It was a pleasure to talk to Casey Fenton, the founder of Couchsurfing again. We had met a year ago in Bali but with a tight schedule and us celebrating his 40th birthday we never ended up recording an episode at that time.  Luckily, he is now writing a book about his experiences building my favorite community for travel. Couchsurfing allows you to stay with strangers for free while travelling and its all backed on a review system that makes sure you stay safe. I've used it over 100 times and I have to say that some of my best friendships have come from the site!

The Founder of Couchsurfing on what all went into building such a great community

Can travel be more than just a fun thing to do? Could it also provide some benefit and learning experiences later in life? I have always thought this and this is why I have relentlessly travelled the world and now have been to over 80 countries. I have always thought that I was planting the seeds of wisdom while in faraway lands. Through experiences with foreign people, cultures, concepts, and ways of doing things I learned much more than anything I could've done while at home. I interview amazing guests, bestselling authors, scientists, successful business people, dating experts, travel junkies, polyglots (people who speak more than 3 languages), and anybody who I think is interesting for the growth of our listeners and I as people. I think by doing this we can plant the seeds of wisdom which will ultimately lead to our success in career, business, money, relationships, self-worth, and generally being a more well-rounded person. But it requires you to be active making this happen. What do you think?

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Nate Ritter is a failed expat who was unable to live in France. Since then he has founded a company called Room Steals which is a hotel booking search engine which allows you to find wholesale prices of hotels. He has seen savings of many hundred dollars on a single night but savings are often 20%. Use the following Coupon code for 20% off your first annual fee travelwisdom   Top 3 Takeaways:  "The night before we left, we were like, what do we do with all this paperwork?We don't need it because we got our visa. And we literally burned all of the paperwork. It was like a book of paperwork that proved who we were and what we were doing and all this kind of stuff. So we burned it in the fireplace that night, thinking this is a fun story to tell people later" "My favorite story that we had is that we spent $250 to send four of us round trip to Europe, and we stayed for a month and paid zero on accommodations. So for 250 bucks to fly to Europe for four of us, and then stay there for a month, like it's definitely, people are spending three, $4,000, easy on that kind of a thing." "So that's Room Steals. I took that inventory source and I said, "this needs to be public." Instead of doing what everybody else does, which includes Expedia booking, they say here's what the wholesale price is, and mark it up to that and then they keep the difference. So I thought we should be a little bit more transparent than that.  We make all of our money like a Costco model. We're doing a membership."  1:00 "Failed expat, how does that work?" 7:00 "What happened in between then and now with Room Steals?" 9:00 "What kind of travel hacking were you doing?" 12:00 " You found an unused inventory of rooms?" 18:15 "So what kind of savings do people usually get?" 20:15 "Do you mostly get the savings on the higher end?" 21:45 "So how do you book a room?" 23:15 "I'm also very curious about the RV lifestyle and how you transferred into this" 25:00 "Any tips that you wanna share with the listeners about RV life?" 29:45 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?"   Use the following Coupon code for 20% off your first annual fee travelwisdom

Nate Ritter on being a failed expat and his Room Steals booking search engine

Francis Tapon rejected his normal Harvard Business school life and instead chose to hike the Appalachian trail and travel in Africa for 5 years. He hosts the Wander Learn podcast where he talks about the benefits of being a wanderer. Top 3 Takeaways:  "Sometimes I think the best way to learn is just to forego college and then just go travel the world and spend a few years going traveling around. This probably costs you even less than college." "That is a more important question than how to make a billion dollars is what you do once you have a billion dollars, because once you have a billion dollars, how you spend your time is extremely telling it shows whatever you're spending your time at that point is your passion is what you really want to do." "The protest during the Occupy Wall Street and people are saying like "the top 1%, the top 1%, top 1%." And I felt like walking into that crowd and just saying "You guys are all in the top 1%, every single one of you protesters, because compared to most of this planet, which lives in India, China, Asia, and certainly Africa, you guys are way wealthier than most people out there.""  0:45 "Do you want to do a brief synopsis of all the travel you've done and then why you think why you like this name wander learn?" 7:45 "Have you continued doing robotic vision stuff or have you done only the travel stuff?" 13:45 "So you haven't grown tired of this?" 16:15 "Let's talk about Wander Learn" 21:45 "Sounds like you like hiking" 23:45 "So what's the point of walking so much for weeks and months? What do you get out of it?" 30:30 "How about you for the meditative hiking stuff? Does time go by quickly?" 38:15 " Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that you wanted to cover?"

Hiking meditation and travelling all of Africa with Francis Tapon

David Axelrod is the author  Get Away: Design Your Ideal Trip, Travel with Ease and Reclaim your Freedom about the best way to plan a trip. David has been to over 50 countries and has written other books about the wild situations he found himself in. Top 3 Takeaways:  "They, are chasing their whole itinerary and feeling like they're never really in control of it. I've heard that story way too many times. And I think what it comes down to is insufficient planning."  "Planning enables spontaneity. I think that when you have a plan that's an airtight plan you've earned the freedom to deviate from that plan without suffering"  "Even more important than the number of companions is that you are very clear with the person you're traveling with about your goals and their goals, and trying to align as much as possible."  2:00 Tell us a little bit about your story 5:00 "What are some step-by-step what's the step by step walkthrough for a trip?" 7:00 "Did you see a lot of people not follow these guidelines or did you see a lot of people make a lot of mistakes or what's the motivation behind this?" 10:15 "So how do you balance that, the planning and the not planning the fun versus structures?" 12:30 " So you're not saying as far as go to as far as booking hotels or booking hostels?" 14:30 "What's your kind of sweet spot. What do you recommend for going between cities?" 17:00 "In terms of companions, what do you suggest for people?" 19:30 "You've done a lot of travel writing and travel photography too. Did you want to talk a little bit about this?" 23:30 " You're starting consulting doing this travel planning?" 25:00 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to mention?" https://www.davidaxelrod.co/ 

Planning your perfect 9 day trip with David Axelrod

Kathleen Peddicord wrote a book "How to Retire Overseas" where she talks about some of the research going into the best places to spend your twilight years. Top 3 Takeaways:   "The average social security check right now for an American is about $1,500 a month. And that's enough budget to live well in a lot of places."  "The best place to retire overseas in 2022 is a town called Comporta on the coast of Portugal, about an hour and a half outside Lisbon" The cost of healthcare can be 5-10x cheaper in other countries with even higher quality  1:00 "Do you want to introduce yourself a little bit?" 2:45 "How are you covering retirement for the last 37 years? Have you been retired for the last 37 years?" 4:30 "What's maybe the top five on the retirement index?" 9:30 "This retirement index how focused is it on retirement? And how transferrable is it to other things?" 11:30 Do people get bored of retirement or can they move to another place? 15:30 "Do you find that people that have traveled before or have lived abroad maybe that are maybe more open to this kind of thing?" 19:30 How does the healthcare cost and quality compare with the US? 25:30 "If people are interested in living abroad retiring overseas, how do they do that?" 28:15 "How has COVID changed everything? How has it changed the index, for example, is it still possible to go out? How does it work?"  

The Founder of Couchsurfing on what all went into building such a great community

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