Johnny FD on What Digital Nomad Life is Like After 6 Years

0:02
This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income become financially free and design their best lives. Hey guys is Sharon from digital nomad cast? I’m here with Johnny of the anti and basically I learned about you a long time ago I started my journey like hearing about you and people like you know, Chris Dodd and like, hearing about you guys in Chiang Mai was like really inspirational senior guys as wives. And it’s very cool. Like we’re here now in the Bay Area, San Francisco. San Francisco actually met you at your summit. Was it two years ago? Maybe?

0:42
Yeah, maybe you’ve been there for five years now. Wow. Okay.

0:45
Yeah. So I think I think I met you in like 2017 very briefly, right. So yeah, so I’m interested in kind of hearing more about your journey now cuz you’ve been a digital nomad for a very long time now, right?

0:57
Yeah, I would say at least five or six years. Wow. Yeah, so

1:00
maybe, maybe we could start off with you kind of introducing yourself to the viewers out there.

1:05
Yeah. So I’m Johnny. I’m originally from San Francisco. And it’s funny that I lived here my whole life, but it’s good 10 or 15 years, it’s been gone. Traveling Muslim living in Thailand. And I started basically a scuba diving instructor in Thailand. And I accidentally fell into all my business. It was living in Chiang Mai, because I just got tired of waking up at 5am going to the water every day. But I still love Thailand. I was like, Well, how else can I stay here? And that’s how I discovered all my business.

1:35
Yeah, and you’ve been pretty successful with everything. Like you sold a bunch of businesses, right?

1:41
Yeah, I would say that. I got lucky said it was like the luck versus the skill and also hard work. I think those are the three things that you need. Like, I got lucky that I met some really cool people that 510 years ago, nobody there was no blogs. There’s no YouTube videos about how to start off my business or Different ways to, you know, have a come online. And I just got lucky I’ve met people in person. Yeah,

2:04
I mean, when I started it was 2014 2015. And they were like barely any resources. I didn’t even know about it till like, a ton of research later, and nobody around me was doing it. So I’m sure it’s super rare for you, right?

2:18
Yeah, it took 13 there was nothing about it. It was literally Tim Ferriss, the four hour workweek. And I emailed him. He never emailed me back. He’s busy. Yeah. But that was it. Like, I didn’t know where else could the information? Yeah. So I literally googled how to make money online. And like it was that and then meeting people in person who happened to have done it. Yeah,

2:39
that was it. Yeah. You started with drop shipping, right?

2:42
Yeah, it was, you know, my first business was Amazon Kindle. Okay. Well, people skip over that part of it. Because, you know, like, it wasn’t a ton of money. It was like a couple hundred bucks a month. Yeah. But that’s like the thing I did for the first six months. And then people are like, okay, yeah, tell me about like jobs. time I made like a US salary. That was the first time I was making to be $4,000 a month in profit. So that replaced my my nine to five job.

3:08
Maybe you can tell people about drop shipping? People don’t know what it is. Can you tell me more about what it is?

3:14
Yeah. So it’s funny when I was in Thailand, and I was trying to find a online business people would tell me like, Oh, you should do SEO, your student video marketing, you should do a learn to code you should do these things. And they all technically work. Yeah. And I knew they probably would work. But I also knew it wasn’t really for me. Like, I didn’t have any tech experience. I couldn’t really visualize, like, why would someone spend $300 on a book versus $3 a mini book, but a physical product is something that you know, I’m like, Okay, well, if I’m gonna sell this table that’s worth $200 that Best Buy sells for $300 Why can I sell it? So I was asking around like, Can I like sell stuff online? And I was like, No, you can’t do it. Like you need inventory. You need a warehouse. And finally met someone in Anton, who was like, Oh, yeah, like this is I just have a drop shipped. And he explained is like, it’s basically become an authorized dealer for brands. And now people will drop ship from China, which isn’t really drop shipping, just ordering crap off of Express and sending it over. But like what I mean by drop shipping is you become natural authorized dealer from a company. And instead of them shipping products to your warehouse that have you hold it, you just have them ship it directly to customer. So it’s just a fulfillment model. It’s really an old model. And like I would guarantee every single person who’s ever bought anything online has probably had something to drop ship without even noticing.

4:32
Yeah. Are you still doing that?

4:34
Yeah, I do. Now I have some partners to help me with the store today. But the first store I started by myself, and I sold that for 60,000. Then I started one of my girlfriend at the time, and we sold it for 55,000. Oh, that’s sort of another one of the partner had sorted for around that. A little bit less than that, but around that price as well. And since then, I’m like you know what, this is cool. I can do this. Start one. So whenever two or three years and not only do I get the money every month, but then I get that big paycheck.

5:00
Yeah, so are you starting new ones every time or Yeah, you’re okay. So

5:04
basically, I was trying to get it down to one year but it’s sort of tight. So now it’s every two years. We start a new store we sell it and we started in the store seller.

5:13
Oh, cool. And you have kind of your own brand right with Johnny fd Do you sell like digital products there at all

5:20
are now a little bit I don’t push it too hard. And I’m actually Johnny fd kind of came organically. It was almost back so

5:28
yeah, tell us more about that.

5:29
Yeah. So I I’ve always liked blogging. I was like sharing things. Even in college. I had a blog and a Sangha. Yeah, and I just, you know, I never monetized it. Even my blogging never monetized until I think it was like 2014 2015 asked me advice on things like what hosting do you use? What like books do you recommend? Yeah, like what emails prior to us? And I just was like, all right, well, I’m gonna take all this time explaining this to people all the time will be creative about me, like a Bobby page of resources page, like a house. page and just start, you know, having things there. And as far as like personal brand stuff, I created a course called income loss, which then show people how upgraded all this organic traffic to the blog without even really focusing on SEO thinking about is hundred percent organic and then how I monetize that.

6:20
Yeah, it’s cool learning more about your businesses and I want to kind of get into also the digital nomad side of like traveling and stuff. So I’m actually curious like, do you feel like digital nomad has changed a lot like now since way back when when you started?

6:34
Yeah, I would say now let’s actually go through stages I would say so 2013 when I started the only people I would meet that was doing this what I can really independent software event because there’s no information about it. Right either they were they happen to already have a business I just somehow was looking at it and they just like all warm as well travel. Yeah. Or they’re like really like serious. And then it became like so easy. Almost so much for We had a whole wave of people just saying, Okay, let’s go try it. But then none of them actually wanted to work. They just wanted to come and hang out and go on vacation. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you want to take a vacation, like just do it in your backpack, just do it. But then, you know, there was they would claim that they were there to start a business, but they would never be working, you know, they would join a co working space and only show up like two days a week for two hours. Yeah. And like, I think some of those people got serious and ended up getting started business. Some of them you know, moved on to something else. A lot of them are actually just teaching kind of more stable now, but the new stage of digital nomads are kind of more level headed again, where they’re like, Okay, if I’m gonna do this, I need to actually learn a skill. I need to take that time 234 months and build a business.

7:46
Yeah, I actually noticed kind of what you’re saying about the people who are trying to like just chill. I remember like, I guess when I ended my whole digital nomad thing I like, notice the the vibe around me was Kind of like everyone just wanted to make enough to like, survive and just show the rest of their lives. And I think that’s what brought me back to the Bay area where I was like, you know, I want to kind of like hustle. Do you feel like because you use your still going right? Is there was there any fatigue like that you like you want to like stay in one place now or do you want to keep going?

8:21
Or if you asked me a couple years ago, every three months I was like, Okay, this is it. Yeah, three more months, six more months. I’m gonna move back I’m gonna find a house, you know, permanent residence. But look, I never did it because I would get bored. So now what I do is I do kind of a hybrid where instead of traveling very fast moving places every week or two, I’ll get an Airbnb and stay at a place for two or three months at a time. And that way, I feel like I have a real home base. I have like, you know a cheat. I have a gym I have Courtney space. I’m good group of friends. Yeah, and I go back to the same place a lot. Like I’m not trying to check off as many countries as I can. I go back to places I like watching my allotted go back to Eastern Europe. A lot. Now by having those two or three months each place, I have the kind of certainty factor that we all need. Yeah, stability factor. But I also don’t get bored because I am the new place. So we can, you know, go explore. do cool stuff. Yeah. And then every two three months, I can move to another country. So I think it’s the best of both

9:20
times and you said your favorite places Chiang Mai. I agree. Like, still one of my favorite places. He said, Eastern Europe. So which parts

9:29
all over I like I just wanted like, I remember when I first went, I was afraid to go all the stereotypes, like you know, going east. So I think first I was like, I’ll have problems and be crazy. And I got this I got so nice. You know, and then I went to like, Budapest like all this. Poland. I was like, surprises a nice hadn’t been there. So that Yeah. And then it’s kept going like more and more even with Ukraine. Nice. Yeah. And most recently, I spent two months in Georgia, and probably Georgia. Okay. And that was surprisingly a really nice place. And I think that’s gonna be an excellent speaker.

10:06
Oh, interesting. You say that? Yeah, yep. Do you have like friends kind of all over the place? Like,

10:13
yeah, I have like good friends kind of old like, then also have this other travel, but we meet up a lot. So like, I try not to be alone for more than a month at a time without meeting up with good friends.

10:25
And how did you meet them? Like

10:27
a lot of them and check mine? A few of them was, you know, I tried to convince all my friends from California to travel. Yeah, most of them haven’t. Like maybe literally one of them, Chris. I mean, all the time. Yeah, but everyone else. It’s from Chiang Mai from, you know, just travel the world.

10:44
Okay, for newbies out there, like how would you advise people to make new friends and make their communities?

10:52
Well, by far the easiest way is just go to conference. So like when you’re outside I’m sure a lot of people there’s like literally hundreds of other digital nomads there. So to have the same interest because we’re traveling, a lot of people there are new as well. So they’re looking to make new friends sort of connections. And it’s also kind of cool place to meet up again every year. Every single January, there’s gonna be 1000 digital nomads in Chiang Mai and a lot of another because every year we have the Nomad summit.

11:19
Yeah, speaking of that summit, I want to learn more about you what it took to create that. So was it.

11:28
Okay, now we have a whole team of five people. We have to start trying to get 678 months of events. Oh, wow. The world’s gotten easier now. Because we have the network we have everything kind of established. Yeah. But it reminds me how hard it is. Because we now we do one in we’re doing one in Cancun, Mexico. That’s coming up. Again one Vegas last year. Yeah. Anytime we do in a new city will you know and it’s almost like doing it again for the first time even though we kind of had procedures we haven’t changed. It’s a nightmare again. So it’s a lot Word value really love it. Like every time I remember, like after the event, sometimes I’m like, Okay, I’m not doing this again. This is the last year. Yeah. But then once I’m there, and I meet all these cool people or love people come up to me saying like, how much they learned or how much they enjoyed it. Yeah, I’m sorry.

12:15
It’s like the fulfillment factor. So it’s more that over anything else?

12:20
Yeah. I think it’s actually a bit of a huge hit on my income. Because so much time with organizing the conference. I don’t have time for my own stuff. Yeah. And usually, like, the conferences are, like, the half the time they’re breakeven. Yeah, half the time. They’re afraid to lose money. And then once in a while, but like, okay, like this one? Yeah. So it’s, like, if I just continue to work on the stuff I was doing

12:44
a lot more and you’re saying, so what are the first steps to creating such a conference?

12:48
I would say just have like, small meetups, you know, yeah, you started free meetups, get people to go. But really, even if you just charge a small amount of money and you get some more kind of nice people. Yeah. A quieter space. You can have coffee, you can have projectors. And this makes it better and they can just grow from there.

13:07
Oh, interesting. And then you booked like that hotel at one time. Yeah, it’s still that same place.

13:13
Yes, we do have the stronger login.

13:16
And actually when you were there was the limit, right? Yeah, I think it’s also really nice hotel. Yeah. So even nicer. And we did it just because you have room to grow into it. Yeah. But the problem is you have to reserve the spaces like six months in advance. Yeah. And you have to pay like non refundable. Oh, right away. So it’s like, it’s expensive. And I think that’s kind of the nice thing is that most people like we don’t have too much competition, because most people don’t want to put $10,000 deposit down. Yeah, like not knowing

13:45
for sure. And did you just like survey a bunch of hotels? Yeah.

13:50
Yeah. Which basically every single nice hotel that could fit like, that’s a big conference room. Yeah. And by far shunga large nice is wanting to check my How did

13:59
you know that like You are going to be able to fill that when you book. Big asterisk. Yeah, you didn’t do any kind of like

14:08
the first year we started out with much cheaper hotel. We did the EVA styles, and it just like, but it was also kind of ghetto. The ceilings are so low. It was so dark in there. Yeah. Okay, that works next year. That’s let’s get the same hotel, but with the higher ceilings. Yeah, sure. Let’s move hotels. And it’s like, yeah, that’s why it takes so long to build.

14:28
So it’s kind of you start from like, something lower, and you just keep kind of moving up. And yeah,

14:33
that’s everything in life for sure.

14:34
Yeah. And you said it takes what seven months to like so yeah. So like, what is the thing that takes so long? You’d say

14:43
it’s literally

14:45
planning getting ticket sales getting hype out there. Yeah. And getting really good speakers just literally,

14:53
like certain things within the event that life was like really long like lightning in our life.

15:01
Sometimes like that stuff, I think it’s actually pretty easy. It’s like, it’s not easy, but it’s like planning a wedding, I guess. Yeah. So it’s possible. I would say the the kind of the magic is getting really good speakers and then help like kind of going with them throughout the process to sure what the talks to make sure that they’re all performing. So like, I actually have all the speakers sending their slides before. And I do have do like a Skype like a Skype recording of their talk. And then I have them meet in person to do rehearsal. So this is why like, our talks are so polished and they’re so good. Yeah, but it takes a lot of time because basically I listen to the same talk seven times.

15:38
That’s really good. That

15:39
was seven speakers like four times.

15:41
Yeah. Okay. And I guess what’s the future with that summit and you have another summit right. But

15:48
yes, we just started invest LIKE A BOSS summit, which is from the other podcasts because every time I sold the stores instead of just going on buying something with the with the money, you know, buy a car or buying a house. I started investing it. And I got really into investing because it’s the best way of making passive income online. And my buddy Sam Marx was my co host. He also built a business and he actually sold his for a lot of money like so, like both of us are got results investing, but all the information out there is so old, it’s like, for your old you know, your parents, right? Like, you know, stop like stocks mutual fund for that. So we wanted to figure out what is the new kind of modern way of investing that robo advisors is at things like wealthfront, or betterment, or acorns index fund, so that is the point of that’s like a boss, and then they decided, hey, let’s have a conference.

16:40
That’s it. Awesome. And is that going to be going on as well as like the Nomad summit, Univision?

16:47
Yeah, we would like to Yeah, I would hope so. Okay, awesome.

16:50
Yeah. What are your future goals with like

16:52
everything with no matter what business I want to be happy and I want to, like help others as well. I like people following on the journey and like, I like these messages. That People sent me all the time saying like, Hey, you know, because of you I started traveling more to start a business. And it makes me happy, like everybody does. And I meet really cool people like this.

17:08
Yeah, that’s awesome. Do you feel like there’s any step you need to take in the future like future project or anything to get you to goals? Or do you feel like you’re already kind of living the dream and like, you just gotta do it? I couldn’t honestly I’m living the dream.

17:24
I’m very happy. Yeah, obviously, there’s a lot a lot like a lot of room to grow and keep doing it. But for me, it’s like consistency. I finally figured out what works, what makes me happy, but also what’s kind of good for my life and also the business and I just have to keep doing it. And I think that’s something that all of you guys could take away from this is if you find something that actually works just Just do it. Stop looking for the next shiny object.

17:46
You have any last piece of advice for beginner like digital nomads as well as you know, like the, they call the digital nomad two point O people, right, the people who like to kind of experience the actual

18:01
I would say, forgot what makes you happy. And it might be different than what other people think. It’s like, figure out what makes you happy and just go for it because there’s so much room out there to be unique and do something kind of cool and different. So hopefully, I’ll see you guys somewhere in the world. And yeah, thanks for having me on.

18:19
Yeah, thanks so much. Where can people find you by the way?

18:21
So if you guys on YouTube, just look for Johnny fd started my channel there. All the videos, check out the Nomad summit YouTube as well and hopefully I’ll see you at one of the events.

18:30
Thank you so much for having me here. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai