POPULARITY
Nomadic Matt is a pioneering travel blogger. One day, we'll call him the grandfather of travel blogging during the Golden Era of travel blogs. He's not known for his travel feats but rather for the extensive tips he's provided on his popular website, which focuses on budget travel. Watch the Video The book's budget used to be $50/day, but inflation and a post-COVID world forced Matt to update his book. In 2025, he refreshed his bestselling book, which is now called How to Travel the World on $75 a Day. As part of his book tour, he's appearing on the WanderLearn Show twice! Nomadic Matt discusses 00:00 When to book a hotel 02:40 Why is Africa left out of his book? 05:10 Bilt Rewards Credit Card 08:10 Airline booking tips 09:20 Travel insurance 12:00 Tourist Cards 15:00 Why Matt travels less than before 18:30 Blogging is dead? Questions What's the most embarrassing or ridiculous thing you've done to save money while traveling? What's the difference between EatWith, WithLocals, and Traveling Spoon? When do you usually book your hotels? Why is Africa left out? Are tourism cards still worth it? When do you use travel insurance? Why not use Kiwi? What are Bilt Rewards? His book is packed with tips. Here are my favorite ones. The best websites to keep track of the latest credit card deals BoardingArea FlyerTalk The Points Guy View from the Wing Pay your rent and get frequent flyer points with Bilt Rewards Matt's top three airline booking sites My favorite airline website is Kiwi, and use this link to get $10 off. He doesn't mention Kiwi in his book. Instead, his favorite flight booking sites are: Skyscanner Momondo Google Flights For insurance Safety Wing World Nomads MedjetAssist IMG InsureMyTrip for comparison shopping Sell your old clothes to raise money for your trip Vinted ThredUp Poshmark Online Garage sale to raise funds and downsize VarageSale OfferUp Swappa for electronics Gazelle Decluttr Anytime Mailbox starts at $6 and has several locations. Lodging Sites LateRooms Last Minute Hotel Tonight Priceline Hotwire Roomer allows you to buy someone else's hotel reservation at a steep discount Agoda excels in East Asia Food Matt is a foodie. I am not. Here are some of his favorite sites: EatWith has 5000+ hosts in over 130 countries WithLocals Traveling Spoon Ride-sharing or hitchhiking for the 21st century Search for "ride-sharing" and the name of the region/country where you are traveling. You'll usually find options. I've used BlaBlaCar in Europe, for example. Tourism Cards Nomadic Matt sold me on the tourism cards that give you access to popular sites and public transportation. Although that can save you nearly half the price, it's only suitable for those doing a whirlwind, fast, and comprehensive tour. If you want to see the British Museum, don't get the London Pass. But it makes sense if you're going to see most of the significant sites. Why is Africa left out? The first half of the book offers general, practical advice. The second provides specific guidance to various regions. For example, he has a section about Australia. You'd think a book that helps travelers live on $75 a day would encourage tourists to visit Africa. Like Southeast Asia, parts of Africa have a low cost of living. For example, in 2013, in Benin, I rented a two-room place with a shower (but a shared outhouse for a toilet) for $10 per month! Ten years later, maybe the price has doubled to $20 a month! Still, Nomadic Matt confesses, "I had to make trade-offs and omit the lesser-visited countries and regions..." (Kindle Location 1434). I won't quibble with his decision or logic. Conclusion When I got an advanced copy of Nomadic Matt's book, I expected to be bored out of my mind. I figured it was a book for beginners or intermediate travelers, not hyper-experienced travel studs like me. As usual, I was wrong. Nomadic Matt pumped me with many ideas I was oblivious to. Although I shared my favorite ones on this page, buy How to Travel the World on $75 a Day to get all his excellent advice. Feedback Leave anonymous audio feedback at SpeakPipe More info You can post comments, ask questions, and sign up for my newsletter at http://wanderlearn.com. If you like this podcast, subscribe and share! On social media, my username is always FTapon. Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram TikTok LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr My Patrons sponsored this show! Claim your monthly reward by becoming a patron at http://Patreon.com/FTapon Rewards start at just $2/month! Affiliate links Get 25% off when you sign up to Trusted Housesitters, a site that helps you find sitters or homes to sit in. Start your podcast with my company, Podbean, and get one month free! In the USA, I recommend trading crypto with Kraken. Outside the USA, trade crypto with Binance and get 5% off your trading fees! For backpacking gear, buy from Gossamer Gear.
Nomadic Matt is a pioneering travel blogger. One day, we'll call him the grandfather of travel blogging during the Golden Era of travel blogs. He's not known for his travel feats but rather for the extensive tips he's provided on his popular website, which focuses on budget travel. Watch the video interview The book's budget used to be $50/day, but inflation and a post-COVID world forced Matt to update his book. In 2025, he refreshed his bestselling book, which is now called How to Travel the World on $75 a Day. As part of his book tour, he's appearing on the WanderLearn Show twice! #1 How Nomadic Matt Travels on $75 a Day! Nomadic Matt discusses: 00:00 Splitting between Austin and NYC 02:40 Couchsurfing 05:15 Stupidly cheap 07:00 EatWith and Traveling Spoon Questions What's the most embarrassing or ridiculous thing you've done to save money while traveling? What's the difference between EatWith, WithLocals, and Traveling Spoon? When do you usually book your hotels? Why is Africa left out? Are tourism cards still worth it? When do you use travel insurance? Why not use Kiwi? What are Bilt Rewards? His book is packed with tips. Here are my favorite ones. The best websites to keep track of the latest credit card deals BoardingArea FlyerTalk The Points Guy View from the Wing Pay your rent and get frequent flyer points with Bilt Rewards Matt's top three airline booking sites My favorite airline website is Kiwi, and use this link to get $10 off. He doesn't mention Kiwi in his book. Instead, his favorite flight booking sites are: Skyscanner Momondo Google Flights For insurance Safety Wing World Nomads MedjetAssist IMG InsureMyTrip for comparison shopping Sell your old clothes to raise money for your trip Vinted ThredUp Poshmark Online Garage sale to raise funds and downsize VarageSale OfferUp Swappa for electronics Gazelle Decluttr Anytime Mailbox starts at $6 and has several locations. Lodging Sites LateRooms Last Minute Hotel Tonight Priceline Hotwire Roomer allows you to buy someone else's hotel reservation at a steep discount Agoda excels in East Asia Food Matt is a foodie. I am not. Here are some of his favorite sites: EatWith has 5000+ hosts in over 130 countries WithLocals Traveling Spoon Ride-sharing or hitchhiking for the 21st century Search for "ride-sharing" and the name of the region/country where you are traveling. You'll usually find options. I've used BlaBlaCar in Europe, for example. Tourism Cards Nomadic Matt sold me on the tourism cards that give you access to popular sites and public transportation. Although that can save you nearly half the price, it's only suitable for those doing a whirlwind, fast, and comprehensive tour. If you want to see the British Museum, don't get the London Pass. But it makes sense if you're going to see most of the significant sites. Why is Africa left out? The first half of the book offers general, practical advice. The second provides specific guidance to various regions. For example, he has a section about Australia. You'd think a book that helps travelers live on $75 a day would encourage tourists to visit Africa. Like Southeast Asia, parts of Africa have a low cost of living. For example, in 2013, in Benin, I rented a two-room place with a shower (but a shared outhouse for a toilet) for $10 per month! Ten years later, maybe the price has doubled to $20 a month! Still, Nomadic Matt confesses, "I had to make trade-offs and omit the lesser-visited countries and regions..." (Kindle Location 1434). I won't quibble with his decision or logic. Conclusion When I got an advanced copy of Nomadic Matt's book, I expected to be bored out of my mind. I figured it was a book for beginners or intermediate travelers, not hyper-experienced travel studs like me. As usual, I was wrong. Nomadic Matt pumped me with many ideas I was oblivious to. Although I shared my favorite ones on this page, buy How to Travel the World on $75 a Day to get all his excellent advice. Feedback Leave anonymous audio feedback at SpeakPipe More info You can post comments, ask questions, and sign up for my newsletter at http://wanderlearn.com. If you like this podcast, subscribe and share! On social media, my username is always FTapon. Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram TikTok LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr My Patrons sponsored this show! Claim your monthly reward by becoming a patron at http://Patreon.com/FTapon Rewards start at just $2/month! Affiliate links Get 25% off when you sign up to Trusted Housesitters, a site that helps you find sitters or homes to sit in. Start your podcast with my company, Podbean, and get one month free! In the USA, I recommend trading crypto with Kraken. Outside the USA, trade crypto with Binance and get 5% off your trading fees! For backpacking gear, buy from Gossamer Gear.
Think travel is too expensive in today's economy? Think again. I'm joined by Matthew Kepnes, a.k.a. Nomadic Matt, to explore whether budget travel is still possible in 2025 and beyond. We get into: Money-saving tips that still work Travel hacks that no longer do Surprising destinations where your dollar stretches way farther than you'd expect Back in 2005, one trip to Thailand changed Matt's life forever. He quit his job, set off to backpack the world for a year... and never stopped. Since then, he's spent the last two decades helping millions of travelers explore the world smarter, cheaper, and longer through his blog, books, and courses.
Matthew Kepnes has been traveling the world since 2006. In 2008, he launched his site NomadicMatt.com to help others travel better, cheaper, and smarter. Matt is a NYT bestselling author. Top 3 Value Bombs 1. It's a struggle these days to gain traction in Google and you can't rely on it anymore. 2. Most creators stick to their niche. But, you have to find new audience and the best way to find them is to go outside your niche and find other fields . 3. AI can't tell you the reason for travel changes and it can't replicate the human experience because travel is a personal experience. AI in travel is still in process. Learn how to travel more for less with the book the BBC called the bible of budget travel - How to Travel the World with a 75 dollars a Day Sponsors NetSuite - Over 41,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite, by Oracle - THE number one cloud E.R.P. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at NetSuite.com/fire. ZipRecruiter - Save time hiring for 2025 with new ZipIntro. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com/fire right now to try ZipIntro FOR FREE. ZipIntro. Post jobs today, talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Shopify - If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time for you to head over to Shopify. Sign for your 1-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com/onfire.
Discover all of the podcasts in our network, search for specific episodes, get the Optimal Living Daily workbook, and learn more at: OLDPodcast.com. Episode 2970: Leo Babauta shares simple, flexible strategies for staying healthy while traveling, focusing on movement, mindfulness, and eating habits that don't rely on strict routines or gyms. He encourages a mindset of adaptability and self-awareness, helping you stay energized and fit no matter where your journey takes you. Quotes to ponder: "Travel throws you out of your routine, and that's what makes it amazing but also what can throw your health habits into disarray." "The key is to let go of the idea that you need to do things exactly as you do at home." "Walking is amazing. You'll explore, get your body moving, and enjoy the moment." Episode references: Nomadic Matt: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/ Nerd Fitness: https://www.nerdfitness.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Discover all of the podcasts in our network, search for specific episodes, get the Optimal Living Daily workbook, and learn more at: OLDPodcast.com. Episode 2970: Leo Babauta shares simple, flexible strategies for staying healthy while traveling, focusing on movement, mindfulness, and eating habits that don't rely on strict routines or gyms. He encourages a mindset of adaptability and self-awareness, helping you stay energized and fit no matter where your journey takes you. Quotes to ponder: "Travel throws you out of your routine, and that's what makes it amazing but also what can throw your health habits into disarray." "The key is to let go of the idea that you need to do things exactly as you do at home." "Walking is amazing. You'll explore, get your body moving, and enjoy the moment." Episode references: Nomadic Matt: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/ Nerd Fitness: https://www.nerdfitness.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(Disclaimer: Click 'more' to see ad disclosure) Geobreeze Travel is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as MileValue.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. ➤ Free LIVE training to maximize your pointshttps://geobreezetravel.com/webinar ➤ Free points 101 course (includes hotel upgrade email template)https://geobreezetravel.com/freecourse ➤ Free credit card consultations https://airtable.com/apparEqFGYkas0LHl/shrYFpUr2zutt5515 ➤ Seats.Aero: https://geobreezetravel.com/seatsaero ➤ Request a free personalized award search tutorial: https://go.geobreezetravel.com/ast-form If you are interested in supporting this show when you apply for your next card, check out https://geobreezetravel.com/cards and if you're not sure what card is right for you, I offer free credit card consultations athttps://geobreezetravel.com/consultations!Timestamps:00:00 Meet Nomadic Matt01:27 Traveling on a Budget: Tips and Tricks03:23 Earning Money While Traveling12:25 Safety Tips for Budget Travelers16:50 Debunking Travel Myths20:39 Traveling in Expensive Cities31:34 Sustainable and Ethical Travel35:47 Conclusion and Where to Find MoreYou can find Julia at: ➤ Free course: https://julia-s-school-9209.thinkific.com/courses/your-first-points-redemption➤ Website: https://geobreezetravel.com/ ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geobreezetravel/ ➤ Credit card links: https://www.geobreezetravel.com/cards ➤ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/geobreezetravelYou can find Matt at:➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nomadicmatt/➤ Website: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post. The content of this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available.
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're talking with Nomadic Matt—one of the most well-known travel bloggers in the world. He's been traveling for nearly two decades, and his new book How to Travel the World on $75 a Day is an update to his classic budget travel guide.In this episode, we dig into how travel has changed, the real way to find cheap flights, whether travel hacking is still worth it, and if long-term travel is actually sustainable. We also discuss social media's impact on travel and why Matt thinks travel blogging isn't dead—it's just different.
Nomadic Matt (Matt Kepnes) is a New York Times best-selling author who revolutionized budget travel with How to Travel the World on $50 a Day. With over 15 years of globetrotting experience and having visited more than 100 countries, he shares expert insights on affordable travel, building a sustainable nomadic lifestyle, and the evolution of the travel industry. Whether you're a seasoned backpacker or a first-time traveler, this conversation is packed with practical tips, inspiring stories, and a deep dive into what it truly means to explore the world on a budget.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/globetrotters-podcast--5023679/support.
Kiwis are known for being great travelers, coming from a small country, it's only natural to be curious about the rest of the world. But American Matt Kepnes aka Nomadic Matt has done something extraordinary - he has basically been travelling the world for the past twenty years. How you might ask? On a budget. [picture id="4KAPWFE_Barcelona1_jpeg" crop="original" layout="full"] A New York Times bestselling author, Matt has made it his mission to help other people do the same - maybe not for as long but certainly as cheaply as possible. One hundred or so countries and a thousand odd hostels later, Matt joins Jesse from New York. [picture id="4O738HW_mattmadagascar_copy_2_JPG" crop="original" layout="full"]
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.
If you're dreaming of your next adventure but worried about the price tag, you've come to the right place! All this week on the podcast, we're diving deep into travel tips, tricks, and money-saving strategies. Earlier, we heard from Brian Kelly, founder of The Points Guy, on how to maximize travel rewards and cut costs on flights and hotels.Today, we're keeping the momentum going with another expert traveler, Matthew Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt. His New York Times bestselling book, How to Travel the World on $75 a Day, is now in its fourth edition. We talk about everything from affordable travel destinations and hidden local gems to travel logistics, like minimizing ATM and credit card fees abroad.Check out Farnoosh's new hyperlocal podcast The Montclair PodJoin the So Money Members Club.Download Farnoosh's free investing blueprint.Hang out with Farnoosh on Instagram.
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.
Island er fuld af overraskelser – fra strenge nøgne brusebadsregler til en kærlighed-had relation til Eurovision. I denne episode af Radiovagabond taler jeg med Alda Sigmundsdóttir, Helga og Asbjørn om, hvad islændinge virkelig tænker om turister, den fascinerende islandske sprogskat og hvorfor nogle lokale fungerer som “brusepoliti” i svømmehaller. Vi dykker også ned i hemmelige perler i Island, Islands fodboldmirakel og hvorfor landet har så mange specielle regler og traditioner, som ofte overrasker turister. Næste uge: Jeg taler med Nomadic Matt om, hvorvidt budgetrejser stadig er mulige – selv i dyre destinationer som Island! Lyt nu og læs mere på https://radiovagabond.dk/406-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
Travel hacking allows you to see the world for less than you spend at home. That's right. If you took your rent or mortgage payment in the US and traded it for traveling abroad, you could live off far less money and do far more than you do back in the States. But you'll need to know how to work the system before you take off on your flight, or else you might come home happy and full but broke. Matthew Kepnes, better known online as Nomadic Matt, made travel his full-time job, documenting how much he spent, saved, and enjoyed along the way. Matt has spent more time outside the US than most Americans will in their lives—and he has some secrets to share. Matt goes over EXACTLY how to start travel hacking, from credit cards to cheap activities, hostels, hotels, and horror stories you should try to avoid. Matt also shares why so many Americans spend WAY too much money when they're abroad and what you can do tomake your trip last FAR longer IF you follow a few essential tips. So, if you want to finally take the year off and wander around Europe, Southeast Asia, or Central America but don't think you have the funds to do so, Matt is here to prove you wrong. In This Episode We Cover The most cost-effective way to travel and why you MUST “travel like you live” Why smart spenders MUST get a travel rewards credit card NOW Geographic arbitrage and the cheapest countries/areas to stay in for weeks (or months!) Hostel horror stories and why it ISN'T all partying and bunk beds Free activities you can do in ANY city and where to find them Matt's top travel websites and apps to find hotel and flight deals for cheap And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Join BiggerPockets for FREE Scott's Instagram Mindy on BiggerPockets Grab Scott's Book, “Set for Life” Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Money Moment How to Earn Free Vacations With Travel Rewards Credit Cards Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-445 Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email us: moneymoment@biggerpockets.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Solo Travel Adventures: Safe Travel for Women, Preparing for a Trip, Overcoming Fear, Travel Tips
Researching your travel destination is an essential part of trip planning. It helps you gather information about the place you're visiting, including its culture, attractions, safety considerations, and practical details. Here are some steps to effectively research your travel destination:Set your goals: Determine what you want to get out of your trip. Are you interested in historical sites, outdoor adventures, cultural experiences, or local cuisine? Clarifying your goals will help you focus your research.Use online resources: The internet offers a wealth of information for travelers. Google of course. Try FB for groups specific to travel or that destination. YouTube has vblogs of people who have traveled there. Rick Steves, Samantha Brown, Nomadic Matt. Books can spark interest such as Frances Mayes books or Stephanie Rosenbloom books and articles.Explore local attractions and activities: Make a list of the must-see attractions and activities in your destination. Look for historical landmarks, museums, natural wonders, parks, local markets, and events. Check the opening hours, admission fees, and any special requirements for visiting these places.Transportation and accommodation: Research transportation options within the destination, such as public transportation, car rentals, or local tour operators. Look for accommodations that suit your preferences and budget, whether it's hotels, hostels, vacation rentals, or camping sites. Read reviews, compare prices, and check their proximity to major attractions.Safety and health considerations: Check travel advisories: Visit the website of your country's government or relevant travel authorities to check for any travel advisories or warnings issued for your destination. These advisories provide information on safety, health concerns, political stability, and other important considerations. Visit Safe Expat for country safety recommendations.Remember, travel research is an ongoing process, so keep exploring and gathering information until your departure. The more you know about your travel destination, the better prepared you'll be to have a memorable and enjoyable trip. Facebook community: Solo Travel for Women Over 50Instagram @solotraveladventures50www.cherylbeckesch.comSend me a message or share your solo travel story with me.https://www.speakpipe.com/SoloTravelAdventuresLeave a review:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/solo-travel-adventures-safe-travel-for-women-preparing-for-a-trip-overcoming-fear-travel-tips/id1650161410
“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.
#109: Travel expert and author Nomadic Matt (Matt Kepnes), joins Chris to reflect on their most unforgettable travel experiences and discuss the importance of staying flexible, embracing a slow travel philosophy, and living in the moment. Matt also offers insights on travel insurance, and shares his top picks for off-the-beaten-path travel destinations, must-have travel gear, and effective strategies for planning a budget-friendly trip. Matthew Kepnes (@nomadicmatt) is a bestselling author and and travel blogger. He is the founder and CEO of Nomadic Matt, a website dedicated to budget travel, and the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller "How to Travel the World on $50 a Day." Full show notes: https://www.allthehacks.com/travel-nomadic-matt-kepnes Partner Deals Pacaso: Free early access to listings and $2,500+ in closing credits Rocket Money: Easily cancel your unused subscriptions Athletic Greens: Free 1 year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs Inside Tracker: 20% off personalized wellness & nutrition plans backed by science MasterClass: Learn from the world's best with 15% off Selected Links From The Episode Matthew Kepnes: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Linkedin Books: How to Travel the World on $50 a Day | Ten Years a Nomad: A Traveler's Journey Home All the Hacks: #108 Living a Happier Life, Saying No, and Prioritizing Goals with Derek Sivers Connection Recommendations: Couchsurfing | Bumble BFF | Meetup.com Cards/Points: Charles Schwab Debit Card | Chase Sapphire Reserve | American Express Gold | Bilt | Point.me | Seat Spy Travel Insurance: Safety Wing | World Nomads | Insured Nomads | InsureMyTrip Matt's Destination Recommendations: Taiwan | Romania | Bulgaria | South Korea | Malaysia | Sri Lanka | Napal | Mexico: San Miguel de Allende, Oaxaca, Chiapa, Yucatan, Merida, Monterrey, Mexico City Paris Recommendation: Le dit vin Full Show Notes (00:00) Introduction to Matthew Kepnes (01:19) Biggest travel misconception (03:35) How the travel industry has evolved (07:15) Traveling economically (09:17) Strategies for planning a trip on a budget (11:18) Travel as a professional career (12:32) Making connections and finding experiences (13:52) Travel resources (17:51) Memorable travel experiences (19:19) Dealing with travel burnout (21:34) Getting a sense of cultures, customs, and languages (23:10) Overcoming communication barriers (25:30) Finding quality tours (27:01) Matt's must-have travel gear (28:26) Carrying credit/ATM cards and identification (35:36) Travel insurance (37:57) Dangerous/bad experiences (40:43) Credit card and point resources (42:40) Off-the-beaten-path recommendations (44:42) Travel mindset (47:22) Paris recommendations (47:55) Where to find Matthew Kepnes online Connect with All the Hacks All the Hacks: Newsletter | Website | Facebook | Email Chris Hutchins: Twitter | Instagram | Website | LinkedIn
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 […]
The O'Leary Review Podcast Guest: Hartmuth Pelger December 1, 2022 Recently, we got a chance to sit down—virtually, of course, because I'm in California and he's in Austria—with Hartmuth Pelger. Hartmuth is a multilingual business executive with more than 25 years of experience managing a wide range of financial functions, from analysis to auditing. Currently, he is a CFO in the e-Mobility sector. Hartmuth lives in Austria but has also lived in 8 countries across three continents during his well-traveled life. More importantly, Hartmuth started a parallel career in business coaching for high-performing individuals. Tom Woods 100 One of the goals of this program is to get at least 100 people within the Tom Woods orbit on the podcast. “Tom's orbit” is loosely defined, but in our case, Hartmuth is number 8. Ninety-two to go! #TomWoods100 Book mentioned Tomorrow's Gold: Asia's age of discovery by Marc Faber Influences The Peter Schiff Show — where Tom Woods developed some of his radio/podcasting chops as a guest host for Peter. The Mises Institute — The Mises Institute exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian school of economics, and individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Founded in 1982 by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe — an Austrian School economist and libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosopher, is Professor Emeritus of Economics at UNLV, Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, founder and president of The Property and Freedom Society, former editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, and a lifetime member of the Royal Horticultural Society. He is married to economist Dr. A. Gulcin Imre Hoppe and resides with his wife in Istanbul. Digging through the archives, we found the debut episode of the Tom Woods Show which Hartmuth mentions. Ethnic Germans in Romania The Wikipedia entry – Germans of Romania A New York Times article (behind paywall), “Ethnic Germans in Romania Dwindle” A fascinating 8+ minute video on The Exodus of Romania's German-speaking Minority. More Romanian history Who was Nicolae Ceaușescu? The Wikipedia on Romania's brutal and hated dictator. Romania in World War II. The Wikipedia on the interesting history, from its near alliance with Nazi Germany to its ultimate flip to the Communist side. The e-Mobility Sector Hartmuth works in the off-highway sector within e-mobility. Some manufacturers are now focused on not only alternative fuels, but alternative ways to power machinery in general. The specific application of a fully-electric drive concept is key to knowing if it will make economic sense. For instance, Hartmuth is working on mining and agricultural application, and an important aspect of a firm's decision on whether to go fully-electric or not is the amount of pollution—or lack thereof—that will be produced on-site. Very interesting. Armageddon (1998) How much better would Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) and his roughneck pals have felt if they had Hartmuth's e-mobility concept working for them on that comet? Assuming they had diesel-powered rigs, they need oxygen to burn the fuel. Does a comet have all that much oxygen available? Since we love Bruce Willis—and most of his movies—we will eventually get to Die Hard later in the holiday season, but we did stumble upon one potential plot hole in the Christmas thriller…or was there ever one? The sovereignty of Hong Kong Wikipedia's breakdown of what happened when the UK handed it over to the Red Chinese. Dubai Wikipedia. Sorry about all the Wikipedia links, but they are pretty good and if you are on your best internet behavior, you'll learn a lot. However, we tend to go down the proverbial worm-hole of Wikipedia from time to time. That's also fun on occasion, but tends to grind down available time in the day. Enjoy the links at your own risk. Portuguese At one point, I was interested in learning Portuguese, but I don't know about that now. Somebody on YouTube claims they can teach you in 4 hours. Click at your own risk. I haven't finished the video yet as I type this… Hitchhiking I was blown away when Hartmuth told me he hitchhiked in the western US and Canada in the 1990s. I grew up with the notion that hitchhiking was a serious no-no—both to try and get rides or to give rides to potential riders. The days of Me and Bobby McGee were more romantic and innocent, I guess. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOoMREvsV9E There's a guy I found on the web called Nomadic Matt and he tells you 14 Ways to Safely Hitchhike Across the United States. Read at your own speed or interest level. I'm just leaving it here…I have no interest in hitchhiking anywhere—I am still a child of my parents. Place in Canada mentioned: Prince George, British Columbia How do you contact Hartmuth? You can either contact me or go to his LinkedIn: Hartmuth Pelger. Austria Final Wikipedia entry of today's show notes: Austria. Interesting story of mine somewhat related to Austria—I've never been to continental Europe—in my travels… I was in Japan a few years back and at a coffee shop of sorts for a breakfast. The selection of non-Japanese foods in most places is often quite strange. The desire to imitate Europe or America is strong, but the implementation is often rather weak—save Kentucky Fried Chicken, but that's a subject for an entire newsletter or podcast series on its own. So, craving a typical American breakfast sandwich or something similar, I ordered a “Viennese Sausage.” Never had that before. Figured it was something even more exotic than regular sausage. Wrong. It was a hot dog on a hot dog bun. Served with a packet of ketchup and a packet of mustard. I was very confused and rather irritated until it dawned on me that I had seen Vienna Sausages in the store, usually canned and next to the SPAM. But also that I was eating a “wiener” and that…duh!...Vienna is the anglicized name for the Austrian capital city of Wien, thus wiener. See also: frankfurter, hamburger, etc. for other such examples. I don't think cheeseburger works in this scenario…but I could be mistaken. Long story short: the coffee was good, the hot dog was nothing special and we had great Japanese food most of the other meals we sat down for. As my good friend once said, “When in Greece…” Final book mentioned How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne. The aforementioned Tom Woods talks about this book in 2017. Highly recommended speech—about a half-hour.
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.
Today we are talking with Erica Hackman from The Nomadic Network who is also the owner of Decoding Online Dating. Erica and I go back a few years and she is one of my favorite people to talk to and it always seems like once we are together, we can spend hours upon hours talking about travel, and business, and even get into some deep topics effortlessly. On this episode, we are getting into how people can ebb & flow from your life depending on the season you are currently in, why being comfortable being you can help you navigate your seasons of life, and how looking at your future through a lifestyle lens can make it less daunting and overwhelming. I adore our conversations and I am always learning and gaining so much great advice from my time talking with Erica. When you look at the next 5 years from a lifestyle lens instead of a purely business mindset, what does it look like for you? Let us know over on Instagram! Guest Bio Erica is the Director of Nomadic Matt's community: The Nomadic Network. After living around the world for years in places like Zambia, St Vincent, South Korea, Qatar, Costa Rica, and rural Thailand, Erica met Nomadic Matt and began her decade-long career working with a huge budget travel website that gets over 1.5 million readers each month. She's worked from my laptop for extended periods of time in Vietnam, Cambodia, Dubai, Costa Rica, the UK, South Africa, and Ghana. Her love for meeting people translated well when it came to building The Nomadic Network. Over the last 3 years, Erica and Nomadic Matt have created a thriving community that hosts in-person and virtual events that connect travelers to people and resources that get them traveling cheaper, better, longer, and more! Important Links The Nomadic Network Seasons of Life - LI Podcast Episode Location Indie - Join The Newsletter (scroll to the bottom of the page)
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
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
Erica Virvo Hackman is a community enthusiast, connector, and purposeful traveler. As an adult, Erica's lived in Qatar, rural Thailand, South Korea, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Zambia, and Costa Rica. Erica has been an integral part of Nomadic Matt's remote team since 2013. Since then she has spend large chunks of time working from Dubai, Qatar, Vietnam, Thailand, South Africa, Iceland, Germany, Jordan, and from a yoga retreat in Cambodia. In 2019, she helped create Nomadic Matt's community, The Nomadic Network (otherwise known as TNN). Two years ago, TNN was born. Today, there are over 13,000 people in our community empowering one another, making friends with other travel lovers, and learning how to travel cheaper, better, longer, and more. She has experience planning in-person and virtual events, working with volunteers, and building a thriving community. What she's most proud of, is seeing all of the friendships born out of this travel network. Want to check out some of what we discussed in this episode? Wifi Solution for your Travels Vietnam Guesthouse-Under the Coconut Tree VCU Qatar-Erica's University Costa Rica Sustainable Living Facility-Rancho Mastatal Nomadic Matt Website Nomadic Matt's Book How to Take a Career Break to Travel the World (my TNN Presentation) What It's Like to Teach English & Live in South Korea (another TNN presentation) Want to learn more about Erica and The Nomadic Network? TNN Website-Join and find events TNN Tours Erica's Instagram TNN Instagram If you enjoyed today's episode and had a takeaway moment to share, be sure to take a screenshot and tag me (@thetravelshifters) and Erica (@erica.hackman) on Instagram and let us know what it was! We love connecting with you. Also, I invite you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify. See you in the next episode! Links and Resources Join Remote Work and How to Find it Waitlist Want a resume audit? Visit my website Follow me on Instagram Follow me on TikTok Join my Facebook Group Leave a Podcast Review or Rating
Today's guest is Kristen, a Travel Blogger, Founder of Bearfoot Theory, and Creator of Open Roads Fest. In 2014, Kristen decided to leave her life in Washington, DC in the marine conservation policy field. Wanting to travel and spend more time in nature, she realized her current career path was not in alignment with what she truly wanted. So, she started blogging as a way to document her journey outside. Since then, Bearfoot Theory has evolved into an incredible resource for everyday outdoor enthusiasts looking to challenge themselves in the outdoors, no matter their experience level. Follow: @BearfootTheory @OpenRoadsFest Website: www.bearfoottheory.com Show Notes: https://bearfoottheory.com/category/van-life-roadmap/ Breathwork: https://ourbreathcollective.com/ Van Company: outsidevan.com Nomadic Matt: https://www.nomadicmatt.com/ The Blonde Abroad: https://www.theblondeabroad.com/ -------- YOUR HOST LIZ: Connect with me on Instagram @LizLandeen and @ElevatedEntrepreneurCollective Find out about my various programs to support entrepreneurs and/or set up a FREE 30-minute clarity call with me at https://www.lizlandeen.com/ LOOKING FOR GUESTS! Are you an Outdoor Entrepreneur? Want to be a guest on the podcast? Fill out the guest submission form to be considered for the show at https://www.lizlandeen.com/podcast Outdoor Entrepreneur Team: Produced by Vandalpop Media at www.vandalpop.com PR and social media provided by @EspressoPodcastProduction
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!
Episode webiste: Ordinarysherpa.com/064 Buy me a Coffee: If you enjoy the ideas, find joy or inspiration from my work, you can buy me a coffee to say thanks and support the show. Beginners Guide to Untourism. https://ordinarysherpa.com/untourism/ I recently read this article from Nomadic Matt and given my reaction I thought it'd be worth sharing and talking through, as well as sharing ways to explore the world of travel differently. https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/travel-change/ “We often believe travel is some sort of panacea for one's thoughts about the world and the people in it. Go abroad, get exposed to different cultures, and then, bam, suddenly you'll have more empathy for people around the globe and stop seeing them as some ‘foreign, scary other' Books upon books about travel expound on the belief “I went traveling and became a better person with a deeper appreciation and tolerance for others.” First as a young American woman, I naively prescribed to the belief that we were the greatest country in the world. I was trained to believe that other places weren't safe. I had several experiences to challenge this paradigm. As a summer camp counselor working alongside International staff from countries I didn't know of; hosting foreign exchange students; my own mini-exchange experience changed my paradigm about travel. My definition and understanding about safety and security continues to evolve today and I rarely find much value from internet stories about location based safety. My threshold for safety is based on the network of people I am with and the relationships I have connected to that location. I know the mechanism behind internet news and the lack of context in the creation of stories or the details that get lost in the game of telephone gossip. Being from a small town in rural Wisconsin, I viewed travel as my gateway to new and different experiences. To meet people with backgrounds different from my own. To see nature beyond the boundaries of our backyard or hometown, to understand the expansiveness of the globe, ecosystems, and environment that contributes to the place and culture building phenomenon. Over the years I have witnessed and experienced different types of travel. What is the impact of travel?Large travel brands impact on small businesses and the soul of a community. Travel can change us in meaningful ways, but it's not a universal declaration. - travel changes us when we are outside our comfort zone- deep empathy and in gratitude for those who serve us Given the way our system of 2 weeks of vacation leads to all inclusive escapes and deluxe resorts hidden from local people in tropical locations, I don't know that travel has any impact on how people see or interact with the world. It can offer exposure and escape from daily life, but I don't know if that leads to change for most individuals. Which is why I hesitate to say that travel is the secret to a fulfilling life. I have chosen to use the word adventure intentionally to invite you to step to the margins of your comfort zone. To consider slowing down and learning about people different from you or places you are familiar with. WHat if instead of exploring the most popular places, you began exploring the least popular place. If this intrigues you I invite you to explore travel from a different lens than a traditional tourism mindset. How might we Incorporate generosity into our adventures? About 3 years ago it started with the kids writing thank you note and drawing pictures for the airline staff. It has extended to looking for ways to support the locations we go or leading with generosity when meeting a new host, driver, or stranger on the street. We've had some great life lessons through these experiences. There are also service-based experiences that you can search to travel and intentionally engage in service work. Since I am an Executive for a Private FOundation and have been working in Philantrhopy for over 10 years I have some insights about mission trips that I won't go into. I will say, you do not need to go to a third world country to have a generous or service based experience. I have plans to feature more examples of these experiences in upcoming podcast episodes. How might we explore different means for travel? With the car rental shortage we had experience with apps like Turo over the past 4 years, but even that was tough. So then we explored car dealerships, and camper rentals. We ended up finding a local company that had a 1996 conversion van available for rent. It was a non-traditional way to travel and most people might turn up their nose to a 1996 van, but it gave us some serious local cred and allowed us to adventure more comfortably. After we confirmed the conversion van we decided to camp instead of reserving formal lodging accommodations. We camped on private property using the Hipcamp platform. It's like Airbnb but for camping and allows for tent camping, car camping, and RV camping (although Hawaii is not suited for RV camping like the mainland). While hotels offer predictability, I don't enjoy hotel accommodations and most time hotels are run by large brands that may not be closely connected to the community. I prefer finding solutions that offer triple win to the community - customer - and business. How might we try local foods? Roadside food stands. We don't eat out very often but we are curious about local foods and flavors. We tried many different local foods and dishes for a fraction of the price of local restaurants. Our kids are slightly picky eaters so having the flexibility to try things on our terms and then prepare a back up plan if they don't like it has always been a better fit for us. We do require a "no thank you try" (Learn more about our no thank you try approach in episode 021) How might we discover “locals only” hangouts? When you build relationships with locals and come from a place of generosity not expectations, they will peel back the onion and share some of their favorite often hidden places that they don't want tourists to know about. We had at least 4 different experiences with some "local secrets" from the best beaches, to a quiet cove where a rare breed of shells are found, a hike unknown to many tourists, a cliff jump location that was perfect for kids and what time of day to go for the best experience. As with any relationship, the more they trust you the more they are willing to share and let you into their tribe. BUT this must be authentic! How might we experience pristine and untouched landscapes? You have to go off the beaten path for these experiences and they will challenge you and your family. We drove nearly 1 mile off any main road and had a pristine camping location on the side of the ocean. It is the only place where we saw the sunrise and sunset from the same spot in my life. It has forever changed our definition of an "ocean view." How might we recreate an experience we hear or see about? We found an Airbnb experience that seemed intriguing but out of our price range, so we did a little extra research and DIY'd the experience on our terms. The experience was to swim in the hidden warm pools, where the fresh water natural pools are heated by lava beneath the surface of the earth. It was definitely a memorable experience for all of us. We didn't pay for a single tour in our 3 weeks in Hawaii. Again, much like I stated in my comments about hotels. I am not opposed to tours, my point is to be intentional about what you want to get out of the tour experience. I have a friend in Nashville who runs a food tour company and is on a mission to invest $1M into the local restaurant industry, she is very particular about the restaurants she chooses and the food must be made from scratch. There is a mutual benefit to that tour. I have purchased tours and later didn't feel great about what my money was supporting. Like the Holleywood Homes tour- why did I really need to know where a bunch of famous people lived? A dolphin cruise or whale watching experience, it's neat to see but I have heard stories from the locals that left me questioning if that tour's intentions are good for the community. How might we connect with local families?One of our accommodations was a stay with a host family. When you find people around the world who have similar likes and interests and you nurture relationships with, you have different options. I grew up staying with family members when we traveled. I know that isn't easy to expect when we travel as a family of 5 so we have built a network of other families who are open to hosting and experiencing adventure. How might we learn what is unique about the culture of the location you are visiting? Bringing a curious mindset to our adventures allowed us to meet and interact with locals and ended up with a little ukulele lesson. A ukulele is now an item on my son's birthday list. I can't imagine it would be on the list without this experience. How might we learning a new skill? While ukulele offered a mini skill building experience, my oldest son had a deep desire to surf. This was our second time connecting with locals, using their equipment and building the skill of surfing. Our first was in Florida where we met up with the Family we bought our RV from and the second was from our host family in Hawaii. My oldest is very eager to keep perfecting the skill of surfing (which is going to be tricky living in Wisconsin). When we learn from someone else, we give them the opportunity to share their passions. One of my favorite things I did for myself was on a horse ranch in Tucson, a local couple would come in and teach glass art. I took an afternoon class (without kids) and made a glass pendant. It was the best investment in learning a skill, supporting a local, and having a souvenir to remember that experience by. Does travel change us? I think that is up to you to decide. As with many things in life Envy can be the root of deception and entice people to more luxurious, more remote, epic views. The impact of travel comes back to purpose. What is the purpose of travel in your life?Beginners Guide to Untourism. https://ordinarysherpa.com/untourism/
Self Publishing School : Learn How To Write A Book And Grow Your Business
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
Nomadic Matt, who runs NomadicMatt.com, just returned from 80 days in Europe! He spent the summer bouncing around the Greek islands and four other countries. He has plenty of tips for American's hopping the pond. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/johnnyjet/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/johnnyjet/support
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.
If you’re ready to do some traveling after being cooped up for over a year, then this episode is for you. Today we’re talking with Matthew Kepnes who is better known as Nomadic Matt. Before he turned 23 Matt hadn’t taken a single trip overseas, but since then he’s visited over 100 countries and territories, tried some crazy foods, and made lifelong friends along the way. He’s the NYT best-selling author of “How to Travel the World on $50 a Day”, and his mission is to help would-be travelers realize that they actually can travel- and they can do it all for less money than they think it’ll take. On his site, Matt teaches folks all about affordable travel, ranging from topics like how they can save money by finding affordable flights, all the way to advice on picking out a good backpack. Listen to our conversation with Nomadic Matt to be convinced that you can afford to travel! During this episode we enjoyed a Canela Oscuro by Southern Grist Brewing! And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money! Best friends out! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Show notes: Two Can Travel Blog, Misfits Episode 013, Misfit Stevo Episode 104, Katrina Episode 161, Ray Blankney Episode 188, Nomadic Matt, Goats On The Road, VIP Kid, Adventure In You, Support Misfits and Rejects on Patreon, Get a Misfits and Rejects T-shirt or Tank, Supper-Club.com
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)
Today we had on Matt from @nomadicmatt Hey brought business wisdom to this Live. He shared how he became the brand he is today and shared some of the mistakes and obstacles he has overcome and how we can overcome them too!He also gave his predictions for Travel Blogging in 2021!You def want to hear from this giant in the Travel blogging space!!Follow Matt at instagram.com/nomadicmatt/Hope you enjoy!!Make sure you follow us on IG: @chubbydiaries__Visit our website: Chubbydiaries.comFirst 3 episode launch today Dec 15th Second 4 episodes launch on Dec 22nd Last 3 episodes launch on Dec 29th
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.
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
The Distilled Man: Actionable Advice for the Everyday Gentleman
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/
Boss Girl Creative Podcast | A Podcast for Female Creative Entrepreneurs
Interested in becoming a successful blogger? This episode is for you. Hit play to listen through these 9 tips. It's time to start separating yourself from the pack and figuring out what's going to make you stand out! BGC ANNOUNCEMENTS * Welcome to the 132nd episode of the Boss Girl Creative Podcast!! Today I'm sharing tips on how you can become a successful blogger. * Have comments or questions? Tweet/IG using the hashtag #BOSSGIRLQA or call in: (707) BOSS-GIRL * Support Boss Girl Creative endeavors by joining the BGC Crew! * Join me in the Facebook Group on Wednesday nights at 9pm CST for a live Q&A answer session!! Send me your questions through email, phone or #BOSSGIRLQA on Twitter/Instagram * Want a direct link to the podcast feed? Click here. * Use these Hashtags on Social Media: #bossgirlcreative #bossgirlchat **THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY GUSTO. RECEIVE 3 MONTHS FREE AFTER YOU RUN YOUR FIRST PAYROLL!! HEAD TO GUSTO.COM/BOSSGIRL** INSIDE THIS EPISODE * Read * Be like Apple * Invest in Yourself * Be Niche * Create Products * Stop with all of the sponsored content * Networking outside of your niche * Stop talking about yourself * Be Persistent RESOURCES MENTIONED **Some links below contain affiliate/referral links. It is a way for this site to earn advertising fees by advertising or linking to certain products and/or services.** * Brand new eCourse!!! Unlocking Your SEO Potential * Shout-out to Matt from NomadicMatt.com * Books to read: Influence, by Robert B. Cialdini The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey What Got You Here Won't Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith The Psychology of Persuasion, by Kevin Hogan Start With Why, by Simon Sinek Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman Ask, by Ryan Levesque On Writing, by Stephen King How To Be a Travel Writer (Lonely Planet), by Don George The Obstacle is the Way, by Ryan Holiday The 4-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss Choose Yourself, by James Altucher Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, by Sheryl Sandberg * Shout-out to ProBlogger (aka Darren Rowse) * Shout-out to Brittany Bailey (Pretty Handy Girl) EPISODES YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY EPISODE 71 - BUSTING THROUGH OVERWHELM EPISODE 101 - CONVERTING VISITORS TO READERS FIND TAYLOR ONLINE Blog - taylorbradford.com Instagram - @taybradfordblog Facebook - taybradfordblog Pinterest - taybradfordblog Twitter - @taybradfordblog HELP SPREAD THE BOSS GIRL LOVE! It would be amazeballs if you shared Boss Girl Creative Podcast with your fellow Boss Girls on twitter. Click here to tweet some love! If you love this podcast, head on over to iTunes and kindly leave a rating, a review and subscribe! WAYS TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE BOSS GIRL CREATIVE PODCAST Click here to subscribe via iTunes Click here to subscribe via Boss Girl Creative Newsletter Click here to subscribe via Stitcher FEEDBACK + PROMOTION You can ask your questions and leave your comments by either calling (707) BOSS-GIRL, emailing hello@bossgirlcreative.com or go to the Boss Girl Creative Facebook group!
Sharecare Radio: Be Healthy, Look Great, and Feel Incredible.
In this Travel Well installment, powered by EVEN Hotels, Nomadic Matt shares the inside scoop on NYC.
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.