Travel like a Boss Joins Us from Kiev, Ukraine! with Johnny FD | TNN39

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Episode Summary

So you want to be a digital nomad. You already have a job or business that allows you to work from anywhere. You already have a place in mind (somewhere where there is a beach and great food). You are already packed and ready to go. But what really are the things you need to consider before deciding that the laptop lifestyle is for you? Johnny FD Jen, a location independent entrepreneur and author, is one of the experts in the field because he, himself, had gone through the ups and downs of the digital nomad world.

 

In this episode of The New Nomad, Johnny FD joins our nomad hosts Andrew Jernigan and Allen Koski in another entertaining conversation about this exciting yet challenging lifestyle. They talked about how important laying the financial and mental foundation first before diving into being a digital nomad and why investing your hard-earned money smartly is a must. Peppered by tips and advice from experienced professionals, this episode is definitely worth listening to.

From the episode

Johnny FD:

What You’ll Learn

Timestamps

[0:53] Your overall health matters

[3:55] Combatting loneliness as a digital nomad

[4:48] Traveling for a reason

[12:48] Smart moves in investing

[18:30] Be smarter, get travel insurance

[21:03] Underrated places are much more fun (and more cost-efficient)

Show Transcript

Allen  

Welcome to The New Nomad Podcast, the podcast for those in the location independent lifestyle. We have an incredibly interesting guest today. An author, podcaster, an entrepreneur, Johnny FD joins us today. Travel Like A Boss podcast. But before we catch up with Johnny like to catch up with Andrew Jernigan. Andrew, you know, there’s been a lot of conversations in the community about making quick connections, avoiding loneliness, as people do explore their own journeys. It’s an area that I think we’re going to cover a bit today, but something that I know, we’ve been thinking about as we try to make connections with people. You’ve been to a lot of different countries, you’ve moved to a lot of different locations, some of your thoughts on that.


Andrew  

Yeah, it’s such a crucial first question that you brought up here and taking care of yourself in that journey when making sure you’re out there and willing to make friends with people that don’t look like you, that don’t talk like you that don’t have the same past and experiences or future. And just getting beyond the preconceptions, but also the self-care whether it’s subscribing to a mental health program to where you can chat, or a service that provides the well-being counseling sessions, I think those are really good because they’re oftentimes to where relationships go through different seasons. And we go through different things, we see traumatic instances in new cultures, whether it’s thinking of me in a new city, I saw a flood and emergency vehicles and boats go by. We see different things and need someone to walk through these journeys because we’d only exactly call home and say, Hey, I just saw this. Because where is home anymore anyway, for many of us that have lived in this lifestyle it’s often even over the horizon. It’s a thing of, okay, we can have home bases. But this is interesting. I love the fact that Johnny FD’s on this episode. Today. He is one of the authority leaders of this generation, for those who’ve been living around the world, and making money and teaching others how to, so it’s gonna be good.


Allen  

Just to tie in one last thing about avoiding loneliness, so I’m out like play tennis, I work out a lot. When I travel overseas, or I go to a location for a while, it’s just great to reach out to some of these groups that have similar interests, and really get out there. And you’re never really lonely. Also, if you’re like me, who likes to go to microbreweries. Because there’s always people who are willing to share ideas on what’s a good beer. That’s just my own aside. So we’ll bring in Johnny FD. Johnny, I’ve been to Kiev. It’s a place I’ve also enjoyed a fair amount of beer, wonderful beer there, wonderful food. You’ve just made a huge transition to that area. Welcome aboard. How are you doing there today, some of your thoughts on our initial comments, my friend.


Johnny  

Yeah. So hey, guys, thanks for having me on. I’m excited to be here. This is actually my first kind of nomad interview since I mentally kind of retired from being a nomad, actually. So I wanted to leave a couple of tips for everyone because it was a long journey from 2008 to 2020. I was travelling full time, I would go home to visit for a month at a time, but I was just living abroad. And I finally decided to settle down I bought an apartment here. And now I’m transitioning more to an expat than I am a nomad. But I would say the loneliness of going to a new place a new location really is hard, especially as you get older and you’re not staying in hostels anymore. That was, you know, fine. That was kind of the easiest hack, right? If you’re young, just having a 12-bed hostel, you’re going to meet 12 other people, if I can hang out with them, have some drinks go out. But when you start staying in Airbnbs, and hotels, it does get harder.


Allen  

Well, and you have also been a very active person to you know, Muay Thai and I understand your some of the other things I want some of the group’s you got involved with in your podcasts, you have some great tips on that. Isn’t it like 90% of just everything’s just showing up, sooner or later you’re gonna run into a group that have similar interests, right.


Johnny  

Yeah, I would say, for me, the kind of hack, I guess was always to have an interest or a reason to go somewhere besides just going there or checking off a country. So you mentioned Muay Thai. I would go to different cities in Thailand. You know whether it was Phuket. I would sign up for a fight camp, so I would be there for one to three months. I’ll live at the gym, with other people who are also training. So instantly you have a group of 20 or 30 people for training the same sport as you. And you can do this for other things, too. So I also did scuba diving and I wanted to get my divemaster. And for the first two months, you have a couple other people in your class who are also your new friends. And when I started working as a dive master dive guide, you would go and there’ll be 10 other people working there. And those are your new friends as well. Plus, you have all the guests who are coming and you taking them out. So kind of that’s the easiest way to plug in, is to go with a reason and attention, join a program, whether you’re working in that program, or volunteering or you’re a student.


Allen  

So you just made the big move from Sri Lanka to Ukraine, and a lot of people in our community are like, how do you identify the next place you want to go? I mean, you had a world out there. So how did you end up there? You know, make that big transition. And I also recommend to folks to go to the Travel Like A Boss podcast. Johnny does what explains some of the thinking on why you left Sri Lanka for Ukraine, but how did you identify Ukraine and Kiev in particular?


Johnny  

So in this case, I actually had been here before, in general, I think we travel a bit too quick, most people in this in this community or they drive travel way too slow or they go one place and they stay for 20 years. They kind of assume that it is the best place. For me it was kind of a hybrid where I’ll go somewhere for a month at a time but if I really liked it, I would try to go back every year. You would meet with old friends again, you would go back to your favourite restaurants or coffee shops or favorite gym. And when I was stuck in Sri Lanka, I was stuck in paradise and I was living on the beach, surfing I was you know in the sun every day and I was thinking Where do I want to go? Do I want to go to another paradise you know do I want to go to Thailand or want to go to Hawaii no I’m kind of tired of I want a big city. I don’t want to go back to the US it’s expensive I’ll lose the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, the tax breaks. And I was just thinking where in the world would I want to go and the only reason why I didn’t want to move to Ukraine was the language barrier but I decided you know what, let me just go there, I’ll force myself to learn Russian and then Ukrainian, this is a long term place so that’s how I ended up here.


Andrew  

Well, you touched on this, the camps for fighting and different things but I think if history serves me right as I followed you through time to FD has something to do with that right? The adventurous side of you. Can you reveal that FD for us all?


Johnny  

Yes. So when I wrote my first book, it was about scuba diving and Muay Thai kickboxing and I wanted to put all that in the title because at the time at least there was good stuff as many keywords in right so that the book was called 12 Weeks in Thailand, The Good Life on the Cheap. But that was kind of the maximum amount of characters you can put in title and I thought okay, well how could I get the words like fighting and diving in there? I thought you know what, let me put it as my author name. So my the book is not by Johnny FD it’s by Johnny Fighter Divemaster on Amazon. 


Andrew  

So fighter divemaster became the FD Yeah. Okay, gotcha. So this has been a journey for you over a long time you’ve been known as the host of the Nomad Summit that ran for a few years right. And this Nomad movements even expats are now realising, Oh, I haven’t been I’ve taken that label of expat but really, I’ve identified with digital nomads didn’t realise that was even existing or digital nomads now realising okay, I’m shifting from being a digital nomad into that colonial term of expat or they’re taking location independent or trying to figure out okay, what can I be I don’t like the colonial term. It’s going to morph is this great resignation and the global workforce changes. What’s your take on that? When this whole generation is so mobile? There may not be the perfect title for it right now. I’m not sure. What’s your take?


Johnny  

So when I was living in Chiang Mai, I was in the digital nomad community and most of us are pretty young, I would say on average between 20 and 35 maximum. And we thought we discovered at Chiang Mai everybody you can assume that. But there was also this expat community mostly ranged from I’ll say 50 to 70 or so they had been there for years. And there wasn’t that big of a difference. It was just they weren’t as into online business or into, creating content online, most of them had pensions, or they’re living off of savings and things like that. But it was a very separate community. Now, in 2021, that lives a little bit more blurred, because there’s people like me, who are, you know, technically not a retired expat, because I’m still working online. But the same time, I’m not really a digital nomad, so I’m not moving around every month or two, and building businesses, I’m kind of just coasting by. So I think there’s a between, a guy can be 70 and still working online, he could be freelancing, or, doing something and earning money while living in other countries while traveling once in a while, so, the lines are very blurred. I think terms are not really meant to put someone in a little tiny box, but it’s just kind of to make it easier to generalize, category people, there’s always exceptions.


Allen  

So, listening to you, and you’ve obviously got a lot of wisdom to share. One of the things that really resonated with me is, so you’re able to have this lifetime staff for many years. You’ve spoken very eloquently about index funds. You just met the other day about the tax credit when you’re out of the US, I guess, for more than 330 days, could you share some of your tips to some of the folks that are kind of new to this because you’ve obviously been through the school of hard knocks, and I really appreciated some of the things that I heard you share on your podcast.


Johnny  

Yeah, it’s, it’s hard because I did it the kind of the long grind way over the last 10 years been saving every dime, investing it and kind of growing out my net worth to a point where I can kind of chill out a little bit have some passive income. But in the last couple years, there’s almost like the riskier, that are more speculative investment you made, the more money you made. So, you know, it’s not really exciting to say, like I made, you know, 200 grand or something, because you could have put it in a failing movie theatre stock or failing retro car agency or some kind of crappy cryptocurrency and a lot of people made this amount of money. But I really generally believe that the speculation that it’s luck good for them. But it could have very easily went the other way. 


The way I did, it was kind of a long grind I have a video on YouTube called My 14 Streams of Income. And there are 14 different businesses I’ve built over the last 10 years, starting from my two ebooks, to some courses I made to my dropshipping stores, to real estate investing, all these things. And my kind of biggest tips for everyone is, as an entrepreneur, we don’t need to ask for a 5% raise, we can do some tweaks, we can learn new knowledge, we can scale up things, and we can double or triple our income. And as long as we don’t double or triple our expenses, you can take all the rest of the money and you can save it, you can invest it in something. And if you want to be speculative, go ahead and do you know, put it in an awesome crypto fund. Or if you want to be like me a bit more conservative, you put in something like a broad index fund, where you’re buying a little piece of every business in the US or even around the world. And in general, those go up, you know, between seven to 9% per year. And, you know, you can live off the dividends, you can live off the growth and you pretty set. I don’t regret doing that. And I wish I was able to just have thrown a couple of thousand dollars into something speculative and you know, become a multimillionaire today but at the same time, I would much rather be where I am now. And I this will recommend your friends or family or anyone listen to this as well is the turtle wins the race more than the hare that that sprint’s you know in zigzag.


Allen  

Well, you know, it’s interesting, you bring that up. So I myself am a big fan of index funds. Most of my money is in index funds, but having a small percentage, as I call it my own venture fund, which is Johnny, Andrew, all of us are in unique areas and we see products that are really burgeoning. I think I can put five or 10% in that and then you might have a chance to accelerate but to your point I love your conversation that you’re speaking of of the failing rental car company I mean hertz was filing for bankruptcy and people were still buying the stock. That’s not a very smart or intelligent play, it may have worked out in this weird area. But what I think you also hit upon is, you’ve been investing for quite a while and with time value of money, you can get ahead of the curve. And I think a lot of people don’t go down that road and I salute you for getting making your money, earn money for yourself, that’s one of the real steps in the right direction.


Johnny  

Yeah, a lot of people don’t realise that the term, money makes money or the rich get richer, it stems from a very basic thing that’s compounding interest, the easiest way for anyone to think about this is, if you owed a bunch of money on a credit card, and you didn’t pay it off, after 10 or 20 years, you would be in a massive pile of debt, it works exactly the same the other way, if you put a bunch of money in an index fund, or every month, you put some money in the next one, and you just don’t touch it and let it compound interest compound, after five or 10 years, you’re gonna be sitting on a pile of cash. So it’s pretty simple. And I have a blog post on JohnnyFD.com, just search for index funds. And it basically just recommends a few books, recommends the mindset of long term holds and not speculating, but at the same time, it’s hard to recommend the slow and steady, right way to do it in 2021, when it seems like the more risky you are, the more money you can make. So I don’t know, this is a crazy world we live in.


Allen  

Well there’s another part to it is protecting against the downside. What I mean by that is people that have either a big medical reversal, lost something, and we’re talking about floods that we were experiencing, and where we are today, people have not insured against that or not prepared, etc. As you’ve travelled about how have you also protected yourself against the downside, you obviously shared with us some great tips on putting some money aside for the upside. How about a little bit on the downside.


Johnny  

So to be perfectly honest, with both you and myself, the first five years, I was just taking a risk, you know, I was trying to get lucky. I was literally teaching scuba diving, and I didn’t have health insurance, I could have drowned, or I could have fell off a cliff or something. And I would have been screwed. So I do recommend to everyone who travels to have something, especially if you can’t afford an air lift home where you can afford otherwise. And then at a certain point, I also realise that medical care in places like Thailand, or even Ukraine or Sri Lanka, it’s actually cheaper to pay out of pocket, then go somewhere and deal with the insurance. So now honestly, I don’t worry too much about it. If I live in the US, I would absolutely have to. But it’s one of the things where you should at least be honest yourself and sit down and really ask yourself if I got a bill for $30,000, could I pay it without selling a liver? 


Allen  

It’s interesting. We saw a case recently. And of course, you know, we’re in Andrew and I are strong advocates of health care being in that area of a person who needed $13,000, just to be released from the hospital. And then you had to go to social media to fund it. And of all things, Tyler Perry, the movie star came up with the money. Now, it was a very fortunate experience. But I think it was a learning for a lot of folks that to your point maybe some of the small things you don’t necessarily insure against if you need to be evacuated or some other major medical issue, but also you hit upon something to is there are parts of the world that healthcare is relatively inexpensive, and there’s others that obviously are expensive, like the US and one of the great things I think about where you are in Ukraine when I travelled to Ukraine, it’s even a mind body tied together. I met a gentleman there who had Crohn’s disease in the United States. And he said that he had been in Ukraine for a year. And because of the amount of naturalness in the food, he had not had any issue with Crohn’s disease, the whole year he’d been there, because the food is so natural, the beer, it’s kind of interesting about eating local natural foods. So you’ve travelled about you’ve obviously had different foods and different things like that. Maybe this is a great time for you to share with us one of the places that you might think is overlooked, marvelous, whatever? Or if you’ve got a couple of them, because you’ve been so many different spots that people should keep their eyes peeled on.


Johnny  

Yeah, definitely, I would say, if it’s somewhere that you’ve heard of five or 10 years ago that you’ve always dreamed to go, it’s probably going to be over tourist crowded by now. So places like go to Paris, go to Bali, you know, going to London or something, they’re probably going to be really overpriced there for sure. I’ve been to all of them. They’re all overpriced. There’s hidden gems, it’s those countries that you never really hear about like for example, Sri Lanka is so much better than Bali in pretty much every way. With way less tourists, it’s cheaper, there’s more nature, it’s more untouched, but it’s just not as popular. Or if you go to like Albania, there, you can go to a beach that’s just as beautiful, as in Greece, but it’s half the price because it’s just not as popular. So that’s my biggest recommendation is, don’t just go to the places that are in the top 10. Find a place that you talk to people who do travel who have traveled to more than a few places, get their recommendations and go there.


Allen  

Is there a particular food style to that? We just had somebody on one of our podcasts that had mentioned Ethiopian, a food style that a lot of people have not tried, but when they do they think it’s marvelous. So as you’ve travelled about, obviously, some of the foods that you’ve run into in those locations.


Johnny  

The one cuisine that doesn’t exist outside of Eastern Europe, for whatever reason. It’s one of the best foods out there. It’s Georgian food. And I don’t know why it’s not in the US. There might be two Georgia restaurants in the whole country. And it’s just not a popular cuisine, but it’s delicious. It’s amazing they have amazing breads and cheeses and meats, and dumplings. Their wine is the oldest wine culture in the world. And it just, never the word never got out. But it’s amazing.


Allen  

Interesting, I’ve never heard of Georgian wines, either. When you’re in Ukraine you’re gonna have quite a unique mix of Eastern European and different styles of food there too. I have to admit, I was there when it was a little bit colder and I got used to borscht and some of the soups that they have there. As you’ve been to Kiev, and a lot of people have been shying away from Ukraine because they’ve seen some of the issues with Russia on the border. Can you give us a quick report on what you’re seeing in Kiev right now? I’m hearing it’s a wonderful place. I was there I loved it although there’s that really strange statue not exactly there Lady Liberty overlooking the city that was left behind but it’s a wonderful city. What’s the latest thought that you see there?


Johnny  

The kind of the current Russian conflict doesn’t affect your life in Kiev at all. People don’t even have a talk about it, but it’s always coming back to people’s mind. But Ukraine in general is a hard place to travel to if you’re new. I would suggest going somewhere like Thailand first or you know just Sri Lanka or to the rest of Europe before you make it here because if you’ve never travelled before you don’t speak Russian or Ukrainian you’re gonna have a hard time. It’s just not an easy place to go. Winter’s coming and it’s gonna be minus 20 here it is gonna be a tough place. But that’s what I like about Ukrainians is they’re tough people. I don’t need to have my handheld to an easy place anymore. So I’m up for the challenge. I think it’s worth it but it’s definitely not a place I wouldn’t recommend most people unless you want to have a hard time. Maybe get scammed and definitely get lost.


Andrew  

Well, where can people find you? Where can they learn more about your courses and coaching and different things? Where can people find out about that?


Johnny  

The best place would be my blog, Johnny FD.com. I’ve written guides about every single city I’ve been to I lived in including all the ones we mentioned here in-depth all for free. There’s embedded YouTube videos on there as well as you can see what it looks like. Nowadays, I’m not really updating my blog as much anymore, focusing most on my YouTube channel, but that’s more honestly for entertainment. But look for Johnny FD on there. I have put out so much solid information out there the last five years about how to build businesses where to go. So that’s all there still, most of its evergreen. But nowadays, don’t expect me to put out too much more because now I’m semi retired taking a break and enjoying life.


Andrew  

Okay, this has been fun. You’re just one of those that I could listen to so much. I’ve followed, you on the various channels throughout the past years, and I want wanted to go to Chiang Mai for the summit is one of those things of couldn’t happen in that season of life. But this has been really great hearing your take. And, and I don’t know about you, Allen. But one of my takeaways is to start early in making sure you’re financially stable. That’s one of those things where people are ready to make a transition, but they haven’t laid the foundation for it a lot of times, I think, okay, great. I can work from anywhere. And now let’s go do it. Tthey don’t have the reserves, or they didn’t start investing soon enough. So they can think about the future. And what about you, Allen, what are some of your takeaways today? 


Allen  

Well, a couple of things. First off, I could talk investing all day, like Johnny, I retired, and you brought me back, Andrew. And I appreciate that. And I also appreciate his conversation about trying a different food style. And I will try to search out Georgian food when I next get to probably New York City might be one of the two places that has a restaurant like that. But I also would say to the audience that his Travel Like A Boss podcast is really interesting. And even if Johnny’s not doing as many of them anymore, they’re very enlightening and very entertaining. So I would listen to them too. The takeaway I would also say is, I love the idea of somebody’s been in a wonderful place, and then you move to somewhere completely different. So think about this his move from Sri Lanka where it has to be warm beachfront. And now he’s in Ukraine. I can’t wait to check back with him in a year and see how the difference in topography and climate.  I learned a lot today, and I really enjoyed the conversation. So for those of you out there who are listening to The New Nomad podcast, we really hope you keep travelling, this is a community of people, ideas, spirit, helping you take advantage of the location independence lifestyle. I think we had a great conversation to that line today. Please travel well circle back again and we look forward to catching up with you next week with another adventure in independent and exciting lifestyle.

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About the Guest

Johnny FD is a location independent entrepreneur who began traveling the world in 2008 working as a scuba instructor, fighting professionally in the sport of Muay Thai Kickboxing, and has been featured on Forbes, Business Insider, Entrepreneur.com, England’s Top i100 List, and even written about in the Danish magazine Information Denmark. Johnny has written two books, 12 Weeks in Thailand: The Good Life on the Cheap and Life Changes Quick: Simple Tips to Getting Rich, Fit, and Even Find Love. He is also the host of the Travel Like a Boss Podcast, and the founder of the Digital Nomad super conference, the Nomad Summit.

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