Ricky Shetty | How To Make Money While Travelling The World

Joel: The publishing for profit podcast is brought to you by ghostwriters. Incode earned more money by publishing better content and learn how do we increase your thought leadership? So you can build your brand head over to ghost writers and code.com for more information. That’s ghost writers and go.com and now your host, Joel Mark Harris.

Hello and welcome to the publishing for profit podcast. This is your host, Joel Mark Harris. Today we have an amazing guest on the show, Ricky Shetty. He is a Amazon bestselling author with 10 books under his name. He is also a world traveller. And he runs a website called daddy blogger, where he talks about being a father and being a husband.

We talk about a bunch of different things from internet marketing to the most important things about being a father and how to become a digital nomad. Hopefully you enjoy this episode. Hi, Ricky. Uh, welcome, uh, from the Philippines. How are you today?

Ricky: I’m doing amazing, Joel. Great to reconnect with you, my friend.

Joel: Yeah, it’s been, uh, sometime four years, uh, since I guess, uh, we, uh. We last talked and relaxed, really connected.

Ricky: Um,

Joel: so obviously you’ve been traveling, you’ve been experiencing the world, uh, with over 80 countries. That’s amazing. What do you think is the biggest life lesson you’ve learned through your travels for like the last two years?

Ricky: Yeah, so just like Joel, I’m actually from Vancouver, so we’re both banquet boys. And, uh, I ended up leaving Vancouver. Uh, back in 2016, so four years now. I left Vancouver with my wife. I’m married to Anne, and then we have three kids. Our daughter is eight, and then son six. And then I have another son who’s four, so eight, six, and four.

And then we actually traveled around the world for a whole year. We sold a place in Vancouver, uh, how’s the car, furniture, books, whatever, people willing to buy it. And we ended up traveling. Uh, so my kids have already been to 20 countries by the time they turn five. Pretty incredible. Because like when I was five years old, I’d only been to like Canada, U S so my kids have been to like 20 countries.

And, uh, I personally have been to 81 because I did a lot of travel before I got married and active. So it’s been amazing, Joel. Um, you know, seeing the world and seeing the incredible natural beauty. Also the manmade beauty, like I’ve seen the pyramids are so unique. Wazoo falls, Brian Canyon, Niagara falls, uh, you know, all these, uh, world wonders.

We went to an African Safari, so we got to see lions in the wild and elephants in the wild. Giraffes in the wild. We got to see Dubai, which is like the tallest building in the world. So in terms of what your question is about, what have I learned. I can write a book. I know it can be, we’re going to be talking about books.

I could write a lot of, we’ll be talking

Joel: about your book for sure. Your books.

Ricky: Yes. So in terms of what have I learned from travel generally, um, I feel like people reclined and hospitable, like, uh, sometimes the media will say, Oh, these places are dangerous, but travel is dangerous. Or, uh, you know, you need to be careful.

And there’s that whole stereotype about danger associated with travel. I want to kind of recommend, reconstruct the stereotype and say that travel is very safe. You don’t have to be street smart, not walking around at night, et cetera. But I think in general, people are good. That’s something I really, really realized.

People want to help. They’re kind a, you don’t need to worry about being stranded or something cause people always help you. And I’ll give you a quick example. Uh, we’re doing this interview and during the time of covert, you know, big crisis globally, and I’m, and Ron blond, which is a small Island. Got stuck here when the country walked down and, uh, I’ve just been treated like a King, like royalty here.

You know, I’m a tourist. I’m a foreigner. I don’t belong here. Uh, but they’ve really treated me well. I’ve got a free place to stay. The vice governor, uh, accommodated me here. Um, even the meals have been covered. So it just, and I didn’t know him before, I just ended up meeting him while I was here. So just, that’s one example of just locals being so kind and hospitable.

If, and I could tell you examples and examples and examples on end, but yeah, just the fact that people are kind and caring is one big learning lesson I’ve learned. Joel.

Joel: What do you, I mean, yeah, you’ve seen so much way more than I have seen for sure. Is there any one spot that sticks out for you in particular?

Ricky: You know, uh, obviously there’s the famous ones that everyone knows, like the Eiffel tower or the great wall of China is incredible spectacular. I wanted to kind of maybe highlight some that are not as well known. Uh, so because we’re both Canadian, we both know Niagara falls, but there’s actually a bigger waterfalls, and it’s actually between Brazil and Argentina.

It’s called egg wazoo falls. And I actually just, truthfully, I didn’t know much about that waterfalls, but it’s actually the biggest waterfall in the world by volume. It’s actually three times the size of Nagra. Nagra it gets a little bit more. Press or kind of more famous because it’s in Canada, U S border, right?

So it’s, uh, North America. So this waterfalls in South America is three times as big as Niagara, and Harlene even knows that they’re like equal one. So I just wanted to highlight that, uh, incredible. Uh, and also Machu Picchu in Peru, in Carla city. That was incredible. The energy of the place, just like the fact that they build this.

City literally in the mountains in the middle of nowhere is incredible. So a great wall of China definitely stands out. The pyramid stand out. It was a falls in terms of natural beauty. Um, and I would recommend everyone does animal Safari once in your life, because we’ve all been to a zoo. It’s so much different when you see animals in the wild.

When you’re staring like two meters away, you’re staying a in the face, he’s ready to eat you basically with no cage. And that’s, uh, definitely something that we’ll never forget. African Safari is definitely on the list as well. It’s

Joel: kind of like the tiger, tiger King, uh, reality.

Ricky: Exactly. Tiger King in real life.

Joel: So you describe yourself as a digital nomad. Can you describe what that is?

Ricky: Of course, y’all. Yeah, that’s what I would say. A fairly new concept, and I’ll just break it down by the word or the term itself. The word digital nomad or the phrase digital nomad. Break it down. Digital means someone who’s working online.

Internet marketer, they have traditionally been called digital Mark, digital marketers and a marketer. And then a nomad is someone who travels, obviously nomadic. Um, so when you combine the two, it’s somebody who’s working online while traveling. And, uh, we live in a day and age where we can work, um. From the comfort of anywhere, a beach, a cafe, a restaurant, Airbnb, a hospital, and some of the comforts off technology.

Um, you know, smartphones, tablets, laptops, they’re so mobile. And so a portable, like I’m doing this interview here on my iPhone and I could do this anywhere. Right. And literally, I could carry it and do it and walk you around as long as I have good internet connection, which thanks we have on this call here.

Um, so a digital nomad is someone who just being able to work online. Doing a multitude of different types of things, which we can elaborate on. And they the light to travel, so they’re not stationed in a place. Some nomads might be, they might set a base in a famous place like Bali, which is a nomad hub, Chiang Mai, Thailand, which is a nomad hub.

Um, so they might set a base for them maybe six months a year. But then they’ll pack up the backpack and then they’ll go to the next place and still continue to generate income and still still see this incredible world. So that’s in a nutshell what a digital nomad is. Joel,

Joel: how, and so how did you first come to understand this concept and, and how did, was that something that you always kind of wanted to do and just didn’t know the term, or is there like another way of, how did, how did you discover this.

Ricky: Great question, Joel. Uh, so back in my twenties or early thirties, before I got married, I actually traveled a lot as a broke backpacker with very little money. Yeah. We all have done that. Uh, you know, maybe the European backpacking trip after college or university. So I did that. I stayed in youth hostels.

I did the couchsurfing.com thing where you’re just staying in a cupboard, um, and hitchhiking even. So that was my cheap way of traveling. And obviously we do that because we have no money. And the obstacle for people traveling is the money, the money variable. Don’t have enough money, can’t take time off my job and family commitments.

We’ve heard all the excuses, quote unquote. Um, so the internet gives us this power to work still, right? So I was already doing internet marketing. You know, Joel and me, we’ve worked together on several different projects back in Vancouver, internet marketing related. So I was already doing internet marketing and I had gotten married in that kids.

So I thought I was just going to be in the suburbs for the rest of my life. You know, maybe it’s like, yeah, you know, the stereotype, right? Uh, so just didn’t have the dog. I had the three kids, the wife in the house. So I really love to travel. Uh, and my wife, uh, hadn’t traveled as much and we wanted to show her the kids.

So. It was the wrong time, but it was the right time, if you know what I mean. The wrong time is because our kids were young. We had just bought a place like two years before we ended up selling it. And, uh, we were stable. My wife had a stable job. I was well connected in the banquet community, so that wrong time.

No one’s crazy enough to travel with young kids. That was the wrong time. But it’s also the right time because our kids were young. They weren’t established in the school, so it was easier to take them then before they made their friends. Uh, uh, you know, started enrolling in schools and ballet and TaeKwonDo and pride, you know, those kinds of things.

So it was, and there’s no right time to, by the way, so. It was just the right time for us, I would say. So it makes sense. Um, and we didn’t have the money, so we ended up selling our stuff and still working online as well. So you might have to do that as well. Um, and we’re bicycling when we’re traveling too, so we would, uh, stay in, uh, even as a family, we have stay in hostels.

Uh, we would, um, there’s something called house sitting where you can actually stay at a house and just take care of the pets. Or the gardening, and then you can stay for free. You can do things like travel, happy to save money as well. So it just made sense for us to do this digital nomad lifestyle. And we’re probably one of the only family digital nomads.

Usually you think of a digital nomad as someone who’s in their twenties you know, the surfer look where we are definitely not surfer looking type of people. And, uh, we made it work for us as a family job.

Joel: Okay. So you mentioned travel hacking. What is that?

Ricky: Travel hacking. Great question. So I’m not an expert in this by any means, but basically, in a nutshell, travel hacking means you’re using credit card miles and points to get free or discounted flights.

And hotels you can use like status. Uh, um, and most of the major airline, uh, conglomerates, they’ll have actually have these points schemes where you just basically sign your full credit cards and then you’ll get points for signing up, uh, points for retaining and points for monthly spend. You accumulate those points and you trade in the points for, uh, just kind of flights.

I mean, you can fly across the Pacific or Atlantic for like less than 50 U S. Sometimes you’re just being for taxes. So, uh, it’s, there’s a whole community around travel hacking. Um, you know, the, your listeners can just Google travel hacking. Uh, there’s a famous website, and I’ll give a shout out to the points guy.

He’s one of the world’s foremost authorities on travel hacking. It differs country to country, obviously. So U S is different than Canada, different than Europe, different from Australia. Usually it’s more limited to Western countries in Europe, North American Australia. But yeah, travel hockey is a huge. A topic.

You probably should get an expert on that topic to enlighten your listeners, because I’m definitely not the expert in it.

Joel: Have you always had the travel bug and, and where does that love for travel come from?

Ricky: Yeah, I would say no. I didn’t always have the travel bug from zero when I was born. To early twenties, I hadn’t traveled much because I’m in bank and from Vancouver, which is near the us border.

Obviously cross over the border a few times a year, you know, doing your shopping and, uh, getaways into Washington state in the U S and then, um, my ethnic background is Indian, so I’d been to India several times to visit relatives, like uncles, aunts, cousins, et cetera. So I’d only been to three countries by the time I was in my early twenties.

Um, and that really the problem, Bob, uh, as they say, hit me. Or bit me or hidden bit me in their early twenties. Uh, I’d finished university, graduated, wasn’t sure what to do with my life, so I did the teaching Japan thing. I taught English there for your, then I ended up saving up money to travel around Asia.

I did a working holiday in Australia. I traveled around Australia, New Zealand did a working holiday in London. And then traveled around Europe. So I was actually kind of already doing the working traveling thing, but it was more just casual jobs, like waiting, bartending, working in a call center, teaching English, that kind of stuff.

So yeah, I would say in my early twenties is when really I got infected, because once you start traveling, you just realize like, Oh man, this world is so beautiful and I have sexually meant a time. Most of us are going to live until maybe 70 80, 90 for lucky. And um, you know, a lot of times we’ll wait till retirement.

But that’s, I feel waiting too long because by the time we retired with you, unhealthy depends how much you work out in. But usually what you, um, I don’t know what the right phrase is, but maybe not in the best shape. To be able to travel as well as we can, maybe, you know, twenties, thirties or forties. So I advocate for traveling young, traveling often, and finding a way into travel in spite of the circumstances.

So if it’s worked for me, it can work for you. And, uh, I really believe that travel is the best education for us as humans in terms of all the life lessons, which we alluded to earlier, but especially, you know, as a dad of three, my kids, I’ve learned way more. In that one year of travel than they have in a public school back in Vancouver or a private school here in the Philippines.

Uh, not that, not that there’s nothing wrong with schooling. Obviously. I’m a big advocate of it. I’ve done a lot of schooling myself and we were big proponents of formal, traditional education, but also supplementing with the more experiential, uh, hands on. Learning through the power of travel.

Joel: So you have three kids of various ages, and obviously they, I would describe it as upbringing.

That’s not typical of, especially in North America, in Vancouver, where it’s actually, it’s really expensive to travel anywhere, right? So what do you think the impact on them and whatever. Maybe some of the Le like, I guess, lessons that they’ve learned. Um, and how do you, how do they view the world now that they’ve seen so much more than they’re, you know, there’s that age group that they’re in and their other children that they’re exposed to.

Ricky: Yeah. And I’m just super grateful for this opportunity to be traveled with them because you’re, I’m in the Philippines. It’s a terrible country. A lot of Filipinos. I’ve never even left their province. They don’t have a passport. They haven’t left the country. So definitely we’re privileged, quote, unquote, to be in the West or growing up in a country of affluence or, uh, the first world.

Right. So, just want to acknowledge that fact too. So in terms of our kids, um, they have. Learned a lot. Um, you know, there’s a traditional schooling, there’s a homeschooling, and there’s also something called world schooling, unschooling, life schooling, road schooling. There’s that whole educational paradigm of philosophy, which has really emerged in the last five or 10 years, where parents aren’t necessarily.

Wanting the kids just to learn from in a classroom with a teacher, with a textbook, but do things like I mentioned, you know, like doing road trips with them, teaching them about animals by doing animal Safari, teaching them about history by going to the Inca ruins, teaching them about geography by actually showing them volcanoes and mountains and oceans and you know, like scuba diving, snorkeling, like that kind of learning.

It’s way, way, way, way, way more educational than a textbook, obviously. Right? Because we’re immersed in it and we’re sensing it with all of the senses, not just our brains, but our soul or spirit or heart or emotions and memories are far more important than materialism, I believe. And, uh, so, you know, in terms of what they’ve learned, um, you know, I’ll, I’ll give you an example of maybe that would help.

Kids in general love things. They love toys. You’ll see kids and they’ll start fighting, or a toy, like even from a young age, they have this kind of inbuilt, uh, desire for materialism, like new toys. And obviously commercialism and advertising has its part to do that. You know, Disney, and you’ll see all these commercials for the latest Hasbro Hasbro toys or Playmobile toys and Lego toys.

So materialism has hit us as adults, but also hit our children. Um, and our kids had a lot of toys back in Vancouver, way more than they needed. And every Christmas, every birthday, every, uh, social function will they keep getting more and more and more and more things. So one quick story, Joel, is, um, we actually volunteer when we travel.

It’s called voluntourism. It’s not just traveling for the sake of vanity or taking pictures of the latest Instagram selfie or ticked up video, but it’s also traveling for the sake of impact and making a difference and helping the community. We probably win. So we volunteer when we travel. We partner with, uh, a few different organizations.

Uh, one is an orphanage. Um, so we ended up, uh, volunteering several orphanages when we traveled. A few were in Cape town, South Africa, in Manaus, Brazil in , Columbia. And, uh, I’ll give you the quick story about Metagene Columbia, which is a digital nomad hotspot as well. We were in, uh, it’s called a youth with a mission.

Why? Um. Youth with a mission. So why wham, wham. And we were at this why on base it’s orphanage. And our kids travel with the few choice and it was really impactful. We stayed in the dorm Mondays for two weeks. At the end, our kids said, mom and dad, would it be okay to give away our choice to orphans? And, uh, even now as I’m doing this interview, I get choked up.

Because, um, my kids had learned the importance of giving back and making a difference. Um, not just wanting more toys, but giving those the toys that they love, to these orphans who had nothing. So that’s one life lesson. Like how could they learn that in any other way, but actually interacting with the orphans and staying with them and seeing the difference between their riches.

And the orphans, lack of parents and the poverty, so to speak. Right. And their richest during into generosity and love and compassion and empathy and giving. So yeah, that’s a quick example of how travel has impacted my three kids.

Joel: Wow. Yeah. That’s definitely, I don’t think something that you will find in North America, there’s just not that I think, I mean, there’s not really orphanages in Vancouver, right?

So I think you’re right. I think that’s amazing that they actually can. So, you know, I mean, obviously it’s, it’s horrible, but it’s, I think it’s important to see it and not just learn it on the news and not to just have it spoonfed through. Um, I guess, you know, teachers, social media, what have you. Um, so that’s, yeah.

That’s, that’s amazing.

Ricky: Um, so for somebody,

Joel: I want to go back to this, uh, digital nomad, uh, concept. So for somebody who’s listening to this and they say, wow, that, you know, seeing all that stuff, uh, experiencing, you know, all those different countries, and, um, you know. And all that. How can somebody start out and take that step to become a digital nomad?

Ricky: Great question again, job. No one, you’re doing these interviews, you’re asking all these great questions already having that in their mind. So how can you as a listener, uh, become a digital nomad? I really, truly feel this. Any, any, any, anybody can be a digital nomad because of the power of the internet. The internet knows no color.

It knows no passport. It knows no geography. It knows no income status. It knows no sexual orientation, knows no marital status, et cetera. So the internet is the great, uh. Solution. Uh, one of the greatest solutions to the world’s problems, obviously, right? Not their solution, but one of the solutions, right?

So do things in that I believe everyone can work online. Um, obviously if you have African passport or a middle Eastern passport or a country with a third, third world country password, maybe it’s not as easy to get into countries or get visas, et cetera. But in general, everyone can work online. This is pretty much fact, quote unquote, depending on your internet speed, et cetera.

So you can work online. And how do you start. Um, this is the hardest question. How do you start? Because if you do a Google, if you do a Google search, how would you make money online? You know this, right? And I’m sure some of your listeners have done this. You’ll find millions and millions of different websites.

How do you make money online? Internet marketing gurus by my course, join my mastermind, uh, you know, watch my webinars, et cetera. I really feel you need to start from a point of passion. Okay? So I’m not here to sell anyone anything on this call here. I’m here to just educate from my own experience and hopefully sharing any, uh, inspiration I can with your listeners here.

So, um, start with a point of passion. What are you truly, truly, truly passionate about? It could be people, it could be their environment, it could be animals, and then figure out how to monetize their passion. Uh, digitally. Um, so there’s a lot of ways you can monetize passions digitally. Um, Mark, uh, Joel is actually a author as a my, so you could write books on any topic.

Uh, pets. Environment, cars, you name it, right? So you can write books and then there’s something called repurposing your content. So I’m not saying start with the book. I’m just saying that’s one of the ways you can make money online. Writing books. Obviously the amount of books you need to sell is quite significant for you to make money, because average book might be like five U S for Kindle, Alaska, maybe 20 U S for our hardest softcover or less.

Right? So. We were talking about not a lot of money per piece, but pirate for volume in Canada. Right? So not just selling books, but also repurposing that book into different forums, right. Um, you can, uh, create, uh, not just the book, but the content of the book, the content of your knowledge. It’s called. The information or content marketing.

So you’re repurposing it from a written form to audio form. Like we’re doing a podcast to video forum like YouTube or Vimeo, uh, to turning it into a course on things like Skillshare or you dummy or Thinkific or Kajabi, a journey into a mastermind group where it’s like a, you’re teaching your knowledge or content or information to a small group of people, maybe three, four, or five, six people, and then.

The highest leverage of your time is you’re going to share the knowledge and charge for it on a one on one basis. Um, so what your, they call it, IP. Intellectual property is worth money. Uh, no matter what the topic of your expertise is. So it has to be, you have to be. An expert is kind of a debatable term, right?

I mean, as long as you know more than someone else, you can teach them. Uh, you’re not, you might not be expert in the sense of like the thousand, you know, 10,000 hours to be an expert kind of philosophy from Malcolm Gladwell. But as long as you know more than the other person and your credibility, replications, success results, then you can teach others, uh, in many forums, like I mentioned, and all those are monetized coaching power.

It could be anywhere from like a hundred us an hour. To, some people charge 200, 300, 400, 500 an hour, a thousand an hour, right? So again, based on your results and your credibility, reputation, um, if you feel your worth, that’s a whole separate topic, right? Charging for what you’re worth. Coaching, small groups, masterminds, online courses.

Um, you can sell stuff on Amazon and eBay and Ali Baba, et cetera. Uh, you can do graphic design. You can do website design. You can do ghost writing like a Joel or a friend here does a, you can do a book writing. Uh, you can also speak while you travel. Like I am an international speaker as well, so I speak as I travel as well.

Getting paid for it, uh, by a company or organization or speaking for free, and then selling one of your products after you can do webinars, sell stuff on there. So you can tell here the sky is literally not the limit. Um, so there’s a lot of stuff you can do and we can elaborate on any of those. The single things I mentioned.

Joel: Yeah, I was going to say, there’s a lot to unpack there. Um, yeah, I think where I want to start is, so you mentioned speaking, uh, I think speaking is a great way to make money to get your voice out there. Um, can you tell us a little bit about your journey as a, as a international speaker, cause I know you did.

I wanted to talk about specifically your TEDx talks, um, and how did you get involved. And again, yeah. What would you recommend people who want to start speaking?

Ricky: Great questions. I love these questions, man. Every question I’ve asked have been great. So what would you, how would you get started as a speaker?

So I would say the way I started at this, two ways I started. Okay. One is Toastmasters. So, uh, I’ve been a Toastmaster for a good 10 years plus I’m no longer one currently, but I’ve got myself up there in the Toastmaster ranking. So that’s how I started it. I was, I, uh, a little known, unknown fact about me.

I was voted most shy in high school. You know, they have the high school annuals. I was super

Joel: shy really?

Ricky: Seriously. Seriously. I have my annual to prove it. My high school and your Windsor secondary school in North Vancouver. Ricky said emotionally. So anyway, yeah, I got voted most shy and obviously now I’m more outgoing.

I broke the shell, so to speak. My travels. But also by Toastmasters. You know, when I first started Toastmasters, I was doing, um, by, uh, by, you know, my, and I’ll still say down this interview, I’ll be saying souls a lot. I’m still working on the, the sows, and there’ll be some words I keep using over and over when I’m speaking, when I’m doing webinars, when I’m doing podcasts.

So even though I be speaking for good, like five to eight years, roughly. I’m still working on my speaking skills, but I started as a Toastmaster and that’s a great place to start, a first place. Secondly, I would recommend meetup.com lot of meetup organizers are looking for speakers to share the knowledge.

And if you, if you cannot find a meetup started when, um, you know, again, any topic under the sun, you can have a meetup around that topic. Uh, and then you’ll find other people with that common interest in just be the speaker, be the leader. And then again, the more you speak, the better you’ll get. So those would be two suggestions I would give to your audience.

Toastmasters and meetup,

Joel: and so how did you become a TEDx speaker?

Ricky: Yeah, I paid a lot of money. I bribed my way in. No, just kidding. You’re actually not allowed to pay to be a TEDx speaker? No. Basically what happened is I was here in the Philippines and I could kind of share a little backstory. Joel and me know each other.

Also from TEDx, like connected through that as well with TEDx Valley park. But, um, I was volunteering at TEDx in Vancouver and I had actually applied to be a TEDx speaker twice in Vancouver, I believe it was. When was it? As a few. And one was an East TEDx CSPAN and Texas. I got rejected both times. For whatever reason, maybe my topic wasn’t on point or I wasn’t the right fit for the theme of the TEDx event.

So I got rejected twice, you know, drown my head in shame, so to speak. Then I came here, the Philippians, and I was again looking for TEDx opportunities and I found that there was one in a different province, like we were based in Manila and it was in a city called taco Bon, which is a few islands away.

And I just applied. I, I, uh, I, I’ll kind of share with you my strategy. I didn’t apply front door. The front door is like you go to tedx.com, Ted, sorry, ted.com, and you look for all the TEDx TEDx events in your city or province or state, and you just start applying. That’s the front door approach, kind of like a job interview, front door, a job, applications application.

There’s a backdoor approach, which is networking. Um, and I did that. I actually look for the organizers of the TEDx events near Manila, and I messaged them on Facebook. I said, Hey. I am from Vancouver. Uh, I’m living here in the Philippines. I’d love to speak at a TEDx event, and one of the organizers messaging me back on messenger Facebook and.

Said to me, we’d love to have you as a speaker or events coming up on November. Um, you’re in. And I was like, Whoa, no application, nothing like that. And literally, it was as easy as a Facebook message. I didn’t hesitate. I just took action and I got through rewarded by being offered a TEDx spot through Facebook messenger alone.

I once I’d been accepted through that messenger conversation, then I do application, sending me a headshot in my bio or website, et cetera. So that’s literally the story of how I became a TEDx speaker.

Joel: That’s awesome. What

Ricky: did you do to prepare your speech?

Joel: Like you obviously see, it sounded like you didn’t have anything in mind when you.

When you started, and so how did you, how did you go from nothing to amazing speech?

Ricky: Yeah. Again, I’m a big advocate of passion. Again, I might be repeating myself, but start with your passion. So like my passion is travel and being a digital nomad, kind of what we’ve been talking about in this interview.

Family, travel, et cetera. So I talked about that. Um, uh, three steps to be a digital nomad. It’s on, you know, you can share the link on the show notes. It’s on YouTube and also on the ted.com website, my TEDx talk. Um, how did I prepare? There’s a few ways that you can prepare for a big speech or a TEDx level type of speech.

Um, some people write down their whole script, which is a good idea. Some people will just share it amongst, uh, close friends and family and then kind of do mock speech. Getting feedback. I did those things. I wrote out the speech, I did mock speeches. I just literally recorded myself in front of a microphone doing the speech, watching myself, watching everything, my eye contact, my hand gestures, my, my pitch, my tone, uh, how my stance, my posture was everything.

I dissector myself, analyze myself, critique myself. I allowed others to critique me. I changed the content, tweak the content. Uh, every word you say is important. It’s only 18 minutes. They say the most important 18 minutes of your life, you know, they say, if you had 80 minutes to live, what message would you give to the world?

And that was my message, memories or materialism and, uh, uh, savor family and, uh, see this world because life is short, right though. That was my message. And I was able to share that to an audience of 800 in person, but now in your audience of potentially millions, if not billions around the world. So those were some of my techniques for preparing for my talk gut.

Joel.

Joel: Um, I w I still want to. Touch on the digital nomad, um, aspect. Cause I mean,

Ricky: there’s so

Joel: many different, like, you know, like you mentioned, there’s so many different, um, jobs that you can do online. You can graphic design, web design, writing. Like all that we mentioned, but you need other skills too. You need know house to market yourself.

You need to know how to sell yourself. You need to know how to do client relations, what like what are some of the things that people can do to, to learn these skills. I think you know, their entrepreneurial skills that will help you become a digital nomad.

Ricky: Yeah. I think I mentioned one of the platforms.

One was a, you dummy. You know, I mean, you can get courses for very cheap. You can buy courses on sale with the coupon code, or you Demi flash sales for like 10 us dollars, 20 us dollars. Really affordable for most people. Right? And then even a lot of instructors give away their course. If you can’t afford the course, just message is a.

The instructor looked them up on Facebook, Facebook, stock them and message them and just say, Hey, I saw you have a course or you can’t afford it. Will you be able to give me a coupon code in exchange for review? And most instructors, you know, Hey, message me, I have like 20 year dummy courses. I’ll give you guys the coupon codes.

Happy to do that, to give back and help you guys out. Um, so you damn use a great place and just search for the topic you’re interested in. As an entrepreneurial business owner, one of the key skills is branding, especially personal branding. Um, learning branding is vital. Learning marketing, as you mentioned, is vital.

And, uh, sales, one of us don’t like sales. A lot of people say the word I, Oh, the phrase, I hate sales. I hate selling. Um, but remember, we’re selling all the time. You know, if you’re recommending a movie, uh, you’re selling, if you recommend a restaurant, you’re selling, we are selling quote, unquote, all the time to friends and family, best selling movies, selling, um, clothing, you know, like, Oh, this nice place to buy clothes, et cetera.

A nice restaurant around the corner, right? So we’re selling all the time. So I think if you look at it that way. It might ease the burden in terms of thinking you need to sell and, uh, ask people for money, et cetera. Right? So learning those skills through you, Demi, uh, YouTube, I mean, YouTube, it’s kind of hard to sort through the mess of the junk, so to speak, because there’s so many YouTube videos, right?

But even YouTube has lot of amazing content. You just have to find the right ones. You might have to filter through a lot of junk to finding the right ones. Look for the amount of use. Usually that indicates if it’s a good video, if it has a lot of views, and also a lot of comments, right? If people are commenting and engaging with the content, that means it’s usually good.

I mean, you’re in a good resource for learning, uh, books, obviously, uh, you know, on Kindle you can buy books or get them for free again. Um, you know, local library, you can get books as well. Uh, and you know, there’s a lot of different resources. Um, asking people, I would say as well, just ask someone who is more knowledgeable for advice.

Most people who become successful are willing to give back and help. Those are starting out. So, yeah, hopefully those tips help aspiring or new entrepreneurs, digital nomads. What

Joel: the court, what you to meet courses would you recommend? They can be either yours or somebody else’s.

Ricky: Mine. Mine, I have about 15 or 20 different courses.

They all are into the mastery branding, so I have branding mastery. I have social media mastery. I have blogged mass suite. I have podcasting mastery, YouTube mastery. I have digital nomad mastery. I’ve probable mastery of public speaking. I got to take a breath. I have, um, uh, Amazon, uh, mastery about South publishing, et cetera.

So I have several different courses online and I feel they’re good that. Uh, several hundred different reviews on those courses saying they’re good. So I didn’t have to pay those people to say it, but they’re, they’re said that they’re good. Um, so yeah, my courses are good, but also, you know, just go to you Demi again, do the same thing what I mentioned on YouTube.

Do a search on whatever topic you’re curious about. Like public speaking or, um, financial management, whatever. And then, uh, look for the reviews, the ratings, and then, uh, the number of students. And that will be a good indicator of what courses to buy on Udemy. So,

Joel: I mean, I first knew you as the daddy blogger.

Um, have you always enjoyed writing or was that something you just kind of fell into? Um, over time.

Ricky: Little bit about, um, I always like journaling. Uh, I like processing my thoughts through journaling or talking. Uh, some people are introverted. They might like to just journal, um, self-reflect. Some people are more extroverted. They’re like, to. Grab a cup of Joe, a cup of coffee with a friend, and then externalize the thoughts.

So I’m kind of a fusion between the two. I like socializing, but I also like writing, self-reflection, logging, uh, introspection, spirituality, meditation, that kind of stuff. So, in terms of transitioning to daddy, blogger, um. When I became a dad, I’ll just quickly share with you a little back story. So my parents actually had arranged marriage to Indian.

Uh, they moved to Canada. Their marriage wasn’t so good. They ended up having a divorce, and that left me with a lot of fears about, uh, getting married myself. Also becoming a dad myself. A lot of fears, insecurity, self doubts. Am I going to get a divorce? Am I going to be a bad dad right. The reason I started daddy blogger is really, uh, South healing, so to speak, uh, to process my fears around fatherhood, to learn from other good dads.

And that’s why I started this mission. Daddy blogger was very much a small mission, uh, for myself on me, even if no one read it. I was happy. For me to process what it means to be a dad. And then slowly it picked up steam from daddy blogger, uh, being a local Vancouver based blog to being more nationally recognized, getting readers from like, you know, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, to becoming more global.

Getting readers globally, you know, from us, our neighbor, Europe, Australia, Asia, et cetera. So it became a global brand in the span of, I would say, six months to a year. Uh, soon afterwards I started getting sponsorship opportunities, uh, paid and also in kind, um, honestly, a lot more in kind. A lot of companies would email me out of the blue.

Um, just in my inbox, I would get, uh, Ricky at daddy, blogger.com, um, you know, opportunity to work together, a partnership, uh, opportunity, et cetera, from big brands I’ve worked with like, um, you know, big car brands like Lexus and the Disney. Well, I worked with, um, HP, so many. Um, and I got started with the ups and the FedEx person started getting to know my address really well.

They started sending me stuff in the mail, like big boxes of stuff. I bought like, uh, laptops before. Tablets, cell phones, printers, um, luxury cars to drive nuts, to keep, to drive for a week, like test drive it, and then to write about how we liked it as a family car. You know, like, um, like, uh, what do you call it, Alexis SUV, like a $60,000 car.

They were just like, letting me drive for a week, you know? I was just like, kind of in shock because I was like, Whoa, you’re trusting me with the $60,000 car. Uh, you know, obviously it’s insured by Alexis. They can afford it if I got an accident. Uh, and then they flew, started flying me to places, you know, like I got flown by Alexis to a natural tendency, uh, by Volkswagen Canada.

They flew me across the Prairie, used to drive across Canada. And promote their new Volkswagen line. I’ve got flown in helicopters. I was living the life, so to speak, you know, celebrity level, um, without making the Bradford paychecks, you know, without getting the money. I would just get treated really well at restaurants.

They’re like, you’re a blogger, you’re a food. Eat here. Here’s a five course meal for your wife, for your kids. Eat whatever you want from the menu and the Bill’s on us. Right. And just write nice things about it, hopefully. So, yeah, I really got treated well as a blogger, even as I traveled, you know, I didn’t really talk about me blogging as a traveler.

I was able to stay in hotels around the world. Um, you know, restaurants around the world get sightseeing tours around the world. All for free. So blogging has been an incredible life changing experience for me personally, I, it sounds like because of all the free stuff, but also because of the impact that I made, I’ve had new dads email me, message me saying like, Hey, uh, I was in the words of like a, again, I’ll share a quick, short story.

I’m a 19 year old boy. He a teenager, you know, he got his girlfriend pregnant and then he was going to be a dad and he was so nervous, 19 B that, you know, you can imagine. And he messaged me, he was actually from Vancouver. And he’s like, Hey, I see you are so passionate, but father, I’m so nervous. I’m going to be a dad.

I didn’t know who to turn to. I’m afraid to tell anyone with evil getting an abortion. I said to him, come over. Uh, I lived in East man as a come over man. Uh, you know, just we’ll hang out and we’ll talk. He came over and after one or two hours together, he just felt so encouraged. He’s like. You had all this nurse to Ricky, you know, I feel so much better and I don’t need to be afraid.

Now the are parents and they have a wonderful kid. And, uh, I feel, you know, even if I just impacted the one guy from India that when abortion, I’m pro life by the way. So just, if I presented, no offense to any pro pro choice they want to get into, but you know, just the fact that I was able to save one kid maybe from abortion, and that, that dad, I encouraged him and inspired him and equipped him.

With resources, they would have all been worth it just for that one dad. And that one kid who could be the next prime minister of Canada. Who knows, right? So that one kid who’s been, um, you know, uh, born with the help of me, not, not, not the help in the, in the hospital, but just the help of my encouragement to that.

The dad. Right. So that kind of story. I’ve got so many of those kinds of stories. I started a dad’s community group in Vancouver called YVR dads with diamond. Well. And then obviously I wrote books about my father and et cetera. So yeah, father is a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge passion of mine.

Joel: Um, so you mentioned personal branding as being super important for, uh, entrepreneur of being, or a digital nomad. How did you balance your personal brand. When everyone was throwing free stuff your way and how did, was there some sort of a process that, um, where you would not work with somebody?

Ricky: Absolutely. Yeah. A hundred percent. I will never, ever, ever, ever work with, uh, something that conflicts my value system. As a dad, I don’t want to advocate or promote, uh, smoking, drinking, gambling. Um, and I got approached by gambling companies a lot, especially, especially online gaming. Well, I mean, it’s debatable whether that’s good, that’s good or bad.

Online gaming, online gaming, online gambling. It’s debatable whether that’s good or bad, but just as a, as a dad, I didn’t know some people online gambling. I didn’t want to add about gambling even though they’re willing to pay me. Uh, I got, I still get emails all the time from online gaming websites saying.

Uh, they’ll pay me to put links to the site to write about that site. I say no without in. Considering pricing, pricing is irrelevant. Offer me 10,000 U S a hundred thousand I would say no in heartbeat because my integrity is not sellable. I’m not going to sell my integrity, my value system for any price tag.

So I’ll say no flat, no to anything gambling related. I’ll say no to anything alcohol or cigarette related to just, I mean, I’ll, I’ll, I w I don’t smoke, but I’ll drink here and there socially, but I just don’t want to advocate for that on my website. It’s family friendly. Right. So those are three examples of something I don’t allow on my site.

Um, there’s an integrity issue. When you don’t like a product, how do you write about it if you’ve been given that for free? That’s a whole separate conversation. And this happened to me. I will go to the restaurant. I want to like the meal. I’ll send a product and it’s like, I’ll give you an example of some cars there.

They’ve asked me to drive and it’s just not. Workable as a family because it may throw a little more fit in the boot in the trunk. So there’s a few ways I can go around it. One way is to write about the positive things and just, I’m not mentioned the bad things. If it’s, if it’s something I still support, but a bad thing, it doesn’t outweigh the support benefits, if you know what I mean.

Or I’ll just flat out say, um, I like your product, but it’s just not a good fit for my audience even after I received it. I’ll say that. And that’s again, integrity. Because I can’t write about something. I don’t feel it’s good for another dad or another family. Right? So I would say, uh, if you are a strong in line with your integrity and with your value system, you’ll filter any opportunities based on that.

And then you can just say no, and people will respect you for that. They’ll say, wow, you know, like even though we’ve sent you this product in the, uh, we had an agreement that you write, but things, but the fact that you don’t think is good and you’re not writing about that, we respect that. We respect that and we’re okay with it.

So I’ve had to say no several times, and I have to not write about things just out of. Personnel, morality or ethics. You wrote

Joel: a book. Uh, I want to talk about your, your, your, uh, Amazon bestseller. You wrote 10 books. Uh, there’s one in particular, uh, I want to talk about, um, but you know, feel free to elaborate and talk about the others.

Um, but the, the wisdom you learned as a dad. Um, you mentioned that, um, you know, in your pre, the previous question, but what are some life life lessons that you have you, you gave that, uh, new dad or you know, the dad that was thinking about abortion but decided not to, or anyone who is. Who is going through that, that process and that and that fear.

Ricky: Yeah. Um, I do have 10 books. Joel, um, they’re all on Amazon and Kindle, both the print version, also the digital ebook version as well. Um, so my books are the wisdom from daddy’s book, which is a father and book. I also have a series about. Uh, travel called exploring the continents. It features all seven continents.

And then I have a couple of comic books about, uh, parenting and marriage as well. And I’m also being a part of a few, few collaborations, which I don’t come in as part of the 10, the terminal undermining as a, the only odds. Um, so in terms of, um, what wisdom I’ve learned from interviewing a hundred dads, so just like you’re doing to me today, is you’re interviewing me on zoom.

I also did the interviews with a hundred dads on Google hangout and also zoom and Skype, um, over the course of about a year and all the knowledge from picking their brains. I summarized in a book and. It’s so hard to summarize the summary. Um, you know, because  yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. But I want to give, give the question justice by answering it.

Um, so the book’s hundred and 20 pages, but what’s the kind of the key lessons there? Um, so the key lessons from the book are. Love is spelled time. That’s the phrase that really stands out for me. Love this sprout time. So as dads, as men, we are traditionally the breadwinners, the providers and protectors, you know, society really, historically, culturally, globally.

You know, men are that role. Being the providers financially and then being the protectors in terms of safety, security, men and women have been traditionally, again, traditionally on the more of the nurturing or the supporters, you know, um, but that’s teens, obviously 21st century here at 2020. Uh, both men and women are working.

Both moms and dads are working, unfortunately. Uh, unfortunately, I want to say. Uh, kids are being raised by daycares. Again, debatable, contentious issue. I’m not afraid to speak my mind, but I do. I don’t feel that’s the best way to parent a child. They feel that mom or dad or both has to be the primary caregiver.

Right. And not the daycare. So again, debatable topic. Um, so a lot of is fell time. What does this mean? What does this mean? So as dads, we’re so driven to make money that we often forget who we’re driven to make money for. We’ll work crazy hours, we’ll work nine to five. We’ll work evenings as entrepreneurs.

We’ll work sunrise to sunset, right? Until our hairs go gray. We’ll go to a networking event after networking event and we’re working like crazy and we’ll be so exhausted by the time we come to come home that we’re crashing the bed and then repeat and rinse and repeat. Right? So love is spelled time. So at the end of the day, our kids are gonna remember daddy worked like crazy.

He made lots of money, or are they going to remember daddy hung out with me making the puzzle, reading me the book, saying bedtime prayers with me having that family dinner together. You, you know this, Joel, you’re listening to know this. Family is central to our identities, to our identity formation. If we have a broken family, we become broken kids who become broken in Dallas, who in turn broke as breakout adults, right?

So if the family is broken, society’s broken. The world’s broken, right? So I really feel as dads gain traditional model, I feel like dad’s a little bit more of the leaders and our job is to lead our family in those important areas. I mentioned. Those dinners, those are non-negotiable, those bedtime prayers, the bedtime stories, the hugs, the kisses.

I love you. And that’s how we spell tiny love to our kids quality time. I believe that time provision is more important than financial provision because at the end of the day. You know, I didn’t know how what your case is with your dad and all my dad provided for me. You know, I had a car when I was 16 I had a university education by my mom and dad, but I didn’t have that quality time.

That was my father wounds, so to speak. Right? And I was learning union and lacking that father, father figure. So really as dads, we as men, as you know, you’re married that. So as husbands, we need to be there for life’s for us, for our kids, for our families. Not just in money, but in time. So I’m beating a horse to death here, like time, time, time, time is the central message of my book.

Quality time with your kids. It’s second to none. That’s should be a primary focus is dance.

Joel: Yeah. I mean, I, growing up, my dad was definitely the provider. He, he’s a lawyer and he worked long hours as he said, but I always remember he would teach who had coached other my soccer game with my. Baseball games and would always come out and watch me.

So those are the things I remember. It’s not the, not the dinners that he skipped or the, um, the times he wasn’t there, you know? So I think that, yeah, very important. Um, do you have a writing routine,

Ricky: writing routine? Yes and no. Um, you know, there’s a saying writer’s block. I definitely suffer for that. From that there are times when I’m super, super, super, super inspired and there are times when I’m not inspired at all. It could be just the busy-ness of my state of mind or the business of my work schedule.

And the other times where I’m just like so driven to write. Um, so part of it’s a little bit of a circumstantial, I would say, or unpredictable, but, but when I do get into those writing zones. I definitely like solitude. I don’t, because I have a wife and three young kids, obviously I’m getting distracted though.

Hop on, hop on me while I’m writing, et cetera. And my lock isn’t strong enough to keep them out. So definitely need solid dudes. And when I’ve written in my 10 books, uh, and that could be another question in itself. How do you, how the heck do you write. 10 books, being married, dad with three young kids and having online business.

Right. Definitely very difficult. It takes some time management, but I would say block off time in your schedule. Um, you know, if you have a calendar on your phone, just put it down saying, uh, uh, Joel’s writing time, Ricky’s writing time, Sally’s time, whatever you want to call it, right? So writing time is nonnegotiable, putting your calendar and then.

Put it as located somewhere else outside of your home, because if you’re at your home, you’re going to find distractions. I gotta cook dinner. I don’t watch the news next movie, but I watch the news, you know, gotta scroll on Facebook and find out what all your friends are doing, et cetera. So if you put a dedicated time and place that’s outside of your home, again, this is just works for me.

Okay? I don’t want to say this. As for everyone, it just works for me. Some people are okay with writing in their home, in the office or whatever. Man-cave for me, I needed to get out of the home, uh, get into the zone. So for me, it’s kind of funny because I’m saying getting salted. The zone for me was the McDonald’s on boundary and hasty Granby highway there, Granby highway, and make the McDonald’s.

So I would go there, I would just sit in the corner with the comfy, the cushion seats, and I would bring my laptop and not have internet there. Uh, so just sitting there and writing. Continuously until I’d written enough chill. I got tired and maybe my Baxter hurting a little bit, then go home. And that worked really well for me.

Joel. Um, second thing that worked really well for me is making my deadline public. So I’ll give you a quick example. I published my first book on father’s day 2012 and on January 1st, 2012 I made it public. I’m going to publish a book on father’s day, so I gave myself six months. I put it on Facebook and it forced me because I was like, Oh man, I’m accountable now because I put it on Facebook.

Then whenever father’s day. So I had a deadline and I made that deadline public. And now as a kind of look to my Facebook community, and that helped as well. I mean, deadline and accountability. Um, and then, uh, as, I want to reiterate a dedicated time and place right.

Joel: Um, so you mentioned fear in a couple instances.

Can you, if,

Ricky: if you feel, um,

Joel: appropriate or if you want to, um,

Ricky: how do you

Joel: personally deal with fear and what can, what are some tools that either dads or. Anybody in general can use to push that purse, pass that fear to get to really strive for those dreams.

Ricky: How do I deal with fear? I run behind a Bush and I hide for as long as possible.

No, just joking, joking. I struggled, man. I struggled. So I’ve struggled with fear. I struggled with depression. I’m very much open book here. I’ve struggled with depression, fear of judgment from others, a financial failure, and just isolating myself. Um, and I don’t think I’ve dealt with him the right way, so maybe I’m not the best person to Astro, but I dealt with it not, not like addictions, like some people might be addicted to alcohol or gambling or pornography.

Um, I didn’t do any of those things, but I, I just isolated. That was my addiction, the addiction of isolation and withdrawal and, um, not connecting with people like, uh, staying home a lot. That, that was kind of my ways of. Unhealthily needed dealing with it. Some people eat right, like they’ll just eat to cope with the fear in a general term, but maybe failure kind of broader term there.

Uh, how, how do you healthily deal with fear? Might be the better question here is how did they help you deal with fear? Uh, I’m just being vulnerable here, as you can tell you, I dealt with that unhealthily through like eating binge-eating or isolating, but how did they deal with healthily? I think just expressing it like, you know, just the fact that I’m saying that to your audience here means I’ve overcome the fear.

Cause I’m not afraid that people are judging Ricky heroes. I go, Oh Ricky. Was over eating. Ricky was depressed. Ricky was, uh, uh, isolating himself. That’s actually. A strength. The fact that I’m sharing that, um, because most people don’t, most people don’t share that. They do those things, but we all do those things in different ways, right?

We all get excited about something. At the beginning, we were so pumped, so excited rara and then we get excited to increase increases. You hit a roadblock. It could be relationship difficulties, it could be financial difficulties, could be health difficulties, and then we retreat. And so we need to somehow turn back from the retreat by talking to a friend by just sharing it publicly on a blog, on a podcast to the world through there, or just, uh, journaling.

Yeah. So there’s different ways it can work for you, but I would say definitely a vulnerability is the key to conquering fear. And then, um, sharing it, sharing it. Right. I, with a close. Spouse, friend, sibling, parent, uh, or publicly, if you feel compelled or okay with it. And when you’re open to share your vulnerability, guess what?

We all have been there. We’ve all struggled. And it gives them that people are listening. You know, you guys are listening. Maybe it gives you guys opportunity. They’ll say, Hey, I’ve also dealt with that isolation struggle. I’ve dealt with that. Depression struggles. I dealt with that, uh, hiding behind the Bush metaphor, right?

So. Yeah, I’ve dealt with it unhealthily Joel, and hopefully he little bit of healthiness by being vulnerable.

Joel: Well, thanks for sharing, Ricky. I, I would say those are my go to bad habits as well. It definitely cutting myself off for sure. Um, which is easy for me to do as a writer. Um, overeating as well.

That’s a, that’s a big one. Um, yeah, my wife, uh, she makes chocolates at home, so it’s, yeah, it’s easy to do. Um, yeah. I’ve got one last question. Um, what, and this is one that I generally, um, I don’t generally ask my, um, my audience or my, um, my guests. Um, and that is, is there a book that has particularly influenced you in your life and how,

Ricky: yeah, absolutely.

I would recommend a couple of recommended please. Yeah. Purpose driven life by Rick Warren. It’s all about purpose and it doesn’t have the book. Also, it’s also about purpose. It started with why by Simon Sinek. Um, because I’m, I’m, I feel I’m very purpose driven in my life or in my father and in my parenting.

I ran a purpose driven business, purpose driven travel, et cetera. So, um, purpose has been a defining. Feature of my life. And a lot of people struggle with purpose. Why am I on this planet and why do I exist and what should I do with my life? Right? Those kinds of big, big life philosophical questions. Well, if you have those, which I’m sure all of us have had at some point, many points, and then get those books, purpose driven life, uh, I’ll spoil it a little.

I’ll just say the first sentence of the book. The first sentence of the book for poster of a life is this. It’s not about you. Yeah. Let that sink in. The purpose of your life is not about you. It’s about others. The impact you can make on this world, the legacy you can leave, the difference you can make.

Right. So, uh, you know, if you like that kind of philosophy on it’s not about you or. Being under centric, grabbed that book and start with why is a kind of fusion between personal and business? It’s more business oriented. It talks about how companies such as Apple, um, they’re purpose driven. And that’s why people are willing to sleep outside the stores in the middle of the night in the cold of New York city in the winter, just to get the latest iPhone, tablet, smartwatch, et cetera.

Right? So Apple is very purpose driven, whereas something like Samsung, no offense to Samsung, great company, but they aren’t as. Purpose driven. They’re more like tech driven. They create great products, but they don’t have that rabid fan base where people are willing to sleep outside of a Samsung store. I didn’t know, I’ve never seen people sleeping or heard about people sleeping outside Samsung.

So Apple is very purpose driven and that’s why they’re one of the most successful companies in the history of the world. So. We can learn from companies like Apple and we can implement that in our own businesses and in our own life. Being, uh, having corporate purpose driven business and being purpose driven entrepreneurs and having purpose driven podcast too, like Joel and purpose driven books like yours and mine, Joel.

Um, so yeah, I would say definitely purpose, uh, the purpose driven life again by Rick Warren and secondary Simon Sinek. Start with why.

Joel: Well. I think that’s a perfect place to end it. Thanks so much, Ricky, for being on my show. Really appreciate your time. If people want to find you, what’s the best place to look you up and reach out?

Ricky: Yeah, you can start out daddy, blogger.com that’s a my 14. Uh, you can just Google Ricky shady. I have lots of different resources online. Everything from private coaching. If anything I’ve said resonates with you and I’d love to coach you on that subject, whatever, whatever, about the mini subjects. I did, I kind of brought up pure coaching.

I offer that. I also have online courses. I have a podcast as well, by the way. Uh, digital nomad mastery, where I’ve interviewed 500 plus digital nomads. It’s the largest collection of digital nomad interviews in the world, a digital nomad mastery. I also have some virtual summits online and, uh, um, books.

Yeah, a lot of books on Amazon too. So I just Google Ricky Shetty or go to a search on Udemy, on Amazon, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on YouTube. And. As of a few weeks ago, I picked up. I’m now ticked Tucker’s too, so you can hear it. You can see and watch Ricky dancing and ticking duck too. So there you go.

A lot of different ways to find me. Just all

Joel: right. Thank you so much, Ricky, for taking the time again.

Ricky: Thank you, Joel. You did a great job with the podcast and it’s great to reconnect with you all the best over there in Vancouver and all the best of your listeners, no matter where in the world you’re listening from.

Thanks everyone.

Joel: Take care. Bye.

Ricky: Thank you for listening to publishing for profits.

Joel: Please like it.

Ricky: Subscribe on

Joel: iTunes, Spotify,

Ricky: or wherever you get your podcasts.