you get less opportunities or I can just go, Hey, I'm not going to write that. And then they feel bad. Cause like, you know, like you're a nice person just doing their job, you know, like it's not your fault. I had a bad time. you know, I did this once with a friend and she gave me a couple of places to stay, at a hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica and chill out and sort of tell was really far out of town.And th the amount it took me to take a taxi back and forth. Like, I could've just got a place right. In the center of San Jose, you know? And so I was like, I really, I just don't think it's a good fit for my Anya. And she was very unhappy about it. I was like, I mean, I could write in, but I have to say that.Right. Yeah. And so I just never wanted to put myself in those situations again. I also think that taking a lot of free travel, like I do budget travel. So you given me a resort like that. Doesn't how does that help my audience? So if I start living this awesome life and getting free stuff, that's great for me, but it's not good for my audience.And so I don't mind taking free tours. Like, let's say I'm going to go to Scotland. Right? I did. This actually was real life example. I wanted to access cause I wanted to write about scotch. So I was like, Hey, I don't want to do like the public tour. you know, that 20 bucks, you know, it's like 10 minutes and you get the, I like, I want to talk to people because I want quotes for articles.I'm going to do like history stuff. So I contacted the Scottish tourism board and they got, got me visited. I that's where I went to. I just love P scotch. and so they got me like private tours. So I can like take notes in such. and they gave me a free accommodation that I was like, I want to be really clear about this.I'm not mentioning this place. And they're like, just, just take it. And so, and I didn't mention it and I didn't mention that, you know, I got access to these, you know, distillers to ask some questions, but it was more about building this article as a journalist than,Hey, I want like free tours, you know, like, I mean, I saved 20 bucks. Right. But the point was, I wanted to learn about the process to write about this story beam. And then they offered me free flights and stuff. It was like, now I just, I just want the tourist, please. Thanks.[00:32:44] Nathan:Yeah, it's interesting of the, what a lot of people would view as the perks to get into travel blogging. Right. I want to get into it because then I'd have these free chips or I can have these offs or whatever else, I guess the right apps you get, no matter what, but, You know that that's the other side of like, everything comes with a cost.And I think it's important to realize what you're doing because you want to versus what you're doing, because now you feel obligated because someone gave you something for free.[00:33:12] Matthew:Yeah. The most thing is I tend to accept our city tourism part, which gets you like free access to museums and stuff. I was like, okay, that's cool.But beyond that, I just, you know, I don't want to get into, like, you want to give me a museum pass. I'm going to see these museums anyway. Sure. I'll save some money and I'll, I'll make a wheel note, but I'm going to no obligation to write about which museum, because I write about the ones I like anyway.So,[00:33:39] Nathan:Right.[00:33:40] Matthew:You know, that's not to me like free travel. That's not what people think of Like the perks of. the job are.[00:33:46] Nathan:I, that was funny. When I learned about the, like the welcome packet that cities will, will give, like the first time I saw it in action was. I went to Chris, Guillebeau's like end of the world party in Norway. and I was hanging out with Benny Lewis there who runs, you know, fluent in three months, a mutual friend of both of ours.You've known him longer than I have, but like, we're both at our check into the hotel and he's got like this whole thing of all these museum passes he's got, and he's just like, yeah, I just emailed the tourism board and said, I was going to say, and they're like, oh, blogger. And they gave him like, you know, access to everything and you only ended up using half of it because we weren't there for that long, but,[00:34:28] Matthew:Yeah. That's great. You should always get these discount cards, like the comparison museum pass or the New York mic go card that will save you a lot of money if you're doing lots of heavy sites in.[00:34:39] Nathan:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. okay. So how does actually let's dive into the COVID side, right? Cause COVID took a hit huge hit on the entire traveling. we saw that just in the like running ConvertKit where, you know, having bloggers in so many different areas, we had a lot of growth because lots of people were stuck at home and start like, I'm going to start a new blog.I'm going to have time to, to work on this or whatever. And it was a lot of cancellations, mostly from the travel industry. If people like, look now that what this 50,000 person list, that was a huge asset is now just a giant liability. because no one's planning trips. How did you navigate that time? And what, like, what's the journey been?You know, the last 18 months, two years,[00:35:28] Matthew:Well first I would say that's really shortsighted of someone canceling their 50,000 person list like[00:35:34] Nathan:I think they were like exporting sitting on it and they're going to come back. But, but I agree. It was very shortsighted.[00:35:39] Matthew:Yeah. Like just like throw it away. 50,000 emails, right. I mean, it was tough in the beginning. You know, we went from like January and February were like best months ever, you know? And like, I mean, even, and then all of a sudden like, like March 13th is like that Friday, you know, it's like everything crashes, like again, like we were on our way to have a banner year, like, like, like hand over fist money, you know?And, and then to being like, how am I going to pay the bills? You know? and so, cause you know, we, haven't sort of the, the overhang from Java con, right. You know, like we didn't make money on the first two years. And year three was the, the breakeven year and travel con was in, Right in the world ended in March.Right. And so I had laid out all, like, you're so close to the event, that's you? That's when you start paying your bills. Right. And the world hits and all the sponsors who, you know, have their money, you know, in the accounting department are like, oh, we're not paying this now. And so you're like, well, I've just paid $80,000 in deposits and all that money that was going to offset.It has gone. and then you have people canceling. A lot of people were really mean about it. They're like, oh, I'm, I'm back now. And we're going to do charge backs, that, you know, you have that overhang and just, you know, fall in revenue it's it was really tough. thank God for government loans, to be quite honest, like I, I went to native through if it wasn't for, all that, because a lot of my.My money was tied up in non-liquid assets. So it wasn't like I could just like sell some socks though, you know, pay the bills. but things have come back a lot. I mean, there's a lot of paint up the man, for travel, I view it like this way, right? You got kids, right. You know, they get in trouble, you take away their toy and then you give them back.Right. Where do they want to do now? They just want to play with that toy even more because it's like, no, it's mine. No one else can have it. And like where you want to do this other toy. No. And so now that the toy of travel is being given back to people like people are like, never again, am I going to miss out on this opportunity to travel on my dream trips?Let's make it happen. So we had a really good summer. I spoke to mediocre fall and winter just as the kids are back in school, people are traveling less, you know, but as more in the world, that? will be good. but again, as I said, at the beginning of this, it's going to take awhile for us to get, to get back to where we were, but there's definitely demand there,[00:38:36] Nathan:When's the next conference when the travel con happening again.[00:38:39] Matthew:April 29th,[00:38:41] Nathan:Okay.[00:38:41] Matthew:22,[00:38:42] Nathan:So what's the how of ticket sales benefit for that? Is there like that pent-up demand showing up and people booking conference tickets or are they kind of like, wait and see, you know, you're not going to cancel this one too kind of thing.[00:38:55] Matthew:Yeah, I mean, we're definitely not canceling it. I mean, the world would have to really end for it. We just launched, this week. So, early October, we just announced our first round of speakers. and we sold like 10 or 15 tickets. I don't expect a lot of people, to buy until the new year I saw this.And the old event, right? Because in the old event we were had in May, 2019. Right. And we announced in the fall, but it wasn't until like, you know, a few months prior that people started buy their ticket. Right. Because they don't know where they're going to be. You know, where are they flying from? What were the COVID rules going to be like, the demand is there.But I, I know people are probably just waiting and seats for their own schedule too, you know? So, but you were against so 800 tickets and honestly, from what I've heard from other events, you know, people are selling out, you know, because there was such demand, like it's not a problem of selling the tickets, so I'm not sure.[00:40:01] Nathan:Yeah, one thing, this is just a question that I'm curious for myself. since I also run a conference, what do you think about conferences that rotate cities or like Mo you know, move from city to city, which we've been to a lot of them that do it. You know, the fin con podcast movement areTwo longer running ones that you and I have both been to. obviously that's what you're doing. The travel column. well, domination summit, which we've both been to a lot, you know, it was like very much it's Portland. It's always Portland. We'll never be anywhere anywhere else. What do you think, why did you chose? Why did you choose the approach that you did in what you think the pros and cons are?[00:40:39] Matthew:Yeah, for, for me it was, you know, we're in travel. I wanted to travel. Right. And plus, you know, I mean, you get up, we get a host, right? So like Memphis is our sponsor. Right. It's in Memphis. Yeah, it was supposed to be in new Orleans. New Orleans was our host sponsor. Right. So moving it from city to city allows us to get, you know, a new host sponsor every year is going to pony up a bunch of money.Right. I don't know how Podcast move into it, but I think if I wasn't in travel and it was more something like traffic and conversion, or maybe we'll domination summit, I would probably do it in the same place over and over again because you get better consistency. you know, one of the things I hate about events is that they move dates and move locations.Right. And, and so it's a little hard to in travel cause you know, COVID really screwed us. Right. But we're moving to being, you know, in the same timeframe, right. We're always going to be in early May. That's where I want to fall into like early may travel car, change the city, but you got the same two-week window, because it's hard to plan, right?So like if you're changing dates in cities, you're, you're just off of a year. So I wanted some consistency, make it easier for people to know, like in their calendar, Java con early Mac, Java con, early Mac, you[00:42:17] Nathan:Yep.[00:42:18] Matthew:It doesn't really work out cause of COVID, but post COVID we're we're moving to that, that, early may[00:42:24] Nathan:Yeah. Okay. So let's talk more about sort of scaling different between different levels of the business. So there's a lot of people who say, all right, 10, 20, 50,000 subscribers, somewhere in there. And it's very much the solopreneur of like, this is, I'm a writer. I just do this myself. Or maybe they, you know, contract out graphic design or a little bit more than that.What were some of the hardest things for you and why and what worked and what didn't when you made the switch from it being nomadic, Matt being just Matt to Matt plus a team.[00:43:00] Matthew:Yeah, it It's definitely hard to give up that control, right. Because you always think no one can do your business better than you can. And I mean, even to this day, I still have issues doing, you know, giving up control. Right.[00:43:14] Nathan:What's something that you don't want to, that you're like still holding onto that, you know, you need to let go of[00:43:19] Matthew:Probably just little things like checking in on people and, you know, Content probably like Content. I'm very specific about my voice, the voice we have. So. But I should let my content, people make the content that I know is fine. but I definitely, probably overly check on my teams to be like, what'd you do today?You know, you know, that kind of stuff. but I did take a vacation recently and I went offline for a week and they didn't run the thing down. So I was like, oh right. That was my like, okay, I can, I can let go. And it's going to be okay. But, so getting comfortable with that much earlier on, I would probably save you a lot of stress and anxiety.I definitely think you should move to at least having somebody, you know, a part-time VA, if you're making over six figures, hire somebody because you know, how are you are not going to go from a 100k to 500k really by yourself? Unless, you know, you just have some crazy funnel that you do, but even the people I know who are solopreneurs, they still have two or three people helping them a little bit part, even if it's just part-time because the more money you make, the more time you have to spend keeping that income up.And so your goal as the creator in the owner should be, how can I grow? How can I make more money? It should not be setting up your WordPress blog. You know, It should not be answering joke emails It should not be, you know, scheduling your social media on Hootsuite, that kind of low level stuff can be done by, you know, a part-time VA And maybe that part-time VA becomes a full-time VA as you scale up more. But you know, if you, you have to free up your time and you're never going to free up your time, if you're spending a lot of that time, scheduling. So you mean that the people I know who have half a million dollar businesses, selling courses, you know, and they're really just a solopreneur.They have somebody do that grunt work, right. Plus if you're making that much money, is that the best use of your time now? Really? Right. So getting somebody to do sort of the admin front work, as soon as you can, even if it's on a part-time basis will allow you to focus on growth marketing, and monetization, which is where you should be like Podcast.This week. I have like four or five podcasts I'm doing, right. You know, that is a good chunk of my week. If I have to spend that time scheduling on social media, you know, or setting up blog posts, like I can do that. And this is where the growth in the audience comes in.[00:46:12] Nathan:Okay. So since we're talking about growth, what are the things that you can tie to the effort that you put in that drives growth? Are there direct things or is it a very indirect unattributable[00:46:27] Matthew:Yeah, I think there's some direct things like, you know, before, you know, asking 10 years ago, I would say guest posting on websites. Right. You write a guest post on like Confederacy's site and boom, tons of traffic. Right. that doesn't exist anymore. I mean, yeah. You can get a lot of traffic, but it's not like the huge windfall it used to be, but it's still good for brand awareness.SEO. Great for links. Right. I would say things today that I can tie directly to stuff Podcast and, Instagram. So doing, like, doing a joint Instagram live with another creator. Right. You know, like me and, you know, it's I know pat. because someone with a big following there, we do, we do a talk, you know, 30 minutes, you know, I can see in my analytics, like a huge spike in my following right after that.And so that's a great way to sort of grow your audience is to do Instagram collabs in just like 30 minutes tops and[00:47:32] Nathan:Podcasts[00:47:33] Matthew:I get a lot of people will be like, I saw you on this podcast. I was like, wow, cool.[00:47:37] Nathan:I always struggle with that of like, of all the activities that you can do. Cause you get to a point where there's just so many opportunities open to you and it's like, which are the best use of time. What should you say yes to, what should you say no to, and I don't know. Do you have a filter along those or do you just, is it just kind of gut-feel[00:47:53] Matthew:I will say yes to any text-based interview, normally it is the same questions over and over again. So I sort of have a lot of canned responses that I can just kind of paste. and tweak But those are links, so I'm like, sure. Yeah. Send your questions over. Cut paste, tweak, you know, you know,[00:48:12] Nathan:Customize[00:48:13] Matthew:Customize a little bit, but you know, how many times do I need to rewrite from scratch?How'd you get into blogging, you know, what's your favorite country, Podcasts I definitely have a bigger filter on like you, I don't do new podcasts.[00:48:27] Nathan:Okay.[00:48:27] Matthew:I know that's like bad. because you know, this new podcast could become the next big thing, but come back to me when you have some following.[00:48:36] Nathan:I like Seth, Godin's rule I'm not on south Dakotan's level by any means, but he says like, come back to me. When you have 100 episodes, I will happily be your 100th interview on your podcast or something[00:48:47] Matthew:Yeah.[00:48:48] Nathan:And he's just like, look, Put in your time and then we'll talk.[00:48:51] Matthew:Yeah, so I like, I don't look for just following, but like again, you know, knowing that people give up on blogs, people give up Podcast too. So. You know, you have to have been doing it for like six months a year, like week a weekly, you know? So I know like this something you care about. and I like to listen because you know, you get a lot of new people and they're not really great.You know, they asked us like a lot of canned questions and you're like, listen, you're taking, you know, an hour, hour and a half of my time. You gotta make it interesting for me.Well, yeah, Podcast. And then for Instagram stories you gotta have, or Instagram lives, either a brand new audience, or if you're in travel, at least 75,000.Cause I have like a one 30, so I want to keep it in the same in a level.[00:49:43] Nathan:Yeah.I know nothing about Instagram and promotions on Instagram and all of that is there. If someone were to, like, in my case, if I came to you and say, Hey, I want to grow my Instagram following. I've got 3000 people or 5,000 people or something like that. And I want to be have 50,000 a year from now.Where would you point me?[00:50:05] Matthew:I would say, do you join Instagram lives with people like once a week, you know, and just, or maybe once a week for you and then go to somebody else on their side once a week. So, and just kind of work your way up, like find people in your, your sort of follower count level, you know? So in this case, I'd probably do, you know, you know, 1000 to 5,000, I would look for in your niche and like get online for 30 minutes and talk about whatever it is you want to talk about and and then go to someone else's channel and do that, and then keep doing that because you'll just see giant spikes and then you can move up the the ladder.Then you have 10,000 followers and someone with 25,000 followers might give you the time of day. And then you talk about that, you know, and you just sort of build awareness because you're always there. You're always around.[00:51:03] Nathan:It's a really good point about the figuring out what those rough bands are and reaching out within those. Because I think a lot of people are like, I'm going to go pitch whoever on doing Instagram live together. And it's like, you have 5,000 and they have 150,000. And like the content might be a perfect fit, but they're most likely going to say no, because you're not[00:51:24] Matthew:Yeah.[00:51:24] Nathan:Driving that much value for, or that many subscribers for their audience.[00:51:29] Matthew:Yeah. You know, and so you, maybe I would, you know, someone was like a finance blogger, and they had like 40,000, 30, 40,000. I'd probably.We do it because people who like to say money, like say money on travel. So it'd be like, there's probably a good fit. And you know, 30,000 people, they might not know me or they have like, like you said, 3000, come back to me, you know, when there's another zero,[00:51:57] Nathan:Right. Well, and then the other thing that's going to be true is if I'm bringing you to, to my audience to share and teach something, if you're using this strategy, like go do another 20 of these or 50 of these, and your pitch will be better. And the way that you teach finance to travel bloggers or whatever else it is, is going to get so much better.[00:52:17] Matthew:Yeah,[00:52:18] Nathan:It's like, I kind of don't want to be your Guinea pig. You know, I don't want my audience to be your Guinea[00:52:23] Matthew:Yeah,[00:52:24] Nathan:Pig for your content. And so just get more experienced and come back.[00:52:28] Matthew:Yeah. And you know, you also gotta think about, you know, people are so time-starved right. You know, when I started blogging, I could. There was no Instagram. There was no Snapchat. There was no Tech-Talk, you know, Twitter was barely a thing. So I didn't have to split my focus on so many different platforms and channels.Right. I can just, alright, I can be on this one blog, but now when people are like, whoa, sorry, I have to like manage all these different social channels and all of these comments in the blog and everything. They not don't have like an hour to give, you know, to just anybody way do you could have before,[00:53:12] Nathan:Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. Okay. So on the email side, specifically, if someone came to you with say 1,000 newsletter subscribers today, and they're like, I want to grow, I mean, you're looking to grow to 5,000. This might be so far removed from where you're at that you're like, I don't even know if that was, you know, a decade ago that I was in that position, but what are you seeing that's working?Where would you point them?[00:53:33] Matthew:What works for us right now? one having email forms everywhere on your site, sidebar, footer, we have one below the content below the content forms, and popups, popups, the work they're really great. we find for really long posts, having a form in the middle of the post converts better than, at the end of the post, because know a A lot of people don't read to the end, but when they get to in the middle you're still there.You know, if you look at heat maps are really long websites, right? You just see that drop-off right. So if all your forms are at the bottom of the page, they're just not getting the visibility, that you need. so middle of the page,[00:54:19] Nathan:Do you play with a lot of different incentives of like, you know, Opt-in for this fee guide, you know, or are you customizing it to something for a particular country or there, the content that they're reading[00:54:30] Matthew:Yeah, so we use OptinMonster for that. and so we have, like, if If you go to our pages that are tagged Europe, you get a whole different set of options. than if you go to Australia, like, and like the incentives are like, you know, best hostels in Europe, you know, best hostels in Australia, right? Like little checklist guides.And I tweak what the copy for that, you know, just to see what wording, will lift up a better conversion rate. But yeah, we definitely, because, you know, we cover so many geographic areas. The needs of someone going to Europe are a little different than somebody going to New Zealand. So we, we definitely customize that kind of messaging. And I think that helps a lot, you know, and definitely customizing messaging as much as possible. Um know, but in terms of just, you know, we can talk about, you know, the market, like how do you word things, but middle pop-ups and mil of blog posts definitely converts the best. And so like that's where we see a lot of growth, as well as, just on Instagram telling people to sign up for my newsletter or Twitter or Facebook, but don't let the algorithm, you know, keep you from your travel tips, sign up now and people do.[00:55:58] Nathan:Okay. And is that like swipe up on stories that you're doing[00:56:02] Matthew:Yeah.[00:56:03] Nathan:You know, on an Instagram live or all the above?[00:56:06] Matthew:All the above.[00:56:07] Nathan:Yeah.[00:56:07] Matthew:You just constantly reminding people to sign up for the list, you know, and. One of the failings of so many important for influencers today is, you know,They always regret everyone as everyone does. They always regret not starting to list, you know? And so, you know, you just got to hammer into people, sign up for the list, sign up for the list, sign up for the list.Yeah. And a lot of the copy is, do you see all my updates? No. Would you like to sign up for this newsletter?[00:56:39] Nathan:Yeah, because everyone knows. I mean, I come across people all the time. It's like, I used to follow them on Instagram. I haven't seen, oh no, I do still follow them on Instagram. Instagram just decided that I apparently didn't engage with their content enough or something.[00:56:53] Matthew:Yeah,[00:56:54] Nathan:So now I no longer see their posts,[00:56:56] Matthew:Yeah. You like, I go, I always go to my like 50 least interacted profiles. Right. And, you know, there are some people that aren't there. I interact with this guy all the time. How is this the least attractive? But that that's Instagram and saying, here are the people we don't show you in your feet.[00:57:13] Nathan:W where do you see that? Is that[00:57:16] Matthew:If you go to your, who you're following, it's it should be up on the top.[00:57:20] Nathan:Hmm. All right. I'll have to look at that.[00:57:22] Matthew:Yeah. I'll send you a screenshot. and so like, that's the algorithm be like, here are the people who you interact with the least, but it's like, no, I, I love their stuff. why why do it take them from me? So,[00:57:36] Nathan:Zuckerberg is like, do you really love their stuff? I just not feeling it.[00:57:40] Matthew:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, it's just, you know, the algorithms are terrible and what I hate and I learned this last year, and this was sort of a unsurprising, but surprising thing is that stories, which used to be like the latest first.[00:57:59] Nathan:Yeah.[00:57:59] Matthew:That is, they have an algorithm for that now, too. And I was like, I, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am surprised.And I'm annoyed by that because like, I liked it when it was just the newest first, but Nope, now that is based on, you know, sort of like Tik TOK thing of like, oh, this story is getting really a lot of interactions. We'll bring it up the front of people's queue or, you know, so it's not just like your first, because you had one, one second ago, you know, like it could, it's based on an algorithm[00:58:35] Nathan:Yeah.And that's how it's all going to go. Facebook did that a lot, you know, with Facebook fan pages back in the day where it used to be fantastic for engagement. And then they were like, yeah, it's fantastic. If you pay us[00:58:46] Matthew:Yeah. And even then it's like, I would pay to boost posts. I was like, great. You saw, I lectured five people. What? I just gave you a hundred bucks and that was. And there was some guy you remember him commenting last year. He was like, whatever happened to this page? I was like, I'm still here. He's like, no, no, no, no.And this isn't a common thread in Facebook. He's like your pages to get a lot more engagement. What happened? I was like, oh, Facebook algorithm. I was like, people just don't see it. Let me tell you where all my analytics side it's like this page. So I have 2000 people. You're like great. 1%, woo[00:59:23] Nathan:Do you do paid advertising? I'd like to get email subscribers.[00:59:28] Matthew:We used to, but, the CPMs went up so much that it wasn't worth the effort. You know, like paying a dollar 52 bucks for an email subscriber, is just a lot of money for, for, for things. We don't mind ties directly. Like we're not taking people through finals buy a course, right? Like just to get rot email, I'm not paying two bucks for.Yeah. And, and so I just, we stopped paying, like during the pandemic, like, June, June of last year, we were like, oh, we're going to take a break. And then we paid somebody to help us for it to make kind of reset it up. But I just had to spend down so much. I was like, you know what, I'm going to turn off for a bit.And yeah, that's been like,[01:00:17] Nathan:Didn't really miss it.[01:00:18] Matthew:Yeah, I looked at the numbers recently cause I was thinking, should we do it? And it's not that big of a difference of just doing it organically on like Instagram stories or just on the page. Right. And I also don't really like giving money to the Zuckerberg empire of VO. I just not a fan of that business.And so like, I know my ad spend is low, but I can't say just. On a rod number. Like it wasn't that big of a deal. Like, you know, like, cause the CPMs were so high, we were having to pay a lot of money. So like we put in like two grand a month and we weren't getting thousands. We getting hundreds of people, you know, I want four for two grand.I want thousands of people.[01:01:06] Nathan:Yeah. For my local newsletter, we're doing paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram and averaging about $2 per subscriber. And that I think now that's considered pretty good. You'd like a lot of, with a broader audience, you'd be at $3 or more per subscriber and it gets expensive pretty fast.[01:01:23] Matthew:Yeah. I mean, but I think at some point you'll just see such diminishing returns that, you know, I mean, how many people are in Boise, can you hit, you know, over and over again?Right.[01:01:35] Nathan:Yep.[01:01:36] Matthew:I, I was just reading Seth Godin's book. This is Marketing. And he said, you know, they talked about ads.You turned off ads when the Content says turn ‘em off. And my Content, I was like, you know, they're not really paying for themselves.[01:01:50] Nathan:Yeah. Let's see. Yeah. You turn that off. Looking forward, maybe like two or three years is that I think your business has fascinating of the approach that you have of taking an online audience, building a real team around it, and then building it into the in-person community. what do you think the business is going to look like in two, three years?Where, where is revenue coming from? What's your vision for the events and meetups and what are the things that like over that time period, they get really excited.[01:02:19] Matthew:Yeah. Two, three years. So we're talking, you know, 20 by 20, 23, most of our revenue coming from stuff in person, you know, having chapters around the world, people pay to go to them. So, you know, it it's like 10 bucks and you can bring your friends for free, right. So it's like five bucks versus. Just for the cost of like hosting events.Right. doing lots of that, doing tours, we're bringing back. and they won't be just with me cause they're community events. Right. So we'll have guides, right. So it's not just, you're coming to travel with me, sort of what Rick, Steve does. Right. You go on and Rick Steves tour, it's his itinerary, but he's not on the tour.Right. He shows up to a couple of them throughout the season when it's not like you don't expect him to be your guide at the time. So moving to that, having a consumer event for like, like a, like a world domination summit, you know, a weekend somewhere just for travel consumers, having an app for both having an app for that company. then online just being a lot of and affiliates and you know, even me. Just even taking away just having this like passive income course, just because, you know, one less thing to worry about. Right.And then travel con, so being around, but actually making money this time.[01:03:47] Nathan:Do you think travel con is going to turn into, I mean, obviously it's a significant amount of revenue, but the expenses are so high. Do you think it will turn into a profitable business[01:03:56] Matthew:Oh yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, a lot of the unprofitability is just comes from the fact that I had no idea where that was doing.[01:04:02] Nathan:Yeah, I know that firsthand from my own conference, so yeah.[01:04:07] Matthew:It was, I didn't realize how quickly expenses gets that. Right. You know, being like, oh, okay. Like my food and beverage budget is 120,000 writing that in there. And then getting $145,000 bill because, oh yeah, it's 120,000 food, but then there's tax fees, which we, you know, all this stuff and like, Okay, well, that's $25,000 off the profit.Right. and so with a better handle of expenses, like we were definitely like this year, we were gonna like reg even, you know, at the very minimum, we'll pre COVID and this year we'll also break break event. Um it's and just keeping a handle on, you know, like, well, how will I don't invite a hundred speakers, you know?And, and be like, oh, I had planned to only budget, you know, 50,000 speaker fees, but now I'm at 80. Okay. Like, handling the cost better. We're good. Now I have a professional events team that kind of slaps me around and it's like, can't spend that money.[01:05:06] Nathan:I know how it is, where I'm like, Hey, what if, and then just like, now[01:05:10] Matthew:Yeah,[01:05:10] Nathan:Love it, but no,[01:05:12] Matthew:Yeah,[01:05:12] Nathan:Don't like, you don't have the budget for it.[01:05:15] Matthew:Yeah. But no, I mean, you know, we used to have a party. And we're getting rid of the second night party because people don't want to go. Like we didn't have a lot of people show up cause like they're out and about on town. So it's like, wow, I just spent, you know, $40,000 for like a third of the conference to come, you know, why not take that money and use it to something that's more valuable for everybody that has more like impact for dollar spent and still not like go over budget.You know, same thing with lunches. We got, we were getting rid of, we're doing one lunch now.You know, cause people don't really care that much, you know, about in[01:06:01] Nathan:Yeah, it's super interesting.Well, I love the vision of where the conference is going, and particularly just the way that the whole community interplays. I think it's been fun watching you figure out what you want your business model to be, because obviously, with a large audience, your business model can be any one of a hundred different variations.I like that you keep iterating on it, and figuring out the community.[01:06:26] Matthew:Yeah, we're definitely going

Matt Kepnes is the godfather of travel bloggers and author of "How To Travel The World On $50 a Day". In today's Whiskey & Wisdom episode, Matt and Chris discuss some of their epic stories and life lessons from their world travels.

To close out 2020, we welcomed award-winning author and the original budget traveler Matt Kepnes, also known as @NomadicMatt. As one of our most exciting guests yet, Matt chatted with us about his traveling start (and how it turned into 10+ years), his New York Time's best-selling novels, and his unsuspecting yet favorite travel tip for any adventurer!Matthew Kepnes runs the award-winning budget travel site nomadicmatt.com. He's the author of the NYT best-seller How to Travel the World on $50 a Day and the travel memoir Ten Years a Nomad. His writings and advice have been featured in The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, Lifehacker, Budget Travel, BBC, Time, and countless other publications. He's also the founder of TravelCon, North America's premier travel conference, and FLYTE, a non-profit that sends students from underserved communities on transformative trips abroad. When not traveling the world, he can be found in Austin, Texas.Connect with Matt: * Website: https://www.nomadicmatt.com* Instagram: @NomadicMatt* Twitter: @NomadicMatt* Facebook: @NomadicMatt--------Connect with Ticket 2 Anywhere Podcast! IG/ FB: @ticket2anywherepodcastTwitter: @T2APodcast*Subscribe* to our Youtube Channel: Ticket 2 Anywhere PodcastListen to our podcast everywhere you stream:Spotify, Apple, Google Podcast, Stitcher, & Pocket CastsMusic : Tropical ChillMusic produced by OrangeHeadWatch : https://youtu.be/UsI6VbzGlIAWebsite : http://www.orangehead.netProduction by Trizzy of TrizzInc ProductionsSupport the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ticket2anywhere)

We talk with Matt Kepnes (aka Nomadic Matt) about on his writing process, Corona travel shutdown effects, and weathering the storm of CoronaVirus travel shutdowns. Consider subscribing to our channel to get more good stuff like this :) https://www.youtube.com/kopywriting?sub_confirmation=1 Follow Matt: Website: https://www.nomadicmatt.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nomadicmatt Matt's Books: Travel On $50 A Day: https://amzn.to/2RXj8Qu Ten Years A Nomad: https://amzn.to/3kOVd2d (edited) Follow Copywriting Course: Website: https://copywritingcourse.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/copywritingcourse Twitter: https://twitter.com/nevmed Members Area: https://members.copywritingcourse.com/ Support this podcast

Millennial Travel Podcast 1: How to Travel the World on $50 a Day: Travel Cheaper, Longer, Smarter in the "New Normal". You can find all the show notes on millennialtravelpodcast.com Today we celebrate the launch of the Millennial Travel Podcast with Nomadic Matt Kepnes to discuss budget travel, how he contracted COVID-19, the future of the travel industry, and The Nomadic Network. Nomadic Matt has been a nomad for over ten years and is the author of two bestselling books, How to Travel the World on $50 a Day: Third Edition: Travel Cheaper, Longer, Smarter and Ten Years a Nomad: A Traveler's Journey Home, and is the owner of one of the most popular travel blogs on the internet NomadicMatt.com. I was happy to get an update from Matt who had recently returned from a trip to Asia and fell ill with COVID-19. Now that he made a full recovery, we spoke at length about the future of the travel industry and what we can do as travelers to support the small communities who rely on tourism for their financial well-being. We talk about how Matt quit his job and started to make a living as a travel blogger. Matt recently launched The Nomadic Network, a global community of travel-enthusiasts who support and inspire one another to travel better, cheaper, and longer. I also had the opportunity to discuss Matt’s charitable work at FLYTE, the Foundation for Learning & Youth Travel Education, a nonprofit organization that empowers youth living in underserved communities. Direct support for the Millennial Travel Podcast comes from my new book--The Millennial Travel Guidebook: Escape More, Spend Less, & Make Travel a Priority in Your Life.   You can also download a free chapter "How to Find The Best Deals on Flights".

In this episode, I sit down with Matt Kepnes from the travel blog Nomadic Matt and author of the New York Times Best Seller ‘How to Travel the World on $50 a Day' who receive positive test results for COVID-19. Matt takes us through what it was like finding testing and the feeling of having some of the COVID-19 symptoms. He also shares his unique experience of having his plasma used to help strengthen others' immune systems trying to recover from COVID-19.

Matt Kepnes is the creator of the popular travel site NomadicMatt.com, which makes over $750,000 a year. He’s also New York Times bestselling author “How to Travel the World on $50 a Day” and “Ten Years a Nomad.” Over the last eleven years, he’s traveled to over 100 countries and territories and helped millions of people travel more for less.In this episode, we talk to Matt about his journey from cubicle life to world traveler, how he got started traveling the world, his tips for getting started with traveling on a budget, how he’s able to fund his lifestyle, his predictions on the long-term effects of COVID-19 on travel, and much more. --WHAT TO LISTEN FORHow Matt got started with traveling the worldHow Matt got hooked on travel and his journey to quitting his job to travel full-timeMatt’s tips for traveling the world on $50 a dayHow Matt has built and scaled his business to make over $750,000 per yearMatt’s predictions on the long-term effects of COVID-19 on travel--RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODEWebsite: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/--CONNECT WITH USTo connect with Annie and Julie, as well as with other Investing For Good listeners, and to get the latest scoop on new and upcoming episodes, join the Investing For Good Community on Facebook.To learn more about real estate syndication investment opportunities, join the Goodegg Investor Club.Be sure to also grab your free copy of the Investing For Good book (just pay S&H).--Thanks for listening, and until next time, keep investing for good!

In this episode, the popular travel blogger who caught Coronavirus, the hotel chain doing its bit to comfort us, and why location may no longer be as important when booking accommodation.As governments around the globe impose lockdowns and people self-isolate, coronavirus (COVID-19) has hit the travel industry hard. The World Nomads Travel Podcast has suspended its regular destination episodes and, in their place, offering a round-up of the major coronavirus-related travel headlines, including the future of travel

This episode is recorded in November, before the Coronavirus outbreak. Since then, Matt Kepnes has tested positive for COVID19 – but as he's telling on his blog, he's feeling better. - - - - - - -  Matthew Kepnes is an American travel blogger, and among travel bloggers he's a rock star.   He's a New York Times bestselling author and has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, National Geographic, Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and BBC.   Matt was born in Boston in '81 and growing up, he wasn't a big traveller. In fact, at 23, he had never left the United States. But in 2004, he took a trip to Costa Rica, and that experience changed his life.   From that moment on, he was hooked on travel, and when he came back from a trip to Thailand the following year, he finished his MBA, quit his job, and began travelling the world full time and blogging about his experiences.   In short, he became Nomadic Matt, and in 2008, he started NomadicMatt.com to record his stories and monetize his travelling.   Now he built an empire around the Nomadic Matt brand. He runs an online blogging school called Superstar Blogging, where he offers online courses in blogging and also hosts other courses. He does guidebooks, he owns a hostel, and he created TravelCon – a conference for travel bloggers and content creators.   Kepnes' first book, "How to Travel the World on $50 a Day: Travel Cheaper, Longer, Smarter", was published in 2013.   That was one of the books I bought in the planning of my journey leading up to the day I left in July 2016.   The first time I met him was a week into my journey when I was at a travel bloggers conference in Stockholm. Here I had him on the podcast (it's episode #18), and since then we've met a number of times. Including when he hosted his first TravelCon in Austin two years ago.   He's still "Nomadic Matt" but his life a full-time traveller is over. At least for now. This is the topic for his new book, and since we both were in London for WTM, we decided to meet and catch up.   LINKS:  The Nomadic Network Nomadic Matt Check the list of Matt's books on Amazon. Sponsor Hotels25.com  The Radio Vagabond is produced by RadioGuru. You can follow The Radio Vagabond on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.    

Global reports on pandemic-age travel, including Matt Kepnes on contracting COVID-19.

Nomadic Matt is an American travel expert, author, founder of TravelCon, and blogger. In 2008, Kepnes started NomadicMatt.com to archive his stories and monetize his traveling. The blog offers practical travel tips — from how to score cheap flights and accommodations with frequent-flyer miles and credit card points, to how to frugally navigate more than 90 far-reaching destinations across the globe by finding cheap local eats and free activities. Kepnes has traveled to more than 100 countries. Published in 2013, his first book, How to Travel the World on $50 a Day: Travel Cheaper, Longer, Smarter, became a NYTimes Bestseller. In July 2019, Kepnes published his memoir, Ten Years a Nomad: A Traveler's Journey Home. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rolf Potts is one of the world’s most notable travel writers, author of five books on his adventures, pioneer “digital nomad” before that was even a thing, a totally inspiring person who has carved his own path through life and now helps others do the same through writing workshops and his excellent podcast, Deviate. (Worth noting that as of the time of this episode’s publication, his latest podcast episode is about dinosaurs!) For me personally, Rolf’s one of the most influential writers I’ve ever read, for his book, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, a slim but profound volume that utterly changed my life forever.In this episode we look back on Rolf’s twenty-five years of world travel and travel writing, and how the digital transformations of the 21st Century have changed the way we move around on and experience this planet. We talk #vanlife, citizen diplomacy, psychogeography, the Instagram effect, getting lost with Google Maps, writing as a way of paying attention, and seeing your own home with fresh eyes. It’s a powerful discussion that ignited in me that old call to journey past the far horizon — which, it’s key to note, can also mean the inner boundaries of normalcy we raise around our lives, an invitation to encounter the familiar anew…Rolf’s Website, Writing, & Podcast:https://rolfpotts.comGrab the books we mention in this episode:https://amazon.com/shop/michaelgarfieldSupport this show on Patreon for secret episodes, the Future Fossils book club, and more awesome stuff than you probably have time for:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldMentioned: Marco Polo Didn’t Go There by Rolf Potts, Storming The Beach, Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, Kevin Kelly, Google Maps, Lonely Planet Guide to Thailand’s Islands & Beaches, The Beach by Alex Garland, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jim Benning, World Hum, Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff, Burning Man, Matt Kepnes, The Glass Cage by Nicholas Carr, Temporary Autonomous Zone by Hakim Bey, The Pessimists Archive, The Tao Te Ching translated by Brian Browne Walker, Ari Shaffir, Livinia SpaldingRelated Reading:“Giving Into Astonishment: Scenes from Burning Man’s American Dream" by Michael Garfield (2008)Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldAdditional Intro Music: “Lambent” by Michael Garfieldhttps://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/little-bird-the-eschaton See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Roaring ‘20s are here! 2020 is about to be the best one yet, and to celebrate, we have another special “Talking Points” episode for you. Whether you think resolutions are bogus or need some inspiration to set your travel goals up for success, we called upon TPG’s best friends, travel influencers and collaborators to find out how they're heading into the new year. Tips from travel influencers like Lindsay Silberman and Oneika Raymond, NYT best-selling author Matt Kepnes aka Nomadic Matt, even Derek Peth from "The Bachelor" and "Bachelor in Paradise" and so many more. While you're resting up or cleaning up after that wild party last night, get ready to plan your next adventure with the help of this episode. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On today's episode, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we take the time to thank all the guests who have been on our show and the many listeners. Thank you to our amazing, talented and fearless guests for being on the show and inspiring all of us to embrace change and take a chance! https://www.instagram.com/courtneypaigeerwin/ (Courtney Erwin), https://www.broadcastcoffeeroasters.com/#/ (Barry Faught), https://www.backpacking-with-the-bonds.com/ (Carrie and Albert Bond), https://amyjohnsonphoto.com/ (Amy Johnson), Shane Jones, https://www.facebook.com/seattlefoodiepodcast/ (Nelson Lau), https://www.instagram.com/hoboarchitect/ (Nicholas Williams), https://www.travelingbitz.com/ (Melissa Bitz), https://www.michaeltranmer.com/ (Michael Tranmer), http://www.pushers-show.com/ (SumedaAhuja-Bahri), https://www.instagram.com/smucs/ (Kathy Waage), https://www.nomadicmatt.com/ (Matt Kepnes), http://minoritynomad.com/ (Erick Prince) and soon to be guest, https://aaronschlein.com/ (Aaron Schlein). Thank you to our loyal listeners such as my sister Amy, Amity, Eric, Leah, Chris, Carrie, Katrina, Cathy, Dr. Dueck, Tom, Jon-Mark, my Dad, Sheralyn, Sunga, Merrick, William, James, Martha, Caty, Beth, Paul, Brian and whoever else has ever listened! Thank you!! Did you know our show has been downloaded in 31 countries!?!? Also, on this episode we discuss holiday traditions and true to form, we get off on some tangents. We are so thankful for the support and love you've given us. May you have a Happy Thanksgiving! What are your traditions? I'm (Nicole) starting a new tradition and listening to "Alice's Restaurant" the 18 minute 1967 Arlo Guthrie anti-war song. XO Nicole & Ali

I've often wondered what would it be like to be a nomad and travel the world. I did this for a brief time in my early 20s and then stopped, and recently I've been falling back in love with travel. I've bumped into some really interesting people who have traveled the world. I've learned that travel is not so much about the places you go or the people you meet, but instead, it's about the person you become. In this episode of The Portfolio Life, I talk with Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt. Matt spent 10 years of his life traveling the world. He's the New York Times bestselling author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day, as well as a follow-up book he just published called Ten Years a Nomad. In this interview, Matt and I discuss: How a movie changed Matt's trajectory and a vacation led to a new career What is means to like the “art” but not the “job” of being a creative professional as well as the difference between a hobby and a profession How travel and a change of environment makes you uncomfortable and why you should lean into that Why you should travel alone at least once How familiarity leads to complacency Why one of the greatest gifts of travel is learning to be your own best friend

Matt Kepnes ~ Founder of the Famous Travel Blog, Nomadic Matt ~ Current Series ~ 100 Interviews with 100 Major Influencers   Way back in 2008, I first decided I wanted to make money online and travel the world. I used to read some blogs of travelers that were leading the way for this new lifestyle and somehow, I came across a book called ‘How to Travel the World on $50 a Day'. It was written by a guy named Matt Kepnes, also known as Nomadic Matt. Matt ran a blog that helped others travel the world on a budget while he made money from his blog and book while traveling the world. I thought it was genius and I said to myself, ‘Man, this guy has it figured out!”  So I bought his book so I could figure out how to do this as well. A couple of years later, I had a backpack and a one way ticket to Costa Rica. Thanks to Matt and others like him, I was about to start my journey traveling the world while making money online. I never ever thought one day, I would be interviewing Matt on my podcast telling him that story.    That was eleven years ago and today I have been living and traveling to many different countries while business businesses online. It has been the biggest adventure of my life. Today, I get the chance to sit down with Nomadic Matt and talk with him about what he is up to these days. Matt's blog was successful back in 2008, but once I started to travel, I didn't hear too much from him.  It was good to find out that he is still running his blog and built it into an incredibly successful business. Matt now has quite a few books published about travel and runs a successful travel/business conference called TravelCon that sells out in just a few days. If you are interested in building and/or running a successful business while traveling the world, being a travel influencer, and what it is like to be a true digital nomad, this is the show for you.  01:42: Who is Nomadic Matt? 06:52: Matt's Travel/Work/Life Schedule 08:00: Lessons Learned as a Traveler 10:10: Becoming a Full Time Traveler 14:31: What Made Your Blog Stand Out Compared to Others? 15:59: How Does Matt Network While Traveling? 18:03: Strategy to Use to Start a Blog in 2019 18:33: Tips on Creating Good Content 22:23: Creating a Travel Conference 31:54: Tips on Getting Big Names to Events 33:57: What Does Freedom Mean to a Top Travel Influencer? 39:10: Balancing Finances Between Business and Charity 41:46: Matt's Plans for the Future 43:23: Spoilers From the New Book 45:51: Responsibilities of an Influencer   Contact Info: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/ https://travelcon.org/

  Today we are talking to New York Times Best Selling author of https://www.amazon.com/How-Travel-World-50-Day/dp/0399173285 (How to Travel the World on $50 a Day), world renowned travel expert and entrepreneur Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt. Matt has an award winning blog http://www.nomadicmatt.com/ (www.nomadicmatt.com) which hosts countless travel resources, plus guidebooks and e-courses. He has been featured on CNN, National Geographic, The BBC and many more.  Matt just released his new travel memoir  https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Years-Nomad-Travelers-Journey/dp/1250190517 (Ten Years a Nomad – A Traveler's Journey Home) and we asked him on the show to talk about it. Matt's new book is deeply personal which differs from his normal writing style on “the how and the what of travel.” He shares his editor's request to go “deeper.”  He tells us what it was like to head out on his own when people in his life were not as supportive, how he overcame it and whether those people are on board now. He discusses how he overcame his fears of traveling solo and how we were are all just wanting human connection. We learn how friendships are different on the road than at home and that leads towards faster friendships and makes dating look very different. We circle back to his home in Austin and ask if has the semblance of routine he was longing for. At the end of his book, he wrote “19 lessons from 10 years of travel” and number 13 stuck a chord – “It is never too late to change.”  Matt elaborates on that point and how travel gives you the space to be whoever you want to be and if your joke bombs you can just start anew at a different hostel or location. Matt has many endeavors and he shared the genesis and vision of https://travelcon.org (TravelCon) a new travel industry conference that focuses on professional development and how to sustain and grow your travel business. He also touched on the mission behind his non-profit https://takeflyte.org/ (Flyte) which helps under-served teens get to experience “the gift of travel.” We learn who is inspiring him right now and some inspirational book recommendations such as https://www.amazon.com/Vagabonding-Rolf-Potts/dp/8415355262/ref=sr_1_4?hvadid=78202817349202&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=vagabonding&qid=1567383932&s=gateway&sr=8-4 (Vagabonding) by Rolf Potts, https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Found-Pacific-Crest-Trail/dp/0307476073/ref=sr_1_2?hvadid=78065376905134&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=wild+by+cheryl+strayed&qid=1567384005&s=gateway&sr=8-2 (Wild) by Cheryl Strayed, https://www.amazon.com/Bill-Bryson-Sunburned-Reprinted-12-2-2000/dp/B00HTJNM82/ref=sr_1_2?hvadid=77927940091926&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=in+a+sunburned+country&qid=1567384057&s=gateway&sr=8-2 (In a Sunburned Country) by Bill Bryson and https://www.amazon.com/Innocents-Abroad-Wordsworth-Classics/dp/1840226366/ref=sr_1_2?hvadid=3527180630&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=innocence+abroad&qid=1567384139&s=gateway&sr=8-2 (The Innocents Abroad) by Mark Twain. We loved talking to Matt and definitely enjoyed his book! Come listen to this very special episode of the Meltdown City Podcast! XO Nicole & Ali photo credit: Lola Akinmade

Listen to the episode In today's short episode, I speak with Matt Kepnes about his writing career, the various difficulties of life on the road, and about his experiences traveling around the world for the last ten years. We also talk about blogging and his new book, Ten Years a Nomad: A Traveler's Journey Home (St. Martin's Press 2019). Matt is the influential blogger behind NomadicMatt.com, and the New York Times Bestselling author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day. His new book, Ten Years a Nomad, was published on July 16, 2019. I spoke with Matt while he was in Los Angeles, California during a speaking tour to promote his new book. If you're interested in travel memoirs and topics related to world exploration and digital nomadism, check out the book. His book outlines his path from unsatisfied 9-to-5 administrator to world traveler, blogger, and writer. It also covers topics like on-the-road romances and travel burnout. Links from the Show Matt's Ten Years A Nomad: A Traveler's Journey Home Matt's How to Travel the World on $50 a Day Get in Touch with Matt Kepnes Matt on Twitter Matt on Instagram More episodes & support I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Travel Writing World podcast! Please consider supporting the show with a few dollars a month, less than a cup of coffee, to help keep our show alive and advertisement-free. You can also support the show by leaving a positive review on Apple Podcasts or in your favorite podcasting app, subscribing to the show, and following us on Twitter & Instagram. Finally, join the Travel Writing World newsletter to receive your free copy of The Travel Writer’s Guidebook. You will also receive monthly dispatches & reports with podcast interviews, travel writing resources, & book recommendations. Thanks for your support! Intro music: Peach by Daantai (Daantai's Instagram) .ugb-ec8c654 .ugb-block-content{justify-content:center}.ugb-ec8c654 .ugb-button1{background-color:#0693e3;border-radius:4px !important}.ugb-ec8c654 .ugb-button1 .ugb-button--inner,.ugb-ec8c654 .ugb-button1 svg{color:#ffffff}.ugb-ec8c654 .ugb-button1:before{border-radius:4px !important}.ugb-ec8c654 .ugb-inner-block{text-align:center}SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST

My guest today is Matt Kepnes, an American travel blogger. Kepnes was born in Boston. At 23, he had never left the United States but in 2005 he took a trip to Thailand. The trip convinced Kepnes to quit his job, finish his MBA, and begin traveling the world and blogging about his experiences. The topic is his book Ten Years a Nomad. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: After meeting some travelers on a trip to Thailand in 2005, he realized that living life meant more than simply meeting society's traditional milestones, such as buying a car, paying a mortgage, and moving up the career ladder. Inspired by them, he set off for a year-long trip around the world before he started his career. He finally came home after ten years. Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ten Years a Nomad is Nauthor Matt Kepnes’ poignant exploration of wanderlust and what it truly means to be a nomad. Part travel memoir and part philosophical look at why we travel, it is filled with aspirational stories of Kepnes' many adventures. Kepnes knows what it feels like to get the travel bug. After meeting some travelers on a trip to Thailand in 2005, he realized that living life meant more than simply meeting society's traditional milestones, such as buying a car, paying a mortgage, and moving up the career ladder. Inspired by them, he set off for a year-long trip around the world before he started his career. He finally came home after ten years. Over 500,000 miles, 1,000 hostels, and 90 different countries later, Matt has compiled his favorite stories, experiences, and insights into this travel manifesto. Filled with the color and perspective that only hindsight and self-reflection can offer, these stories get to the real questions at the heart of wanderlust. Travel questions that transcend the basic "how-to," and plumb the depths of what drives us to travel ― and what extended travel around the world can teach us about life, ourselves, and our place in the world. Ten Years a Nomad is for travel junkies, the travel-curious, and anyone interested in what you can learn about the world when you don’t have a cable bill for a decade or spend a month not wearing shoes living on the beach in Thailand.

On this episode I am joined by Matt Kepnes, who is the founder of Nomadicmatt.com. Mr. Kepnes has traveled to over 100 countries, written A New York Times bestselling book Called "How to Travel the World on $50 Dollars a Day", founded one of the most successful, and highly visited travel blogs. Mr. Kepnes has also founded on the fastest growing travel conferences, TravelCon. On the podcast, we talk about how Mr. Kepnes left a 9-5 office job to wonder around the world, and how he turned his blog into a successful business.    Mr. Kepnes has a new book out called, "10 years a Nomad." The books available in all book sellers including Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Years-Nomad-Travelers-Journey/dp/1250190517/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=matt+kepnes&qid=1564946052&s=gateway&sr=8-1   Here is more information about Mr. Kepnes from his website:  "Hi, I’m Nomadic Matt, a New York Times best-selling author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day and founder of this website! Have you ever thought to your self one of the following: “How do I find the money to travel? It seems too expensive for me.” “Where do I find the best travel deals?” “How do I save money on flights, accommodation, and other big expenses?” “How do I plan my trip?” “How do I stay safe and healthy?” “How do I maximize my time?” “I want to travel more but I don’t know the first step.” You are not alone. Over the past several years, I’ve helped millions of people answer those questions and travel more with tested and proven tips and advice. This way, you can spend less time searching the Internet and being overwhelmed with information and more time doing the one thing you want to do: travel more." -Nomadicmatt.com 

We chat with Matt Kepnes of Nomadic Matt live at TravelCon Boston 2019 about his story developing one of the best known travel blogs, and what inspired him to develop and create TravelCon. https://www.nomadicmatt.com/ Welcome to the Travel Massive podcast, an interview series with travel industry change-makers and pioneers, sharing their stories and insights. Your host for this series, recorded live at TravelCon Boston 2019 is Ric Gazarian, author and filmmaker, host of the Counting Countries podcast (https://globalgaz.com/counting-countries/), and Bangkok Travel Massive chapter leader. Learn more and register for TravelCon 2020 in New Orleans at www.travelcon.org If you enjoyed this episode or you would like to submit feedback, please leave a comment or email podcast@travelmassive.com

How to travel the world for years at a time

Matt Kepnes (aka Nomadic Matt) joins us to share personal stories from his new book, Ten Years A Nomad, plus some advice about how to have the best travel experiences.   Please head over to zerototravel.com for the full show notes.

Traveling—that itch to get away, to hit the road, to see the world—feels like a distinctly modern craze. Yet it was common in Ancient Rome for people to escape the heat and the frenzy of the bustling city to get away for some time in the countryside. It is likely that those excursions influenced Marcus Aurelius’s belief in sympatheia—the belief in mutual interdependence among everything in the universe, that we are all one.Marcus Aurelius liked to say that he wasn’t a citizen of Rome, but of the world. Matt Kepnes, or better known as “Nomadic Matt,” quite literally is a citizen of the world. Matt spent a decade living out of a backpack, traveling the world. He captures the journey and everything it taught him in Ten Years A Nomad, which released this week. In our interview with Matt for DailyStoic.com, we were curious to find out if—given all the different cultures he’s lived in and the people he’s met—it’s been his experience that we really aren’t all that different from each other. Matt said:People really are the same everywhere. Interacting with people, watching them commute, pick up laundry, go grocery shopping, and do all the other everyday things you did back home—you really internalize the idea that, fundamentally, we all just want the same things: to be happy, to be safe and secure, to have friends and family who love us. The how of what we do is different but the why of what we do is universal. This is true not only right now, but it’s true for the past and the future. Humans are humans are humans—for good and for bad. How much better a place would the world be if we could all remember this? If the Stoic concept of sympatheia was never far from our minds (it’s why we created a reminder of it to carry in your pocket)? Certainly we'd get along better, collaborate better, and be more understanding of each other. If you’ve done any bit of traveling, Matt’s answer likely reminds you of your own experiences of being far from home but finding comfort in realizing that the people are just like you. Doing their best. Just wanting to feel happy, safe and secure, loved—and around the people who put them there the most. That is universal.

One of the most well-known (and successful, for that matter) travel bloggers around is Matt Kepnes, also known as Nomadic Matt. Here's the thing. I actually started blogging a couple of years before Matt, and we got to know each other while freelancing for some of the same travel sites back in the day - but he's the one who went on to turn his travel blog into a very successful full-time career. I want to be jealous, but whenever I encounter Matt I'm reminded that he's just a really nice guy and along with that, we share very similar attitudes to travel. And so after thinking about it for much too long, Matt and I have finally caught up for a special episode of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast where we talk about all kinds of travel topics: budget travel and staying in hostels, how to be a thoughtful traveller and the wonders of solo travel. Matt also has a new book out, "Ten Years a Nomad" and of course that rates a mention too! Links: Matt’s site Nomadic Matt - https://www.nomadicmatt.com Matt’s new book “Ten Years a Nomad” - https://amzn.to/30rqYEo  Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers - https://www.facebook.com/groups/thoughtfultravellers Show notes: https://notaballerina.com/147

On this week’s episode we interview legendary traveler Matt Kepnes, Nomadic Matt, about his new book Ten Years a Nomad: A Traveler's Journey Home.

The Distilled Man - Actionable Advice for the Everyday Gentleman Perpetual nomad and travel author “Nomadic Matt” shares his thoughts on how to truly experience other cultures while traveling.... Read More To view this post on The Distilled Man website, visit How to Travel the World on a Shoestring Budget | Matt Kepnes For a Free copy of our 42-page eBook, visit http://www.thedistilledman.com/48-hour-gentleman-ebook/

#202: In 2006, Matt Kepnes worked at a hospital in Boston, and he felt miserable. He dreaded fighting traffic, spending his days under his offices’ fluorescent lighting, drinking stale coffee. He decided to take one year off -- a “gap year” -- thinking that after his sabbatical, he’d resume another 40 years of punching the clock. He worked 60-hour weeks in order to save money for his sabbatical year. He saved $30,000, then handed his boss a resignation letter. Matt traveled for 18 months, returned to Boston, and realized he had lost his willingness to punch the clock. He couldn’t sit still in an office any longer. He re-packed his bags, bought a one-way flight to who-knows-where, and reinvented himself as a travel writer known as Nomadic Matt. He lives on a budget of $18,250 per year, or $50 per day. In the last decade, his travel information website, NomadicMatt.com, has become one of the most popular travel blogs in the world, drawing millions of visitors. His writing has been featured in The New York Times, CNN, National Geographic Travel, and the BBC. He’s a New York Times bestselling author, and he’s traveled to more than 100 countries. In today’s episode, Matt and I discuss the art of slow travel. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode202

Matthew Kepnes runs the award winning budget travel site, Nomadic Matt. He's also the author of the New York Times best-seller "How to Travel the World on $50 a Day", as well as the upcoming travel memoir, "Ten Years a Nomad".   His writings and advice have been featured in The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian UK, Lifehacker, Budget Travel, BBC, Time, and Yahoo!  He also regularly speaks at travel trade and consumer shows, owns a hostel in Texas, and launched a non-profit called FLYTE, which empowers students from underserved communities through transformative travel experiences. In this episode, Matt shares his one way ticket to Thailand. He also tells us the best places to get air travel deals, why Bulgaria is underrated, and how to overcome the "Paradox of Choice" when choosing where to travel next. Matt is just one of the dynamic guests featured on The One Way Ticket Show, where Host Steven Shalowitz explores with his guests where they would go if given a one way ticket, no coming back! Destinations may be in the past, present, future, real, imaginary or a state of mind. Steven's guests have included: Nobel Peace Prize Winner, President Jose Ramos-Horta; Legendary Talk Show Host, Dick Cavett; Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz; Fashion Expert, Tim Gunn; Broadcast Legend, Charles Osgood; International Rescue Committee President & CEO, David Miliband; Playwright, David Henry Hwang; Journalist-Humorist-Actor, Mo Rocca; SkyBridge Capital Founder & Co-Managing Partner, Anthony Scaramucci; Abercrombie & Kent Founder, Geoffrey Kent; Travel Expert, Pauline Frommer, as well as leading photographers, artists, chefs, writers, intellectuals and more.

      If you've ever fantasized about quitting your job and traveling full time, then you need to listen to our podcast with Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt.     Matt traveled for 18 months and when he returned to his life in America, he decided to save money and go back to full time travel.  Matt has great tips to traveling more and spending less.  Matt also speaks on how you can travel full time by teaching English overseas.    Interested in travel blogging?  Matt also discusses his online courses for travel bloggers and photographers.    Follow Matthew Kepnes on his on site, Nomadic Matt. Or check out his books,  How to Travel the World on $50 A Day and his latest  Ten Years a Nomad

On March 24, 1965, Albert Podell embarked on a 581-day, 42,000-mile, adventure-packed expedition by 4×4 across 30 countries that set the record for the longest auto journey ever made around the world. During the next 50 years Podell visited every one of the rest of its 196 countries. Albert Podell has a B.A. in government from Cornell, was a graduate fellow in international relations at the University of Chicago, holds a J.D. from NYU School of Law, and has had successful careers as a magazine editor, director of photography, advertising-agency creative director, and trial attorney. He has written 300 magazine articles and wrote the adventure classic, Who Needs A Road. Favorite Success Quote “You only live once so grab as much gusto as you can. “ Key Points 1. Life is Fleeting Live it Full Life is precious and short. We all live like life will last forever without realizing its fleeting nature. Embrace the now and live life like you will never live it again. 2. People are Generally the Same Many first worlders ignorantly assume that the rest of the world is vastly different from us. We assume that they are all extremists and crazies and that anywhere beyond the first world is the no mans land. What we fail to realize is that humans are largely the same across all cultures. We all want to live long and prosperous lives. We all want to raise our children to the best of our abilities, we all want as much health, wealth, love and happiness as we can fill into our days. When we open our mind to the similarities that cross all cultural boundaries, we are able to interact much more deeply and intimately with people who are seemingly dissimilar. 3. You Can Live on Less Than You Think In America, the idea of living with less is a foreign concept. We assume that to survive we need to be making hundreds of dollars a day and filling our lives full of possessions and cheap thrills. But in the end, we are left with crap we didn't need and shallow, base level experiences. If we open our minds to the idea of embracing minimalism and living with less, then we open our lives to a whole new level of fulfillment. When life becomes about seizing every moment enjoying every second over accumulating more stuff, we are able to live lives of true abundance and joy. 4. Money and Time are not an Impediment to Travel If you are creative enough, adaptable enough, and tough enough.  You can travel the world on little to no money fairly easily. From staying with locals to camping to hostels, there are a number of ways that you can travel without breaking the bank. One of the best ways to get started is by looking into work exchanges such as WWOOF or Help Ex where you work in exchange for room and board. Influential Books 1. The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss 2. How to Travel the World on $50 a Day by Matt Kepnes 3. Vagabonding by Rolf Potts

This week, Travel Today with Peter Greenberg comes from the Super Bowl of travel conventions, the U.S. Travel Association’s International Pow Wow (IPW) in Denver, Colorado. Thinking about where to travel this year? Roger Dow, President & CEO of U.S. Travel Association, joins Peter to talk about the changing patterns in travel trends and the $4.7 billion that was generated from the convention’s meetings. Then, Matt Kepnes, New York Times bestselling author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day: Travel Cheaper, Longer and founder of Nomadic Matt, Smarter discusses the most and least walkable cities around the world. Writer Ed Sealover of the Denver Business Journal dishes about the roughly 120 (that’s right…120) breweries in the metropolitan Denver area. There’s all this and more as Travel Today with Peter Greenberg comes from International Pow Wow in Denver, Colorado.

This week, Travel Today with Peter Greenberg comes from the Super Bowl of travel conventions, the U.S. Travel Association’s International Pow Wow (IPW) in Denver, Colorado. Thinking about where to travel this year? Roger Dow, President & CEO of U.S. Travel Association, joins Peter to talk about the changing patterns in travel trends and the $4.7 billion that was generated from the convention’s meetings. Then, Matt Kepnes, New York Times bestselling author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day: Travel Cheaper, Longer and founder of Nomadic Matt, Smarter discusses the most and least walkable cities around the world. Writer Ed Sealover of the Denver Business Journal dishes about the roughly 120 (that’s right…120) breweries in the metropolitan Denver area. There’s all this and more as Travel Today with Peter Greenberg comes from International Pow Wow in Denver, Colorado.

In this episode Kristen talked travel with an old friend, Erica Virvo. Erica is a world-wide traveler who has visited over 40 countries and works at the internet's number 1 budget travel website: Nomadic Matt.Erica is a purposeful traveler and connector, who loves the thrill of living in countries people have rarely heard of. She's spent 5 years studying and working in obscure countries in the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa.While she loves visiting the frequented tourist spots like everyone else, the memories Erica has treasured the most are the everyday experiences she participated in with friends she's found along the way. Through these connections and ordinary activities, Erica gained a deeper appreciation for the world and people in it.Now, Erica works at Nomadic Matt, a budget travel website with over 1 million monthly visitors that teaches people how to bring their travel aspirations to life by exploring the world on a budget.She believes that strangers are just friends you haven't met yet. Combining this motto with tips and tricks she's uncovered along the way, Erica's greatest passion is helping others shape their trips into authentic travel experiences.You can find Erica on Instagram as @erica.virvo or reach her by email at erica@nomadicmatt.com.Resources from this episode:Books:Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts: https://amzn.to/2sd639rHow to Travel the World on $50 a Day, by Matt Kepnes: https://amzn.to/2Lxdb8CWork Trade + House Sitting:Housesitting: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/house-sitting/Work-Trade https://www.workaway.infoWorkaway: http://forums.nomadicmatt.com/topic/5145-how-to-travel-the-world-using-workaway/Working overseas: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/working-overseas/Remote work resources: https://www.legalnomads.com/digital-nomads/Vagabond Temple:http://vagabondtemple.comBooking Cheap Flights:https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-tips/how-to-find-a-cheap-flight/Hopper App for your phone: https://www.hopper.comTravel hacking:https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/travel-hacking-1-million-miles-per-year/ and https://www.nomadicmatt.com/guide-to-travel-hacking/

Key links for this episode: Nomadic Matt Plume App Our patrons know a secret. You can know it, too. One of the OG travel bloggers, Matt Kepnes, AKA Nomadic Matt, joins the program with all kinds of stories, tips, and reflections on travel on his site NomadicMatt.com. He even has a NYTimes best-selling book on how to travel the world on a budget! He's a hard guy to pin down, but he recently came through town on his way to New Zealand, and he very kindly let Greg to discuss an important question: Why do people (him included!) keep coming back to Bangkok? Speaking of catching up with friends, but on a much sadder note… the Bangkok expat community is a little smaller and sadder, with the recent passing of Eric Seldin. He was funny, warm, entertaining, and wise, and always had a good story to tell from his decades of working around Asia. In his memory, go spend some quality time with those you love but haven’t caught up with recently, OK? You are flat out not going to like this week’s Love, Loathe, or Leave. And not just because of the topic -- Bangkok’s insidious air pollution that’s just getting worse. No, it’s one of our answers. Sorry in advance. :( And before we go: Remember that we’re 100% funded by our supporters, who get some special swag from us. Hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, or LINE with comments, questions, or whatever you want to share.

Everyone says they want to be a travel writer, exploring the world seeking out new cultures and running a nomadic business but Matt Kepnes is one of the few people who have actually been able to do it. Discover his approach to living life on the road, and how you can see more of the world for less.

Everyone says they want to be a travel writer, exploring the world seeking out new cultures and running a nomadic business but Matt Kepnes is one of the few people who have actually been able to do it. Discover his approach to living life on the road, and how you can see more of the […]

Matt Kepnes quit his desk job to travel the world and along the way became the travel blogger Nomadic Matt. In this episode of “Get Outta Here,” AP Travel Editor Beth Harpaz talks with Nomadic Matt about what it’s like to travel for a living. It’s not all hanging out on beaches and taking road trips: He is running a business, after all. Still, you have to know when to ignore emails and just enjoy that glass of wine in Argentina. Kepnes also offers advice on how to travel on a budget and shares some of his favorite places - along with what’s on his bucket list.

Matt Kepnes of NomadicMatt.com, the man who went from everyday worker to travel writer. Matt grew up in Boston and he didn’t take his first trip until he was 23—a cruise to Montreal. After he started a life as a young professional, he decided to travel the world, so he headed to Costa Rica in 2004, Taiwan in 2005, and never looked back. Listen as Matt talks about the success of his blog and how he grew it from a simple online journal. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Influence What CEO do you follow? –  N/A Favorite online tool? — N/A Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self know one thing, what would it be? – “Value eating healthy”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Matt to the show 02:53 – Matt was working in administration 03:16 – Number of unique website users on average per month is 1.2 million 03:27 – Matt started the blog in 2008 after 14 months of traveling 03:50 – Matt built the blog as an online resume 04:17 – Matt is getting more visitors in 2010 04:29 – Matt wanted to write guidebooks so he made his blog a guidebook 04:56 – 2/3 of Matt’s income comes from affiliates 05:30 – Matt’s book is The Ultimate Guide to Travel Hacking 05:40 – Matt self-published the book 05:46 – Matt’s book with a publisher is How to Travel the World on $ 50 a Day 05:53 – Matt is only getting royalties from the book 06:18 – Matt met the publisher in 2012 06:40 – How Matt negotiated with the publisher 07:51 – Sold around 50,000 to 60,000 copies 08:30 – Royalty percentage per book 09:50 – Matt shifted the blog from an online journal to a website generating money 10:44 – The affiliate offer page in the website are in the home page 11:35 – Average percentage people spend on travel insurance 12:10 – Matt sells 400-500 plan policies per month 12:45 – Other affiliates of Matt 13:21 – Matt is already with the affiliate for years 14:18 – Matt spent some of his time guest blogging 14:38 – Matt does 2-3 guest blogs per month 15:03 – Matt is always traveling 15:11 – Matt’s email list size 15:54 – Matt has a team in different places 17:00 – Connect with Matt through his website, Twitter and Instagram 19:30 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Travel not only de-stresses you, it opens your eyes to global opportunities. Having affiliates is a good way to increase revenue. Eat healthy. You are what you eat.   Resources Mentioned: Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal  for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to quality of Toptal  developers. Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible. Freshbooks – The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts. Leadpages  – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+ Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books. Assistant.to – The site Nathan uses to book meetings with one email. Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel. @NomadicMatt – Matt’s Instagram account @NomadicMatt – Matt’s Twitter handle NomadicMatt.com – Matt’s website Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Matt Kepnes is the founder of the award-winning travel site, NomadicMatt.com, where he has helped millions of people travel around the world better, cheaper, and longer. In 2005, Matt quit his job, finished his MBA, and took a trip to Thailand that was supposed to last a year but continues to this day! Matt shares more wisdom and knowledge in his New York Times best-seller, How to Travel The World on $50 a Day.

If you are between jobs you may find yourself with an abundance of unstructured time on your hands. Trying to make the most out of your day will be frustrating if you don’t know how to effectively manage your time. Guest expert, Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt, shares his tips and processes for accomplishing large and small tasks, even if you are on the road. Creating artificial constructs within your day can force you to complete assignments and is more effective than making a list. Lists are great for the grocery store but if you want to make sure harder tasks are tackled, create a schedule for yourself. One method to create an artificial construct is batching. Batching is restricting blocks of your time for one specific task. For example, batching emails for one hour means you will only read and respond to emails within hour you have blocked. Distractions can kill productivity. Social media sites, phone calls, and unplanned interruptions are things we all get distracted by. To reduce the level of distractions during your work time Matt recommends job seekers: Create routines. Familiarity lowers the chance of interferences. Use the Self-Control app to block distracting websites during your work hours. Schedule projects in advance and then follow the daily schedule. Go to a coffee shop with wifi to get away from distractions when working from home. Schedule a block of time to polish up your resume! Matt Kepnes Bio Matthew Kepnes runs the award winning budget travel site, Nomadic Matt, and wrote the New York Times bestseller, How to Travel the World on $50 a Day. After a trip to Thailand in 2005, Matt decided to quit his job, finish his MBA and head off into the world. His original trip was supposed to last a year. Over ten years later, he is still out roaming around and teaching others how to do the same. Ben’s Job Search Resources: Ben’s resource this week is a free online tool to save job seekers from the embarrassment of typos and grammatical errors. Grammarly can be used online or as a plugin and it identifies over 250 types of writing errors, many of which Microsoft Word doesn’t catch. Grammarly’s versatility allows it to function on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. when added as a plugin to the Chrome browser. Jenna’s Find Your Dream Job Listener Question: Ben, Jenna and Mac respond to Kelly G.’s question — “How do I market my soft skills?” If you would like the team to answer a job-related question, email it to jenna@macslist.org or call her at 716-JOB-TALK. Or if you’ve found a job resource you think everyone should know about, send it to ben@macslist.org and tell him how it has helped you find your dream job. These segments are sponsored by the 2016 edition of Hack the Hidden Job Market Course. The course launches November 1st — Lock in your early bird pricing now. If you like this show, please help us by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. We appreciate your support! Opening and closing music for Find Your Dream Job provided by Freddy Trujillo, www.freddytrujillo.com.

Wouldn’t it be a nice to make a living off of traveling the world? Our guest today is doing just that and he shares how…Matt Kepnes is the creator of the award-winning budget travel site, Nomadic Matt. Matt  is also the author of the New York Times best-seller, "How to Travel the World on $50 a Day." In 2005 after a trip to Thailand, Matt decided to quit his job, finish his MBA and travel. His trip was supposed to last a year but fast forward more than 10 years later and he's still trotting the globe. His travel tips and advice has been featured in numerous media outlets including The New York Times, CNN, TIME, Yahoo! and countless others. Matt shares his top tips for traveling on a budget. How to spend LESS than $50 a day. He also shares why his MBA was probably his biggest financial failure and why he insists on paying his own way when he travels…because let’s face it, with the popularity of his blog, he could travel for free if he really wanted to. For more information visit www.somoneypodcast.com. 

Discount Travel expert Matt Kepnes joins Jim Paris Live to discuss his book, How To Travel The World On $50 A Day. Avoid paying bank fees anywhere in the world, Earn thousands of free frequent flier points. Find discount travel cards that can save on hostels, tours, and transportation, get cheap and free plane tickets. Make money as a travel blogger. 

After a trip to Thailand in 2005, Matt decided to quit his job, finish his MBA and head off into the world. What started out as a one year trip has turned into a 7 year journey in which travel has defined his life. Here are some of the highlights from our conversation Making radical identity shifts through incremental steps A look at the early start of Matt's travel writing career Why long term travel doesn't have to be expensive The highs and lows that come with long term travel Why the hardest step in any journey is the first one How to find adventure outside your front door The difference between vacation and travel culture The personal growth that comes from long term travel Why being a voracious reader is so essential to your writing How to significantly improve your writing through editing Why you must make your stories must about the reader The Importance of having impeccable standards The difference between perfection and progress Living like a local when you travel A look at the writing process for Matt's Book The 8th grade view that can inform your writing A professional traveller since 2004, Matt not only documents his travels but also helps explain how you can also live a life of travel. He is the author of How to Travel the World on 50 dollars a day and runs the travel blog Nomadic Matt After a trip to Thailand in 2005, Matt decided to quit his job, finish his MBA and head off into the world. What started out as a one year trip has turned into a 7 year journey in which travel has defined his life. Here are some of the highlights from our conversation Making radical identity shifts through incremental steps A look at the early start of Matt's travel writing career Why long term travel doesn't have to be expensive The highs and lows that come with long term travel Why the hardest step in any journey is the first one How to find adventure outside your front door The difference between vacation and travel culture The personal growth that comes from long term travel Why being a voracious reader is so essential to your writing How to significantly improve your writing through editing Why you must make your stories must about the reader The Importance of having impeccable standards The difference between perfection and progress Living like a local when you travel A look at the writing process for Matt's Book The 8th grade view that can inform your writing A professional traveller since 2004, Matt not only documents his travels but also helps explain how you can also live a life of travel. He is the author of How to Travel the World on 50 dollars a day and runs the travel blog Nomadic Matt See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This Week's Guest is travel blogger Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt.This Week's News    * Arthur Frommer says "Avoid Thailand"    * The Jingle of Change in Europe    * Man falls asleep on Air Canada flight, wakes up on empty plane in a hangar    * TripAdvisor adds another paid-for service – tourist board pages    * No lines at Walt Disney World? Theme park tests new 'queue-less' wait systemPicks of the Week    * Gary - Sea to Summit    * Chris - Roku    * Jen - Secret London    * Matt - Momondo

“Life's journey is as rewarding as my travel journeys. It's been fun to travel the world as a slightly older person." – Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and participants in the Nomadic Network book club discuss the stories behind the travel tales in his 2008 book Marco Polo Didn't Go There, including what inspired him to collect the essays into a single book, and why he decided to include endnotes (2:00); which stories stand out as favorites, for both Rolf and his readers, and how Rolf finds stories on the road (12:30); how his writing and his travels have changed in the years since these stories were first written (19:00); what it's like to create a home amid a life of travel, and how journaling feeds creative writing (26:00); and the new book Rolf is working on now (35:00). Matt Kepnes (@nomadicmatt) is the founder of TravelCon and the author of Travel the World on $50 a Day and Ten Years a Nomad. The Nomadic Network is a global community of travel-enthusiasts who support and inspire one another to travel better, cheaper, and longer. Travel essays mentioned: "Storming The Beach" (Thailand) ​"Going Native in the Australian Outback" (Australia) "Backpackers' Ball at the Sultan Hotel" (Egypt) "My Beirut Hostage Crisis" (Lebanon) "Be Your Own Donkey" (Egypt) "Turkish Knockout" (Turkey) Notable links: Paris Writing Workshops (writing class) ​Travelers Tales (publisher) Wilfred Thesiger (travel writer) Gertrude Bell (travel writer) American Notes, by Charles Dickens (travelogue) Herodotus (Greek historian) Best Hostel Ever (Deviate episode) Whodunit (storytelling genre) Bootsnall (travel community) Mentawai Islands (archipelago in Indonesia) Tracy Kidder (journalist) The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel's 2017 album Lumber. Note: We don't host a “comments” section, but we're happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.