Spencer Carlson began his adventure on a Farm in Iowa before eventually moving to Kansas City, where he later decided to travel the world. After 6 difficult months of saving funds, Spencer used the $10,000 he saved to travel to 30 countries, on 5 continents, in a half-year trip around the world. Today Spencer is the founder of 2020 Adventures, and he’s hear to share his experiences with you today.

“Every man I meet is my superior in some way, in that I learn from him.”

4:05 – Southwest Airlines benefits:

Here’s a video showing you how much gear he carries:

https://www.facebook.com/jayurbzz/videos/1178116875594050/

Here’s the book (It’s an audiobook available on Audible):

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

50:49 – “How do you find partners in other countries?”

52:54 – ByePal

1:10:09 – “For instance, there’s a neighborhood called Montmartre district…”

1:11:30 – “Well tell me about your experiences in Egypt”

1:16:40.110 – “If you draw it out while you’re talking about it, I can take a picture of it…”

1:12:32 – “The mother made Hashish”

1:13:02 – “We were there [Egypt] in 2013 , in October.”

1:15:02 – “I just watched a guy die from that… [Running with the bulls in Spain]”

And yes, he actually died.

1:20:26 – First World Problems

1:21:46 – “This kinda sounds like Dharma”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma

1:25:33 – “Like just in this room… the bird sign… wet walls…”

1:26:48 – The plant that shrivels up when you touch it

You can buy the seeds on Amazon. But be warned, they are very hard to germinate, take forever to grow, and usually die.

1:28:34 – “Something the Chinese call O-to-O”

1:30:11 – “There’s Eat-With, and another one that are actually doing it…”

1:32:16 – “Do you have a bucketlist?”

1:33:23 – “It’s on my bucketlist to inspire 10 people to make a bucketlist”

1:35:03 – “I use Field Notes”

I bought mine off Amazon:

If the price is too steep you can just make them yourself. It’s 24 sheets of paper (7″ x 5.5″) folded in half and stapled, with a glossy/smooth plastic-feeling outer layer. They’ll fit in your pocket and are way more convenient than large-bulky notebooks.

1:35:25 – “Those are the same ones I have..”

1:35:40  – Aaron Draplin

“Aaron Draplin is a graphic designer, author and founder of Draplin Design Co. (DDC) based in Portland, Oregon. His clients include Nike, Burton Snowboards, Esquire, Red Wing, Field Notes, Ford Motor Company, and the Obama Administration. His book, Pretty Much Everything, is a mid-career survey of his work including case studies and advice which was released in May 2016.”

Aaron Draplin is an amazing person, and an exceptional teacher. I’ve watched hundreds of graphic design tutorials and my favorite by-far, is a 20-minute video of him showing how to design a logo from start-to-finish.

His book, which is available on Amazon, has a nearly 100% 5-star rating on every reviewing website—including Goodreads, which is notorious for giving tough reviews.

Check it out:

Update: After writing this reference page I went ahead and bought his book. I’m only halfway through it atm but it’s a great book!

1:36:04 – “I think he had a square”

1:36:28 – “Yeah, take my money!”

1:36:31 – “His presentation was one of the coolest I’ve ever seen”

1:36:53 – “[Quote] The best education you will ever receive is traveling”

1:39:10 – TED talk video of older man talking about traveling and national prejudice.

1:40:43 – “I see the world… without borders”

1:44:16 – “The largest slum in the world is Kibera..”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibera

1:45:53 – [5-Year Goals]

An article on how to set goals effectively:

Send an email to yourself in the future, to show yourself where you should be in relation to your goals:

1:46:40 – “And I went to my room… I got my globe”

1:53:41 – “Yeah I actually designed the 2020 Adventures Logo”

http://2020adventures.com/

1:54:09 – AirBnB’s Logo

1:54:16 – Brian Chesky

1:56:23 – AirBnB’s First Logo

1:57:04 – The Symbolism Behind AirBnB’s Logo

1:57:22 – “Some people think it looks like genitals or something”

http://imgur.com/a/niJcf

1:57:29 – “Their new logo looks exactly like another company’s logo, for which they’ve been accused of stealing.”

Everything has already been said But since no one was listening, everything must be said again @Medium @Airbnb pic.twitter.com/XdMDxM403N

— Stefano Tirloni (@stefanotirloni) April 26, 2016

1:58:29 – “Like Sam Altman Says… 10% Better Everyday”

Time – “Apple was just two guys in a garage”

2:01:51 – “Google was just guys building hard drives with legos”

2:02:13 – “Mark Cuban says it’s a job that’s 24/7/365. It’s harder than any sport, anything you can do”

2:03:14 – “I’ve been looking for the actual notecard I wrote my goals on”

2:05:15 – Will Smith’s Brick Wall Quote

2:05:24 – “His dad actually… there was like a real wall..”

Time – “They told us about a thing called Kanban.”

2:07:08 – “Focus on your strengths and delegate your weaknesses”

This quote is often delivered by Stephen R. Covey, who wrote the book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36072.The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People

2:17:21 – “Something that happens to you when you see something so beautiful that you cannot process it”

Here’s an article discussing it in length:

2:18:15 – The Hermitage (Russian Art Gallery)

2:18:50 – The island of Santorini (Greece)

2:19:26 – “These right here?”

2:19:47 – “I literally felt like I..”

2:20:30 – “The computers off the matrix…”

2:24:00 – Jackson Pollock

Here’s one of Jackson Pollocks most famous paintings:

2:24:20 – Lady finds Jackson Pollock painting at a thrift store

Apparently there’s a whole documentary on the story,

2:24:54 – “Most of [Banksy’s] paintings sell for millions of dollars… and he knows this, and will anonymously donate them to charities…”

This video went viral awhile back. Bansky setup a stand and had an old man sit there and try to sell his paintings. A low-end Bansky painting sells for roughly $200,000. Watch how many people politely walk past it without realizing how much the paintings are really worth.

2:30:02 – “Like Arabic or Farsi”

2:31:09 – “At the end of each episode I ask each guest if they have a shout-out they’d like to give.”

2:32:37 – “So my shout-out is to…”

So my shout-out is to all those wanna-be entrepreneurs, or people that have an idea of a start-up, or even who want to go and travel the world… or move to Australia and get a job. There’s people who have really big dreams either in travel or entrepreneurship. This shout-out’s to you.  There’s just so many resources, so much opportunity. If you’re hearing this, you’re probably in the states, or you’re in a place where it’s easy to get access to technology. If we have that, you can start anything. You can find free resources for travel, or starting your idea. You can go out and speak to someone about travel or starting up your idea. There’s so many people in both of these sectors that really want to help out the next generation of travelers, or entrepreneurs, or both. That they’re really willing to give as much mentorship, free advice, any sort of guidance to anyone who wants to do it. Cause I know I am, and anybody else who’s in my space is as well. We really wanna help anybody out there that hasn’t done it yet to really go and do it. And no matter how big or wild your dream is, it really is possible—it’s just like we said, getting one step at a time. Putting down one brick.

2:32:49 – “Well I can email you later and you can give me a list of some of the more valuable resources these entrepreneurs can access?”

There’s a million resources for people starting out; Best advice is just to get into the religion of finding out what’s going on in the startup world; Frequent www.Techcrunch.com; Check Startland News for local startup news; get in touch with local entrepreneurs via Linkedin, going to Sprint Accelerator events (or similar events in every city in the country); watch YouTube videos of successful entrepreneurs and Accelerator people in your space (for me, watching numerous videos of Brian Chesky, Sam Altman, Gary Vaynerchuk, etc. have been key to me figuring out how to get going).

2:34:07 – “Do you have a way that listeners can get in touch with you?”

All social media handles are under “2020Adventures” or “ByePal”. You can reach me directly on my email, Spencer@[email protected].

https://www.facebook.com/2020adventures

2:34:27 – “So to summarize your shout-out, just get out there and act on your entrepreneurial spirit?”

Right! Act on it. Go and put something really shitty out there, and get some advice. Get some advice from someone who’s done it really well—use your resources by listening to podcasts, or looking at Youtube videos from really successful entrepreneurs.

2:34:28 – “There’s entrepreneur podcasts I’m sure..”

This episode challenge is go out and notice the things that are around you in your life, that up until this challenge you had not made an effort to notice.
It’s so easy to get distracted these days, and the result is that we miss much of what goes on around us.
In fact, we’re so distracted that we often don’t even realize that we’ve missed anything. Our thoughts are either on the future and what’s next, or… we’re analyzing the past. We’re not truly living in the present moment.

So what do I mean by this challenge? Well… let me give you an example.
There’s this walk that I like to do in my neighborhood—I’ve been doing it for about 5 years now. And I’ve done this walk hundreds of times, usually with a friend of mine.
But somehow, just a few months ago, I was taking that very same walk and I noticed this really cool building that I’d never noticed before. It was a 3-door garage with hobbit doors, instead of the traditional square garage doors. Something that I totally should have noticed on one of my previous walks. But somehow, I never did.
The truth is, we all have things like that garage, that have always been there. and are seemingly obvious, but that we’ve somehow never noticed.

If you have any cool ideas for a future challenges, send them to [email protected].

If you have any questions regarding this episode just ask in the comments section below!

The post #10 – Traveling, Startups, and Entrepreneurship with Spencer Carlson appeared first on Growth Origin.