Blake Miner started his digital nomad life as an English teacher in South Korea, where he started his first online business selling ebooks. He eventually started another business, sold it, and now works in Web3 and focuses on his creative projects.
Tune in to this episode to hear his full story, his lessons learned, and tips for new nomads.
Connect with Blake:
Connect with Anne:
Blake Miner started his digital nomad life as an English teacher in South Korea, where he started his first online business selling ebooks. He eventually started another business, sold it, and now works in Web3 and focuses on his creative projects.
Tune in to this episode to hear his full story, his lessons learned, and tips for new nomads.
Connect with Blake:
Connect with Anne:
Hey Nomads, welcome to Digital Nomad Stories, the podcast. My name is Anne Claessen and, together with my co-host, kendra Hasse, we interview digital nomads. Why? Because we want to share stories of how they did it. We talk about remote work, online business, location and dependency, freelancing, travel and, of course, the digital nomad lifestyle. Do you want to know more about us and access all previous episodes? Visit digitalnomadsdoriesco. Alright, let's go into today's episode. Hey Nomads, welcome to a new episode. Today I'm here with Blake Miner. He is obviously a digital nomad and I'm super excited to have him on the show. He's traveled a lot. I stalked his Instagram and he has some really cool travel photos there, so I'm sure we have a lot to talk about. He also started and sold a business which I'm very interested in. I definitely want to learn more about that, so I'm sure we'll have a lot of business travel nomad talk today. Blake, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you, anne, super excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so can you tell us a little bit more about you and about what life looks like? What is a typical day? What do you do?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, well, currently, I'll start off by letting you know where I am right now in the world. These days, I'm a resident in Panama, so that's new for me. I'm a resident as of like earlier this year, so newly a resident in Panama, even though I've been based in Latin America for three years I would say for at least half the year and right now I'm speaking to you from Armenia, colombia, which is a new location for me. But typically my life involves a lot of travel. These days, it might not always look that way, but I'm trying to spend as much time as I can in my residency country of Panama and then traveling from there. So I found it super great so far as a hub, because there are a lot of flight options, for example, to Europe or to North America, my home country, or to Colombia, where I love spending time as well. That's what life looks like from a travel standpoint, but right now, work wise, I'm quite busy.
Speaker 2:I'm working on a number of different projects, as I know we all are, and I tend to work a pretty standard work week. I'm in front of my computer a lot like maybe 11 hours a day right now, doing a lot of writing and personal creative projects and top of other types of paid work that I'm doing, and typically I keep the week open for work. So I typically have Monday to Friday reserve. That's a default. Sometimes it can be, say, saturday to Thursday because I want to go traveling when other people aren't. So I love that freedom of being a digital nomad. But, yeah, two days maybe for pure exploration reset and then the rest of the week for working on creative and paid projects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. Thank you so much for giving us a sneak peek into the life of Lake. So why did you choose Panama? Was that what you said that it's a good hub to fly out of and it's pretty central to the places that you want to go or is there another reason that you chose Panama specifically?
Speaker 2:Yes, I would say it's a combination of several factors. One was that I've been based in Latin America and I'm loving life here for the past few years, and Panama was an obvious option, because Columbia is very complicated. I love living here, I love spending time here, but it's quite complicated. The other options that a lot of expats go with in Latin America are Paraguay, uruguay, costa Rica and Mexico a lot of times, but I don't know, I'm just out.
Speaker 2:Of all the countries I visited, the best hub for me was Panama, and it helped that I have a friend who'd gone through the process, have the exact lawyer that I could get the same setup with and that all combined made it super easy for me to decide to be based here. That, along with the fact that, like we said before, it's a great hub for flights and, yeah, I think it's a very tax friendly country for expats and I mean there are taxes involved. It's quite complicated, it's territorial, so it depends where your income is coming from, but that's always a nice bonus as well, plus the fact that when you're a nomad, it really helps to have a tax residency. A lot of people don't think about that in their first few years, but for me. I felt pressure. I have lived and been a tax resident in various parts of the world, but for a short period before that I started to feel the pressure where, okay, I need to settle down somewhere, claim my tax residency and then be set from that standpoint.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense to be a little bit strategic about that as well.
Speaker 1:It just doesn't really make sense to just buy default pay taxes in a high tax country because, you just happen to be here at the time that you started your business, or maybe you're born there, so I think it's very interesting that you chose Panama and that you made that your home base, and that was also one of the reasons. Can you tell me a little bit more about the projects that you're working on? Like you mentioned, you have some paid projects. You have some, maybe, passion projects, some personal projects, and I know that you in the past, you sold an online business. So can you tell us a little bit more about what your work looks like right now and maybe in the past?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. I'll start with what I'm doing these days and then we can rewind and I'll share a little bit more about how that came to be. So these days I'm trying to do more creative work. I've always loved writing since I was in high school, and I've just never really made time or I've never made it into a habit. So that's one of my main focuses now. Every day I'm trying to write first thing in the morning. So I'm trying to tweet more. I'm trying to write more long form content and just hash out all of my ideas, because I've been collecting all of these thoughts and ideas every place I go.
Speaker 2:A lot of people use Evernote was super popular back five years ago. Every entrepreneur used Evernote. Now Notion is super popular. I use one called Bear. It was a recommendation from a friend of mine, but that's where I keep all of my notes. So that's for all my personal writing. I just I don't know. Whatever I have an insight or a thought, or it's like even my personal diary journal. That's where I'm keeping it all, but I feel like I've never really gone through that and process that. So that's a big part of my work. Week now is just starting to share ideas, and it's definitely good for me as well, because I get to hash out my thinking and clarify things.
Speaker 2:One of my life goals is to write a book, and I don't really I haven't put much thought into it, but before I die I want to write a book. So I might as well start now writing a lot more. I do have a blog where I publish as well, at Flinner Life, so I've been writing on that website for four or five years, but it was never really this regular habit. So I've actually, because I've been doing it for so long, the site has naturally grown, but I've never put a dedicated focus into it. So I feel like for the past this year I've been a lot better with that at keeping it updated, making it more of a focus to write content and to grow it. So the writing that's one big part of what I'm doing now.
Speaker 2:The other side of my work is I'm doing work in the Web3 space. So since 2016, I've been working with companies in the Web3 space that are launching these, that are launching crypto related projects, and I help on the marketing and operations side. I come in and I also do writing for those projects as well. That's something I enjoy doing. I'm super passionate about decentralization, libertarianism, and I naturally gravitate toward that line of thinking. So I've worked with several founders in the space. We've launched a number of cool projects, including one of the first ones we launched was nominated for. They won some.
Speaker 2:I got quite a few accolades in the Web3 space. It was payroll on the blockchain. It was called WorkChain, so changing the way people get paid in real time, serving a lot of the bankless around the world. I do a lot of work with related interesting innovative startups in this space. So right now, working with a NFT launchpad project called Dropspace, we're helping artists and brands to easily launch NFTs, which is basically just a way of creating a really cool community that all has a shared interest. So that's a lot of my work. Week it's writing, blogging, creating some cool projects. I've done a podcast and created projects within my FlunderLife universe and then doing client work on the side in the Web3 space.
Speaker 1:Awesome, a lot of creation. I love that.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I think we have that in common. I liked your question before about my business that I sold, so for me that was a big part of my life. Moving to even when I graduated university I did not know what I wanted to do. I thought I was going to be a doctor and I told everyone for the years leading up to that I felt like kind of pigeonholed into that, like people, oh, when are you going to be a doctor? Or Okay, are you a doctor yet? Or all these types of you know pats on the back in that direction, and because I'd said it once, right, and then the word spreads.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, yes.
Speaker 2:I finished my degree and then I started thinking, having second thoughts, like what am I going to do now? And I really wasn't ready to go to grad school or to apply to school. So I started Looking for Alternatives, and one that I found was teaching English in South Korea, and it was probably the craziest thing I could have done at the time because I'd never been outside of Canada. Maybe I'd cross the border to go to the States, driving with some friends on a road trip or something, but just for two hours, and then come back across the border and this was a big risk for me and I anyway, against the advice of my friends or my family maybe at the time we're a little bit unsure about it. Now they're super supportive.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I got on a plane and I went to South Korea and I taught English for a year and that was the biggest change I could have made, because I think anytime you go to a new city or a new country especially, you're forced to become a brand new person and take on a new identity and learn new things. So that's exactly what ended up happening, and there I was exposed to new ways of thinking, new friends, new books, new ideas, and that's when I took an interest in online business.
Speaker 1:Interesting, I mean very extreme move, going from never leaving Canada to. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to teach English in Korea.
Speaker 1:That's like a very extreme. I mean that must have taken a lot of courage. I have a lot of respect for that, for sure. And interesting what you said that you have to become a new personality, like you have to become Blake, who teaches English in South Korea, which I'm just thinking back on. Oh yeah, you have a really good point Like thinking back of moving to countries, especially for a longer time, and starting a new trip after maybe not traveling for a while, or going to a different continent, going to a completely different culture. I think you have a great point. So how did teaching English in Korea Blake then start his online business? What was the business about and how did you start it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So then, when I was there speaking of taking on this new identity, I read the four hour work week, which I feel like is like the Bible for digital nomads, or how they got started. So I read.
Speaker 2:it All right, listen to the audiobook, actually, and I remember like being so motivated, never being interested in business. I was the health guy up until then, wanted to be a doctor, loved kinesiology, anatomy, all of those topics and then business never interested me. That changed my mindset when I saw what was actually possible or why I would want to be into business. The answer was well, I'm living this lifestyle now. How can I do this all the time and how can I do it so that I don't have to go into this teaching job every day that I'm doing kind of as a means to an end, which actually had its own benefits as well. I got to learn how to talk to groups and, you know, lecture to university students and all these different skills that it brought with it. But not only that. I learned business because of these cool front new friends that I met. So I started experimenting. I started studying programs, marketing, email list building, email marketing, et cetera, page builder, websites, landing pages, et cetera all the things that I think you should learn when you're starting to learn internet marketing, SEO as well, and I think I had a few ideas. I remember getting the advice that you should talk to a group that's similar to yours, and the first thing I thought was okay.
Speaker 2:What problems have I solved for myself that I could teach others? One was how do you get an apartment in South Korea? Because actually it's not easy. It's not like you just go to find a landlord or a real estate agent and set up. You actually have to put down a massive deposit they call key money and you have to go through this really complicated process. My friend and I wrote an ebook on the topic and we ended up selling it and putting it up and it's sure enough there were people that were buying that sort of thing or interest in that information. So that was the first time I ever made a sale on the internet. I still remember that day when I woke up with a PayPal notification, when I woke up in the morning, like your ebook is sold and you have like $27, whatever. It was so happy, so ecstatic.
Speaker 1:And how long was that after you put it online, like was it a week after or a day, or immediately?
Speaker 2:I feel like it was a month, because we were creating, we were doing SEO strategy and putting up articles and then finally one sold and we sold, ended up selling a number of them. But that was not the business that ended up changing things for me. That was the business that taught me all the skills and gave me the motivation to prove that this was actually possible. So from there I kept. I was always thinking like, okay, this is cool, it's bringing in some funds, it's something on the side, it's a side hustle, but what else can I do? And I ended up taking a trip back home to Canada, met up with my friends that I grew up with and still listening to Tim Ferriss's advice. Like always, I saw him as like someone who changed my mindset through his books. He ended up doing a speaking gig in Toronto while I was home and my friend was like, let's go to this. So we go there. He just launched a four hour chef one of his books. We go there. We saw he did a speech Super cool. Then he did like a meet and greet and we got in line as quickly as we could. I ended up getting to chat with him at the second. I'm talking with him, a professional photographer from one of the newspapers comes in and snaps a photo and then we got this really awesome photo, like me and my friend and Tim Ferriss like all chatting. It was super cool.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we got free copies of the his book. It was not my favorite book, I'll be honest, from his library, from his written works, but one part of that book had a section on language learning that always stuck with me and when I read that I thought, wait a minute, I've learned Korean because by this point I could speak basic Korean, like I could read, write and speak Korean. Out of necessity. You really need to learn to live in Korea, at least how to order food and talk to taxi drivers, etc. So I thought, hey, I taught myself Korean using this really psychological method that his book actually inspired me, because I remember reading he had certain ways of memorizing and mnemonics and tying certain word sounds to how you learn Spanish and I thought, hey, I could do this, I can teach this language.
Speaker 2:And I started writing online about this and I set up a new website, set up a landing page and created an e-book in a weekend when I was super, super inspired and it was all about psychological associations that you can use to learn Korean. I put that online. I started trying to get as much eyeballs as I could posting in I think at the time was literally on Craigslist, facebook groups, whatever I could and people started signing up and I built a little email list and people kept sharing it and that e-book to this day still exists on the internet and it still brings in tons of eyeballs to that website. There's a paid version of it on Amazon and it gets people to sign up to the email list every day. So that email list is massive now, even though I'm not a part of the business anymore. But I can fast forward and this is the business that I ended up selling.
Speaker 2:Five years after I started it it was at 500,000 monthly visitors. We had a ton of subscribers. The K-pop wave came in and hit. Korean was so popular. You know the whole world knew Korean music. There's all these fans of K-pop, korean dramas and that site ended up growing to be pretty big. And then we branched off from that to start Japanese and other languages as well and the whole unique angle on that was how can you learn the language? With psychological associations and mnemonics. We broke it down in a really easy to learn way that was unique from others, and I think that's what led to it being successful.
Speaker 1:Interesting, very cool. How do you sell an online business?
Speaker 2:So I think there are different ways to do it. You can hire a broker and they can put your business up for sale, which we actually considered. I took on a business partner early on and he was my friend. He added a lot of structure to the business and we talked about how we might sell it at one point through a broker. But because the business was so niche and it involved various languages, it was quite complicated. So in the end, what I did is I worked out a deal with my business partner to sell him the majority of the business and he took it over as the sole owner. So that made things a lot easier. I think.
Speaker 2:If you weren't in that case where you had a business partner that was willing to buy it, I think somebody who's familiar with the business would be the most likely buyer or a competitor to yours because they know the industry well. So you could end up buying those assets from you and take on all of your students, all of your materials, etc. So for me it worked out that way, but I think there are other ways to do it.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, you definitely saw an opportunity there right to sell to your business partner. So I think that that is definitely a lesson. If you want to sell online business and you want to sell, then I think that is always a good thing to just keep your eyes and ears open, like have conversations with people and, who knows, maybe your business partner, maybe someone you know, maybe someone in your network is interested. I think that is absolutely a great tip. How did it? How did it feel after selling your business, because you've been doing that for, I think, five years, he said before you sold it, was it really weird to not have that business anymore all of a sudden? Or Did you where you're looking forward to it so that you could dive into other projects, or how was that?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I I've had mixed feelings, for sure. I remember feeling like, okay, no, this was the first thing I've ever created in my life that was successful. That was born from this idea that I had in a weekend and wow, look what it turned into. And it was. It was bittersweet.
Speaker 2:Part of me was not happy in that business anymore, even though maybe I told myself differently. So I think I felt relieved at the same time and Knowing that now I had, you know, I didn't have the necessity to work for a while, at least my. It's like when you're selling your business, you get a lot of your payments up in advance, right? So you have a lot of options about what to do at that point. You could invest the money, you can live off that money, etc. So I think that part was definitely very freeing. It was liberating because I knew now I have time. I don't have this countdown timer that I immediately need to take on something else. I can take my time, I can travel the world a little bit and I can figure out what is my next move, what is really calling me now, and that was the best part of it.
Speaker 2:So I think, there were pros and cons, definitely, and it definitely. You know it's not, it's not easy as well when you're moving on. You had employees and a business partner and all of these things. It's a big change but, yeah, I definitely say it was in the end a positive thing and I think up until this day I think it was the right choice for me at the time and for my mental health.
Speaker 2:I Think I was working a lot like even when I it took me two years to be able to quit my teaching job. I thought I was going to work one, but I ended up having to do another year and that year was really a Lot of work for me because it was working up in the mornings, going to the gym, working on my business all day, taking the subway 30 minutes to go to my job, but I would have my laptop and hotspot for myself, my cell phone. I'd be working on the train, in the class. You know when the students are writing a test or something. I would literally be working on my business and then into the evening.
Speaker 2:So I felt like my whole life was work and when I first took my first trip, it was to the beach in Thailand and I didn't think about work for a few days. I just I remember how free I felt and I remember all the epiphanies and all the connections that were made in my brain. I can still remember that feeling to this day and, yeah, I think that's part of why I write about these themes, a lot about freedom, because that's what I experienced, that that trip, and you know, in the subsequent Six months to a year of my life, when I had that freedom to go and explore, figure out, what do I want to do next? What is that thing that's calling me?
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, we talk about that a lot here on the podcast because I think.
Speaker 1:I think that's such a huge question Right like, especially once you have the freedom to work from anywhere, so location freedom, but also once you have a study income that you can make from anywhere, so you have that, that kind of finance, that type of financial freedom, and then maybe also time freedom that you don't have to click in and out at certain hours or maybe don't have to work eight hours a day but you can, you know, work when it works for you, that kind of freedom. The next question is always what do you want? I don't know about you, but I'm still figuring it out after five years of no matter.
Speaker 2:Me too. To be totally transparent, yeah, I think I don't know when you ever figure out that one thing, or there's always, maybe your, your calling, is one thing. For a certain amount of time. That might be three months, it might be here, it might be five years of your life, but then I think we're always kind of going to the next level of figure out what's that next thing. That, yeah, really that really deeply down, deep down, I want to do. Yeah, there's those transition periods? Yeah, Definitely.
Speaker 1:I definitely think there are phases and that what you want now might not be what you want five years from now. So I always find it very a Little bit funny actually, if people ask oh what, what is your five-year plan or your ten-year plan? I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing next week, so I have no idea what I will be doing in. Who knows you?
Speaker 2:tell me totally, totally agreed, and I think that's one thing we all have in common as digital nomads. We're all seeking that sort of freedom and we all there's something like-minded about us all the type of person that does leave their home country. It goes to travel the world. We all have something in us that, yeah, we're traveling the world for a certain reason. I think we're all looking for that calling within ourselves. So, yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:What did travel look like when you were building your business? So you were in Korea for two years. You were teaching there, so you obviously had to be there. But from the moment that you quit your teaching job, did you start saveling in Southeast Asia? Did you travel slow? Did you travel fast? Can you share a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I first quit my job I think I can't remember the the milestone we were trying to hit my business partner and me, but it was like, okay, when we can pay ourselves from the business this salary, we're going to now have the freedom to live where we want. So whenever I hit that milestone I don't remember what it was like $2,500 per month or whatever, somewhere in that range I went to Thailand.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, to answer your question, I did start traveling in Southeast Asia. That was where I kicked off my journey. But even before that, after my first year of teaching, you have two weeks off where you can. They'll pay for a ticket for you to go back to your home country. But I remember asking them well, instead of going back to my home country, could you fly me to Thailand? So I went to Thailand and from there that was my hub and I did the tour of like I forget it was like 10 countries in two weeks or something like that, and it was super exhausting. And I remember thinking like never again, like I'm not this type of traveler, that's not. That's not travel, that's not relaxing, no, that's definitely not relaxing.
Speaker 1:No, no.
Speaker 2:So I learned then, because it was my first time to ever have freedom to travel. So I took advantage, like I think a lot of people do, when they have a vacation and or they have a Leap, a gap year or whatever I. But I made that mistake and I learned. Okay, travel is more than just going to snap photos at all the tourist locations. Travel is a lot more than that and I don't want to travel like that. So I think at that time I transformed in my mind I'm gonna be more of a slow traveler. So the second, I had freedom now Up until this day. From that point up until this day, I travel at least a month in a location I find is the sweet spot. There are exceptions, you know. I'm going back to Canada in a few weeks and I'll be staying there two and a half weeks Because I want to visit friends and family. But when I'm living somewhere, I want to fully experience the culture and I want to be there for at least a month and I find like that's the sweet spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I, I, I, I also have a one month minimum in a place, because nice, especially when you're working right, one month only means that you, you have four weekends. That's what you have to really explore the place. The other the rest of the time you're staring at a computer screen. So it's actually not that much time a month. It's always sound so long, but then once you're there, it is actually not that much time. Did your travel style Change after you sold the business, comparing it to when you were building the business, like, did you travel more or did you go to the completing different locations Because you had more freedom? Or did anything change at all?
Speaker 2:Yes and yes it did. When I first sold my business, I had the freedom, for the first time, to go change time zones, whereas I feel when I was working with business partners and employees, I always felt the need to be in a certain time zone, but for the first time in my life now, I was not beholden to my team.
Speaker 2:So, I moved across the world. I started living in Latin America, which is almost the opposite from Asia. I spent time in Europe and I just started exploring more, because I think when you have that location freedom, as you found you don't really know exactly where is your place until you've been to a variety of different places, and maybe it's for for some people it's like you have two or three different locations. For me I know I do Southeast Asia will always be one of those places that I want to go back to, as well as Korea and Hong Kong, where I spent time, but now Colombia and Panama and certain places in Europe like sport, portugal and Spain. I always want to go back to those locations. So I kind of think about it as, like, you almost have these little yeah, these little. You're planting flags, like around the world, and then you can go back and visit those those places. So I think it definitely changed.
Speaker 2:I learned what I liked, I learned what I didn't like, and now I think my sweet spot is maybe Four to five months in Panama, just because that's my home base and my residency. It's a little bit much for me, but I'm doing it for for certain reasons and then spend some time visiting my family in Canada per year, maybe two weeks to a month every year, sometime in Colombia, and Then the rest will be Exploration. So either going back to places that I love or exploring new places. I always want to be Not getting into those habits where I have to go to a certain place because I'm comfortable there. Part of me loves that New environment, figuring things out Where's the gym, what are the good restaurants, etc. That's the sweet spot for me. How about you? What is your? What is your breakdown? Look like these days?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, great question. Last year I decided that I wanted to do about six months in Germany, which is where my boyfriend's family is from. We have an apartment in Germany, so summertime I try to be close to my boyfriend's family, my own family, and just enjoy summer, and then the rest of the year, so the other six months, I tend to Go somewhere sunny. So at the moment I'm in Valencia, spain, after this canary islands, after that probably Egypt, south Africa. So I have a bit of a Crazy travel plan for for this winter, yeah, and then after that backs of Germany, you know, settling down a little bit for about six months again, recharging, getting new travel energy, and then probably by that time I'll have itchy feet again and I'll Come up with another crazy travel plan for the for next year, for winter again.
Speaker 2:Oh, that sounds amazing. So similar to me. It's like I benefit from a little bit of stability in the year and then you yeah, exactly like you said itchy feet kicks in, or you want to explore more and you take off to find new places. That's cool. We have maybe some overlap coming up. I hope to visit South Africa again this, maybe early 2024 if I can first quarter.
Speaker 1:Awesome, I'll be there in February, second half of February, so who knows, maybe, maybe I'll see you there, oh yeah, cape Town. So in Panama, do you have your own place there, or do you run an Airbnb every time, or do you have, you know, like, how's our apartment with your stuff, so that you could also, like unpack, have really like a more traditional lifestyle there? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Yes, so I went back and forth on this. I wasn't sure how I wanted to go, because sometimes, even within houses, I like having freedom or I like to explore different parts of the country.
Speaker 2:So, I just spent three months there before coming to Colombia and I ended up renting Airbnb's. But the the Complex answers that I do have a permanent place there. I have an agreement with a friend of mine who owns a house there that he doesn't use, so me and him have a flexible agreement where that's my permanent home. It's my permanent address. I store all my stuff there. He barely uses the place. He only stops in as he's traveling elsewhere.
Speaker 2:So I'm lucky in that way because I don't have to have a long-term agreement that's not flexible and that works out in my favor. And then this time I got to go explore different parts of the country and I just rented on Airbnb because, knowing that when I go back it's gonna be more permanent, more stable, I think I wanted to see which parts of the country I liked best, and I spent one month in three different parts of the country, or at least you know, I was on the beach, I was in the rainforest, in the mountains for one month and then I was in the city for the rest.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I learned about the best locations in Panama and now, when I go back, I'm confident. I have the best setup. I have the productive work set up in my permanent place and if I want to go for a week to one of those places I visited, I have that freedom to do that as well.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense to really explore the country and see what you like best, because, especially what you just said, I mean, there are so many different places. Do you want beach, do you want mountains, do you want jungle, do you want city? So many options. Right, like great, all that freedom. But then again, the question is, what do you want? So I think that makes a lot of sense. Do you have any exciting travel plans or anything exciting work projects, personal projects coming up that you can share with us?
Speaker 2:Yes, I just finished recording this cool podcast that I'm pretty excited about. It's not typical podcast of interviews. It's like set it and forget it one time. It's a seven day challenge podcast. Each episode is like five to seven minutes, so it's super easy to listen to. I put a different spin on it. It's almost like gamified. I don't want to say too much about it, but I had fun recording it. Even if not that many people listened to it, that was super fun for me. It's got challenges and active missions in each episode and the whole idea is that the pathway to freedom. So seven days to creating or discovering your pathway to freedom, with a lot of the questions that I've really learned from traveling the world. So that was super fun and I feel inspired to create more creative projects like that.
Speaker 2:But in terms of travel plans, yeah, I'm going back at the end of this month. I feel like I've done quite a bit of exploring now in the past few months. Finish up here in Columbia. A few more places to go. Then I'm going to visit family, be there for Canadian Thanksgiving, which is always fun, and then I'm going to mix things up this year.
Speaker 2:I've always been like you and I wanted to go somewhere warm. So this year I'm going to go to some new countries that I've never visited in Eastern Europe during the winter and front to cold. I'm going to bring all my cold winter clothes and I'm going to. I have plans to be in Serbia. I have some business there and some friends, so I'm going to go back to Serbia. I've been there before but then have a month in Romania. I have a month in Hungary, which I've never been to, so super excited about Budapest, and then possibly I haven't planned after that, but there's options to go to the Czech Republic or to Poland, and then possibly after that's when I'm thinking South Africa, but nothing is set in stone after a few months in Europe. So we'll see. We'll see how the winter is treating me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's see if you like the cold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. Yeah, three months in the cold is enough to yeah, not to commit to more. We'll see, maybe I'll be totally wintered out. I think I will be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like having that option, but maybe you'll love it Right.
Speaker 2:Maybe. Yeah, we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1:So the podcast? Who is it for, Would you say? Aspiring digital nomads?
Speaker 2:Yes, I would say aspiring digital nomads or anyone who's willing to make, are ready to make a change in their life. So it doesn't necessarily have to be world travel, but maybe it's somebody at home who just feels inspired to make a change, to move to a new city or start a new business or try something new in their, in their life. It's inspired by the idea of the Flanur, which is it's a popular travel term from France which a lot of people I didn't know about it until 2013, but when I first heard it it resonated a lot with me. It's basically somebody who's wandering, but they're aimlessly. They're purposely wandering, or sorry, I can explain that a lot better. A Flanur is somebody who is wandering on purpose. They're deliberately aimless.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's like not only are they aimless, they're deliberately aimless, and I think to be able to do that, you need to have a few things in place. I think you need to have your finances set, you need to have a be really good at mindfulness and calming your mind, and I think you need to have a location and time freedom. So I think it's a perfect representation about how a lot of us digital nomads live, and something that I inspire to be. So anyone who's into mindfulness or psychology, I think the podcast is for them as well.
Speaker 1:Amazing, yeah, very interesting. Can you share where people can find it?
Speaker 2:Yes, they can go to my website, flanurlifecom slash freedom the podcast. It's there and if they wanna join, they get daily emails, they keep them accountable or whatever. Everything's free. But it's also on Spotify, apple, amazon and anywhere that podcasts are called pathway to freedom.
Speaker 1:Perfect, awesome. We'll make sure to also link it in the show notes so when you're listening, you can just simply click the links in the show notes, go to the podcast. Make sure that you sign up for the email updates. I think that sounds awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that, blake, I think. Well, I'm really interested in that, and I think our audience today probably too. I know that everyone who's listening is very interested in freedom and travel, so I think this is just a perfect match. Thank you so much for sharing your digital nomad story with us today, blake. It was really interesting to hear about how you started your business, how you sold your business, what you do now and how much time you now spend on your passion projects, but also the projects for startups that you really enjoy working with and the topics that you really enjoy working on, and I love hearing that you have so many cool travels coming up. So thank you so much for being here today and sharing it with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, likewise so great to connect with you. I think we have a lot in common, so thank you for having me, ann.
Speaker 1:And thank you for listening. See you in the next episode, and that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it very, very much. I would appreciate it even more if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts for me. That way, more people can find this podcast, more people can hear the inspiring stories that we're sharing, and the more people we can impact for the better. So, thank you so much if you are going to leave a review. I really appreciate you and I will see you in the next episode.