In this podcast, we visit a very unique site that offers outdoor adventures for geeks with diverse interests and passions across the globe who want an off-of-grid experience that leaves technology while leaving technology behind.

I had the chance to chat with Mendel Kurland, founder of Geek Adventures. He shares with us:

• What Geek Adventures is and where the idea came from.
• When the turning point came for him to turn this into a full-time gig.
• His biggest technical challenge when creating an eCommerce site.
• Which plugins he used to meet the needs of his customers and community.
• How he has monetized the site.
• Where things are headed for Geek Adventures.

Today’s transcript is brought to you by Liquid Web, WooCommerce hosting done the right way.

Bob: It’s my pleasure today to chat with Mendel Kurland, is the founder of Geek Adventures. Hey Mendel, how are you doing?

Mendel: Hey Bob. Thanks for having me on the show.

Bob: This is an exciting time for you. You just made a huge transition into making this a full-time endeavor. I know that people can go to your site and see the story behind it but I thought, it’s always good hearing the story verbally. First of all, what is Geek Adventures, and how did this idea come to you?

Mendel: Geek Adventures is an outdoor experience company The purpose is to help STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) workers disconnect from technology and reconnect with each other and the outdoors, all on the trail, in adventurous places. So we have a few hiking meetups called Hiking with Geeks all over the country, but we also do trips to exotic places. We’re going to Iceland and Ireland this year. In case international travel isn’t your thing, we’re going to the Grand Canyon and some domestic stuff as well.

The whole idea is just to separate your digital life from your real life and reconnect with the thing that I think we all are kind of starved for these days, and that is experiences where we can leave our technology behind. the lack of technology. Basically, instead of notifications and things like that popping up all the time on your cell phone, getting rid of all that and just spending time with each other.

Bob: Cool. So how did it come into being? Outside of there certainly being an audience for this, what was the epiphany, the point when Mendel said, “Wow, this is something I should get into,” ? What drove you to do it?

Mendel: Yeah, I guess it was 20 years ago. I was a freelance web developer and I was building websites for industries like bars and restaurants and real estate. From there, I moved on, became excited about a career in engineering and went in the direction of web development for a music company. From there, I started working for a tech company, sitting in front of a computer all day.

Fast forward to the last three years of my life. I’ve spent it flying around the world, talking with geeks of all sorts: freelancers, agency owners, people that work for huge technology companies The one thing that stuck was that everybody always need some sort of break and they would talk about the things they loved to do outside of their work. I’d be talking to somebody and the typical questions got pretty old: what do you for work, what projects are you working on? But if you want to So if you want to get deeper, you start talking about what do you do for