Adventure Travel with Gregg Bleakney - WhereNext Travel - Adventure Travel Podcast - Big World Made Small

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (01:05):
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of
the Big World Made Small Podcastfor the Adventure Traveler.
So happy to have each and everyone of you back today, and also
very excited to have my guest.
We've got Greg Blakeney.
Greg is the owner of Where NextTravel.
Greg, welcome to the show.
Hey Jason, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 (01:24):
Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 (01:25):
I'm doing great.
This is going to be a lot offun.
I want to share with ourlisteners that I spent the day
with you yesterday exploringColombia.
We both happen to be in Bogotaat the same time.
You live here, and I'm just kindof passing through.
And you were gracious enough totake me out into the hillsides
and the mountains in the Andesand show me a special project
that you've been working on fora while that we're going to
discuss.

(01:45):
But we call it a finca.
So let's start with what is afinca?
Because I'm sure some of ourlisteners might not be familiar
with that particular word.

SPEAKER_01 (01:54):
Sure.
In Colombia, if you actuallytranslate finca directly to
English, it means farm.
But in modern Colombia, fincafor most of the use case means
cabin.
So if a Colombian invites you totheir cabin for the weekend,
it's something really specialbecause the finca or cabin in
Colombian culture, especially inmodern Colombian culture, is

(02:15):
really where Colombians go toescape the big city and spend
time together, intimate timetogether as a family.
And it's almost uh it's a veryaccurational thing in Colombia
to have a finca.
And it's something that's just avery special escape, especially
when the majority of thepopulation lives in these huge
metropolitan areas like Medellinand Bogota.

SPEAKER_00 (02:34):
Yeah, we were discussing that a little bit on
the drive yesterday, and it waskind of the it's yeah, like you
said, the cabin or some peopleit might be a lake house or it
might be a a country house orsomething like that.
So it it fits because Now, if ifthey have livestock, do they
call it a finca still, or doesthat change the change the word?

SPEAKER_01 (02:55):
Yeah, so it's interesting.
So the the origin story of theFinca would be an actual real
working farm that, you know, 500years ago, Colombian families
might have had a base camp inthe main in the city where they
do a lot of the businesstransactions, but their actual
um center of operations would besomewhere in rural Colombia
where they'd have cattle orthey'd have some sort of crops,
etc.
And so the finca was, you know,somewhere where they'd be going

(03:17):
back and forth between the bigcity and their rural um base
camp from a businessperspective.
And now when you are talkingabout fincas uh with friends
here in Colombia, peopleactually ask me, is it a finca
finca?
Meaning, is it a real farm?
Do you have animals?
Do you have crops?
Do you have stuff?
Or is it a finca that'sbasically we call them
conjuntos, which are likeprivate golf communities with a
golf course or a gated communitywhere people um basically are

(03:40):
living in condominiums or umcountry homes and there is no
farm, there's no cultivation,there's no animals, but people
still call them finca.
So we might call them in theStates again, go into your cabin
or your your you know yourrecreational property.
So I have had that experiencewhere people ask me to clarify
what kind of finca am I goingto?
Am I gonna are there gonna bebugs?
Are they gonna be cows?
Are they gonna be you knowfruits, or am I gonna be like in

(04:03):
a chase lounge about theswimming pool the whole time?
Right.

SPEAKER_00 (04:06):
Very cool.
Well, in a sense, I would sayafter having experienced your
finca, not your finca finca, butyour finca, is that you do have
a lot of fruit trees and youyou've got coffee plants on your
finca.
So I guess maybe it's somewherekind of in between because
you're not necessarily producingcommercially, but you've got a
lot you do have a lot of fruitthere.

(04:26):
So yes.

SPEAKER_01 (04:27):
So the history of of my finca was it used to be a
cattle pasture, most of it,mostly I'd say about 60% of the
property, and it was about 20acres.
And then it was converted intoan organic coffee farm.
And then over the years, thecoffee farm was let go and it
was used more for a recreationalproperty for a family who live
here in Bogota.
And so, since my wife and I havepurchased that finca a couple
years ago, we've been restoringthe coffee plantation, as you

(04:50):
saw, and we've been uh reallyplanting more fruit trees, and
it used to have horses, etc.
So yeah, it is kind of a hybridwhere it is a recreational
property, but we are playing areal working coffee farm there
again, which is which is reallyfun and and interesting.
It's very cool.

SPEAKER_00 (05:04):
Well, it's a really, really cool place.
I suspect that during thisconversation, we're gonna get
back to that and how that kindof ties into your business.
But before we discuss how yougot from where you were to where
you are now, let's give ourlisteners kind of just what is
where next travel?
I think that's an importantplace to start.
We won't spend too much time onwhat it is, and then we're gonna

(05:25):
go back into how it came about,and then we'll get back to more
about what it is.
So, what's the what's the shortversion of what is where next
travel?

SPEAKER_01 (05:33):
So, where next travel, we're a DMC uh based in
Latin America.
We have operations in Colombia,we have operations in Peru, and
we're opening in other countriesquickly here in Latin America.
And a DMC, for the audiencewho's not familiar with the
industry, Lingo, basically is abusiness-to-business travel
company.
So we white label travelexperiences for other travel

(05:54):
brands who are based outside ofColombia.
Most of our uh partners or ourclients are based in Europe, so
they're European operators whosell travel directly to
consumers and/or they're basedin the United States and they
trail and they sell traveldirectly to consumers in the
United States.
We also work with traveladvisors, which are very
prolific right now in the UnitedStates.
Those are individuals whorepresent mostly families who

(06:17):
like to experience a premiumlevel of travel, um, very
experiential.
And we developed the trips forthem and we manage those trips
wide labeled in countriesthroughout Latin America.

SPEAKER_00 (06:28):
I've heard it sometime, and thank you for
sharing that because some of ourlisteners might not know what
DMC means, but you've you'veexplained it very well.
I've also heard it, the termkind of is like boots on the
ground.
You're the ones here in Colombiathat have all the local
connections, access to all thesespecial places that maybe a
travel advisor in Milwaukee or aoutbound tour operator in France

(06:50):
might not have direct access.
So you're able to put all thoseparts together and then create
an experience that they can putkind of put in front of their
clients.
And then when the clients showup, you're the ones taking care
of them when they get here.
Is that is that a goodrewording?
What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 (07:05):
Yeah, it's good rewarding, and I think it's
something to clarify about howwe're structured.
Obviously, you know, I know Iwas born in the United States.
I've been living outside of theUnited States for over 20 years
now.
So I'm a 20-year resident inColombia.
It's a place where I've built alife for myself.
I've married here.
My wife is from Argentina, butwe both live here.

(07:26):
She works for uh an Argentiniancompany based here in Colombia,
and we have a daughter, anewborn daughter, and we built
businesses.
We have three or four businesseshere in in Colombia, and we have
businesses throughout LatinAmerica.
And so I'm not a Colombiannative, but I'm a Colombian
resident.
And the way that we'restructuring is we have a company
in the United States based inbased in Seattle that co-owns

(07:48):
each corporation in the countrywe operate, where we have a
local general manager, or wecall them country managers in a
travel lingo, who owns apercentage of the company.
So for us, it's a it's a uniquemodel where we're co-owned
locally and also um in theUnited States.
And that's allowing us throughthat corporate structure to
create a network of companiesbased across the entire region

(08:12):
that operates under a singularstandard uh and a singular set
of systems and technology behindthe scenes.
Again, boots on the ground.
When I hear that, I thinkoperations.
So what some people are payingus for is smooth operation in
these countries that sometimesare challenging to operate,
right?
And so sometimes I call, youknow, being a DMC is the art of

(08:33):
operational excellence whereyour guests don't really know
what's going on behind thescenes.
So the whole swan in the lakelooks elegant and beautiful from
the surface, but below thewater, the legs are kicking like
crazy, right?
And so we would be the legs theunder the water, where our
clients would be the business ofconsumer brand where they're the
elegant, you know, front,branded front of the experience.

SPEAKER_00 (08:55):
That's uh it's a really good way to put it.
And the other thing that kind ofcame up for me with with that
particular business model is ina sense, you've got a travel
advisor or a tour operator atanother country that's maybe
marketing the trips, and they'redealing with a US company, which
I guess has some advantages.
I don't know.
We could go into that, I don'treally know.
But they're dealing with a UScompany, uh, they're sending

(09:17):
their money to a US bankaccount, and then it's it's
being distributed, and and theoperations are happening with
your country managers, whetherthat's in Peru or Colombia, that
type of thing.
Did I get that right?

SPEAKER_01 (09:30):
Actually, um we depending on each client, um, we
transact differently.
Some clients want to directlytransact with our bank and and
our our corporation in thecountry where we're operating.
And others who might be doing,yeah, some who might be doing
multi-country trips wouldtransact directly with our US
company.
So we have a flexible, yeah, aflexible um payment model.
Some uh US clients prefer totransact with a US corporation

(09:53):
where the transaction will beprotected under US law and US
corporate law with from aDelaware C Corp.
And that gives them a little bitmore peace of mind than
transacting with a foreignentity.

SPEAKER_00 (10:03):
Okay, very cool.
And do you have a, you know, asa DMC, I guess we should focus a
little bit more on climbing.
I'm more familiar with it andmaybe make maybe there's some
variations and differences, butwhat what types of trips do you
set up for your clients that arethen turning around and selling
their trips to their clients?
Do you have a specialty, aniche, or something that you're

(10:24):
most excited about?

SPEAKER_01 (10:26):
Yeah, it's well, first off, as a DMC, you're
basically putting on the hat andjersey of every client you're
representing.
Yeah, right.
So one thing that we're reallyum focused is on is operational
excellence.
And so understanding thestandard and the methodology and
how our clients want to presentand manage a trip for their

(10:46):
guests.
And so learning that system andthen replicating that system
seamlessly in these differentdestinations where we're
working, right?
So that's number one.
And then number two, I have astrong feeling about this that
our clients are paying us forour creativity.
I come from a creative marketingbackground, and we can get into
that later, but they're payingus for our creativity, our
know-how, our experience in thedestinations, and the fact that

(11:10):
our team is local, our team isconstantly traveling, constantly
experiencing their kind of youknow on trend or understanding
what's new and what'sinteresting.
I'll give you a very, veryspecific example of what we're
getting paid to do.
So we had a family, and Iwouldn't say that luxury, but
this family wanted a premiumcomfortable travel experience.
And one of their stops wasMedellin.

(11:31):
And someone in the family, Ithink one of the kids had seen a
hotel on Instagram that's verybeautiful, and they wanted to
stay in that hotel.
And so one of the things theycame to the table with through
our client was, you know, theywant to be in this hotel.
And we know the hotel well.
The hotel is a nice property,but and this again, I'll be very
direct here, and we had to bevery direct with them.

(11:53):
The hotel is known for foreignmen spending time with
prostitutes.
So or paid escorts, we wouldsay.
So when you frequently, whenyou're going in and out of the
lobby of the hotel and aroundthe hotel, there's prostitutes.
And this family was travelingwith young with kids at an age
where we didn't think it wasappropriate to be uh
experiencing that every day.
So we felt very compelled tosay, look, this looks great on

(12:14):
Instagram.
Obviously, you're not going tosee this on Instagram photos,
but we recommend another hotel afew walks away, away from this
stuff that's more familyoriented, right?
And they were like, Oh my gosh,I never would have known.
And when they got there, they'relike, Thank you so much, because
obviously they went and checkedout the hotel.
You know, when they're in Maine,just to just to double check.
And they're like, you know,thank you.
So that kind of stuff is whatwe're getting paid to do, right?

(12:38):
And I think that's reallyimportant that we're, you know,
aligning ourselves with thebrand of our clients and then
really understanding who theirguests are and checking up on
that kind of stuff, right?
That's what we do.
And then when you go into whatmakes us different and special
besides the operationalexcellence that we're providing
by those clients and reallyfocusing on that, it's okay.
So, yeah, we understand this,this, this place really well.

(12:59):
We know kind of what's going on.
Let's be really creative.
How can we integrate uniquepeople that you wouldn't
normally connect with?
How can we design experiencesthat I would want to go on?
How can we design experiencesthat our travel advisors would
have go on?
And how can we adapt thoseexperiences to your guests?
So, for example, we have anadvisor, his name is Nicholas
Gill, and he is the LatinAmerican food writer for the New

(13:20):
York Times.
He's co-written books with someof the most famous chefs in
Latin America and the top chefsin the world.
He knows gastronomy culture inthese regions as well as anyone,
and he's an expert.
And he has some very strongopinions on how people can
better experience gastronomy inthese regions, besides, in
especially in a luxury sense,the tendency to go to the top 50

(13:42):
list and say, you know, book methis, this, and this, so I can
say I've been to the top threerestaurants in this region.
What he really loves istraveling and discovering the
next top restaurants that willbe on that list five years from
now.
Because the really cool thing isto get in there where the chef
is there, visit your table, youhave a really strong connection
with him or her.
And then three years later, likewe went to that place before it

(14:03):
was that place.

SPEAKER_00 (14:04):
Before it was uh yeah, on the list.

SPEAKER_01 (14:07):
Yeah, we were like part of the journey of the
ascent of that place, and that'ssomething we think is really
special.
So we bring those types ofexperiences to the table.
The gastronomy example is justone example, but also adventure,
outdoors, really believe mepersonally in experiences like
birding and cycling.
And birding sounds strange, butbirding is one of the fastest

(14:28):
growing hobbies for youngtravelers.
I call it a hobby, but it can bemore of an obsession for young
travelers, and people are doinga lot of backyard birding in the
United States.
But Colombia is the leadingbirding destination in the world
right now.
Peru is up there as well, maybetop three, top four, right?
So just getting people outsideof their comfort zone to look at
birds, whether it's a toucan ora brightly colored tanager, and

(14:52):
bring into places to see thesebirds and really connect with
that world in a different waywith these incredible guides.
It's like learning anotherforeign language of the planet.
And that's something that we welike to integrate.
Those types of experiences thatmay not be on a classic guest
checklist and seeing sometimesif it clicks or not.
We've had families come back tous and say, you know what?
We did a quick little birdingthing, and our 15-year-old

(15:15):
daughter, for the first time ina long time, showed this
incredible interest for thishobby.
And she's been asking aboutbirding, and she's come back
home and she's like wants totake classes on birding, and now
she's looking at birds in thebackyard and she's wondering how
migrations work and how birdsmigrate from the north to south,
from North America to SouthAmerica.

(15:35):
And it's something that startedas just taking a risk on this
new activity for their family,and down the road had fun.
That fun converted into a smalltransformative experience for
for them.
And that's things that we'rereally proud of.
All right, that's that's verycool.

SPEAKER_00 (15:50):
Do you most so let's talk?
You mentioned specificallyEuropean kind of outbound
operators or people that youknow are are selling the trips
there.
You guys are the ones that stepin with the operational ability
to make it make it one of thosetransformational experiences.
I guess the question is do mostof the tour operators you work
with have kind of a niche?

(16:11):
So, like, would it be a touroperator?
You mentioned the gentleman thatwas into the culinary
gastronomy.
So is that his market?
Is that like if he sends yousomebody, it's somebody that's
interested in gastronomy, or isthat what does that look like
across your client base?

SPEAKER_01 (16:26):
If you Yeah, so right now, I I would say that
most of our clients are notniche.
We've done we've done we've donea few tours, for example, for
coffee aficionados in ColombianPeru.
And so that would be more niche.
But I would say most of ourclients are doing general travel
experiences in Latin America,where just to act of traveling
to Colombia in its own by itselfis like a niche because, like,

(16:48):
whoa, you guys decide to go toColombia over, you know, an
island in the Caribbean, right?
Or over Mallorca, right?
So that is a niche worse initself.
So one thing that we've had tocome to realize as travel
planners is living here andbeing here for 20 years, some
things that are fairly normalfor us are actually very exotic
and new and interesting for someof these groups.

(17:08):
And it's easy to forget that.
So that's another thing that's Ithink is is being really in tune
with those types of nuances.
Um, these people might be comingto South America for the first
time.
Many people are, especially ourNorth American, yes, and
something new for them.
It, you know, and again, I don'twant to put down my culture
because we have a lot of peoplethat are very, you know, worldly
and understand the context ofvarious continents and different

(17:31):
cultures around the world.
But in general, the idea ofpremium travel experiences and
luxury travel experiences is notassociated with Latin America,
especially South America, right?
It's associated with Europe,it's associated with the
Caribbean and different regionsof the world that are not Latin
America.
Latin America is kind of up andcoming.
And so one of the things that wefound that we can really help

(17:52):
our clients with is how can theypresent these experiences and
itineraries in Latin America ina visual way, how can they
communicate them to theirpotential guests that showcases
them in a little bit more of aluxurious format so that they're
more comfortable on taking thisleap of faith, right?
Instead of like going to a verysecure place psychologically

(18:13):
like Europe, where you knowyou're gonna have a high-level
service and you have theseincredible hotels that are
already well established.
And it's kind of like aguaranteed, you know, first base
hit, right?
You're gonna go there and you'regonna at least get on first
base, you know, psychology.
Like we're gonna have this nicesolid experience.
And, you know, taking the risk,you know, because it is kind of
a risk, or taking the leap offaith and coming to Colombia or

(18:33):
Peru or Argentina or some ofthese other countries that
aren't necessarily culturallyknown as premium travel
destinations, right?
And so that's something elsethat we've really work with our
clients on.
How can we help you presentthese experiences?
Because in my appearan, in myopinion, we hit we do have some
incredible luxury properties,hotels, properties, and uh

(18:55):
places to stay in these regions.
But for me, luxury truly startswhen you take your first step
outside of those properties andyou start experiencing, you
know, we did this yesterday.
You met some of the staff ofthis agritourism company that
we're running, and stepping outthe front door with your family
and experiencing and growingtogether is like the biggest
luxury of all right now in theworld of travel, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 (19:17):
Right, right.
I hear what you're sayingbecause as as a travel advisor,
you think, okay, well, I canprobably sell Italy all day long
to be and people are not goingto come back and say, well, the
hotel wasn't nice.
There's a lot of nice hotels,there's great food, it's just
kind of a you know it's there.
And there's also some overovercrowding and some some

(19:39):
tourism issues that you know alot of people think Italy would
be a nice place to go.
So a lot of people go there,which means there's a lot of
people there.
And one of the things that I'veexperienced spending a fair
amount of time traveling aroundand and definitely quite a bit
of time in Latin America is youcan really get away from it and
still have an amazingexperience.
And I remember when I first cameto Colombia, I I think I was

(20:00):
sitting on a you know on asidewalk drinking coffee and
eating a croissant thinking,man, I feel like I'm the only
American here.
I know I'm I know I'm not.
And I say American meaningsomeone from the US, because
people in Colombia are Americanstoo, I guess.
You know, I've heard I'velearned.
But anyway, it's it's just thatwow, who would have thunk it?
You know, I'm here having thisamazing experience, and and a

(20:22):
lot of people just don't knowabout it.
And uh so I get I get why thetravel advisors, it's oh, just
send you to France.
You're probably not gonnacomplain about the hotel, you're
probably not gonna complainabout the food.
And if there's a bunch ofcrowding, you're not gonna
complain either because youwanted to go there, I guess.
I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know where I'mgoing with that.

SPEAKER_01 (20:39):
But I'll say I'll if I could jump in.
Please add this.
Yeah, please do.
Interesting fact for yourviewers that if you're from if
of your viewers from NorthAmerica, Canada, the US, we
learned geography as kids as theAmericas being two continents,
North and South America.
And I thought that's just how itwas.
How many continents, Jason?
How many continents do we haveon the globe and the world?

(21:00):
I know.
Until from your from youreducation, seven continents,
right?

SPEAKER_00 (21:05):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And well, six.
So yeah, I I know where you'regoing with this.
Go ahead.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (21:11):
That's fascinating.
So in my wife is from Argentina,and we had a discussion, is that
most of the world outside theUnited States, almost everyone
learns that there's North andSouth America are one continent
called the Americas.
And so that was a big, a bigkind of like boom, oh wow, you
know, we're educated differentlyaround the world and we're
educated differently in theUnited States than most of the
rest of the world and a lot ofthese geographical features of

(21:33):
our planet.
And that influences very muchhow we think, including the fact
that you brought up that ifyou're traveling in Latin
America and you're living inLatin America as as I am, if you
say I'm an American, most peopledon't like that because we're
all you need to say I'm from theUnited States or I'm from North
America from the United States.
The challenge is in Spanish,there's no easy way to say that.
There's no word that says I'mUnited States person.

(21:55):
It's a law.

SPEAKER_00 (22:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And and and in the Englishlanguage, we don't have that.
You know, we've got Mexican,Colombian, French, German, we've
got all those words for prettymuch every other country I can
think of, but there is no wordthat other than American, right?
We say American.
We can say I'm from the UnitedStates, but if you say I'm

(22:28):
American, it works for us.
Most people kind of know whatyou're saying, or they look at
your face and they can kind offigure they can put it together.
Yeah.
And oftentimes I've had peoplein in the Latin world, they'll
just come out and say, Oh, youyou're American, right?
And I'll just look at them, Isay, We're all Americans.
And they and they and theysmile, they grin, they're like,
ooh, they know that you knowthat you know.

(22:49):
So so that's a good tip foranybody traveling in the
Americas, South America, CentralAmerica, whatever, is if you can
say something like that tosomebody, they're gonna say,
Ooh, you're not the typicalquote unquote American.
So anyway, yeah, yeah, that's agood tip.

SPEAKER_01 (23:04):
Also, but when you're in Europe you can sign an
American and everyoneunderstands.

unknown (23:07):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (23:08):
But in Latin America.

SPEAKER_00 (23:11):
Yeah, so I I I had a friend in Ecuador that we had a
lot of conversations around thisbefore, and she was very
opinionated about it, and Idon't I don't blame her.
I get that.

unknown (23:20):
Yep.

SPEAKER_01 (23:20):
Okay.
And that's one that's one of thegreat things.
Let me put out that's one of thegreat things about travel.
So someone can be in Cartagena,for example, step out of the
hotel, meet a Colombian, have acoffee with them, and get into
that discussion.
And let's say they're with their16-year-old son or daughter.
And then all of a sudden, wow,now you have something to talk
to your kids about when you comeback.

(23:41):
It's like, wow, we met this guy.
Mom, I didn't know that theAmericas was one thing.
Is it really?
And like that's a pretty coolmoment to have that's inspired
through getting out your frontdoor at the hotel, right?
Those are the types of thingsthat we love to hear.
We love to hear about when we'reputting these trips together.

SPEAKER_00 (23:56):
I don't think either you or I, if we had never been
to Latin America, I don't thinkwe, you know, we would never
have a clue that a lot ofpeople, especially a lot of
people in the Americas, see itall as one continent.
And yeah, it's it's it's justthe cool things.
And it's not just about thewords, it's like people identify
with these things.
These are powerful things.
We can say, well, oh, it's it'sone continent, two continents,

(24:18):
doesn't matter.
But to them, it it you know, todifferent people, we have
different things we care about.
And you're never gonna figurethose things out unless you get
out and and explore a littlebit.
So all right, let's um we'regonna get probably get more back
in more back, that's greatEnglish.
Uh, get back into more stuffabout kind of what you're doing
right now, but you've got afascinating story.

(24:39):
And so when if I asked somebody,how did you get from you know
North America to South America?
A lot of people say they got ona plane.
You've got a slightly differentstory, so I want to have that
conversation with you.
I don't know if that's I don'twant to start right there.
I know, I know a little bit ofthe story, but let's go back a
little further.
I understand you grew up in inthe Seattle area.
So, what was it like growing upin Seattle?

(25:01):
So let's kind of shoot for that,you know, 10 to 18 age range.
What was going on in your world?

SPEAKER_01 (25:07):
Yeah, so I I grew up on two islands in the Seattle
area.
One is called Mercer Island andthe other one is called
Bainbridge Island.
My both my parents wereeducators.
And, you know, I had a very, I'dsay an incredible childhood.
I have a really great family.
Again, a family that dinner timediscussions almost always framed
around education, with both myparents discussing different

(25:29):
strategies.
And my mom was also a businessowner and she owned uh an
educational academy that she wasone of the first to diagnose
ADHD in young children in theSeattle area.
And she had a school that uhprivate school for special needs
kids in the Seattle area, andshe also worked with gifted
kids.
So she um and my dad umeventually became the

(25:49):
superintendent of schools forthose islands where I grew up
and also helped um with theentire school district of
Seattle as like an interimsuperintendent assistant
assistant in a transitionarytime in the Seattle School
District.
So I had the good fortune togrow up with a parental
structure that really valuededucation and also sports.
So both my parents wereathletes, my dad was an athlete

(26:11):
and was an athlete at theUniversity of Oregon.
I did the triple jump and andthen I became a professional
triple jumper afterwards.
And actually, the the lead intomy whole reason why I came to
Latin America was because at theU.S.
Olympic trials, I blew out myknee triple jumping, and I had
to recover my knee throughriding uh stationary bikes.

SPEAKER_00 (26:30):
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (26:31):
And that would kind of be my my as growing up in a
nutshell.
I would say one thing that Ialways was attracted to uh
growing up as we moved fromMercer Island to Baymage Island,
Baymage Islands sat in themiddle of the Pichet Sound and
from the island on the side ofthe island that we lived on had
an incredible view of theOlympic mountain range every
morning from my from my windowin my bedroom, wake up to see
Olympic mountain range inOlympic National Park.

(26:53):
And so although my parents werewere incredible educators, they
weren't outdoorsy.
And towards the end of highschool, you know, when I was
around 17, I started and Ibought my own car and I started
loading up the car on theweekends and going out and
hiking the trails in the OlympicPeninsula.
And that's when my firstconnection with the outdoors, it
was very much self-guided, usingbooks, you know, and studying
myself and going down to thelocal outdoor gear store and

(27:15):
talking to all the sales guysuntil they probably, you know,
dreaded me coming through thedoor and asking about the trails
in Olympic Peninsula and how Icould do this, how to pitch a
tent and all this stuff.
So I kind of found my way intothe outdoors on my own.
And then when I went to college,I got a scholarship for track
and field from the University ofOregon.
And the University of Oregon inEugene is kind of an epicenter
for outdoor activity as well.

(27:36):
So activities.

unknown (27:37):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (27:38):
Before we before we get too far into what was going
on in school with the triplejump and the biking and all that
stuff, you had mentioned, yousaid that you had the benefit of
parents that were in intoeducation or you benefited from
that.
I'd like to dig a little bitmore deeply into that because
that could mean a coupledifferent things.
The things that pop into my headwas one is just people telling
me you need to get an education,because I've had people in my

(28:00):
life, hey, education's reallyimportant, you need to get an
education.
And then I had other people inmy life that just by nature,
because they were educators,were just super curious and
really, really enjoyed sharingwith people that they cared
about things.
So when you say you had thebenefit of having educators in
your family, tell me a littlebit more about that.

SPEAKER_01 (28:20):
Yeah, so my my parents always supported me
following my curiosity, and theyfelt that was like a key
component of education.
So I had that support.
And as we go through this, Ihaven't had the uh the kind of
standard life.
I've made uh decisions in lifethat most families, I think,
would would struggle tounderstand.
And my parents always embracedthose decisions and understood
uh and supported and supportedmy decisions that were, I would

(28:41):
say, are kind ofnon-traditional.
So I would say that on thatside, that's what I meant by
that.

SPEAKER_00 (28:47):
Did they, if knowing what you know about them and
kind of their life journey, dideither one of them I mean
sometimes educators have a verytraditional path.
You know, they grow up, they goto school, they become teachers.
It sounds like what your parentswere doing were doing things in
the educational world that werenot necessarily super
traditional.
But I guess where I'm going withthis is did your parents travel?

(29:08):
Were they into travel?
Was there anything that youcould point at in their
upbringing that that would helpexplain why they were so
supportive of you following yourdreams and and your curiosity?

SPEAKER_01 (29:21):
So yeah, my parents weren't travelers, and again,
they weren't outdoors um people.
I think you know, we grew upvery, you know, by the time I
came along, my brother wasbefore me, what you know, um, my
dad marriage due to housing,he's paying for his own PhD.
And so we grew up where I thinkthe big, the big, big splurge
for the family was, you know,getting a pizza once a month
type thing.
And then as it is, yeah.

(29:42):
And so it's like a differenttime, a different generation.
I would say that they were thatmy parents were were successful
and then we never worriedfinancially.
But I think things have changednow where it's like, I don't
know, that my contemporaries onMercer Island, it was normal for
them to jet off to Europe orHawaii for a weekend.
That was very common.
But like us growing up, thoughthose types of things didn't
happen.
So we would drive down to toEugene um for the Track City

(30:02):
Classic, and that was like oursummer vacation for my brother
and I to go run in a track meet,right?
And so that was and then we goout to Bend, Oregon sometimes,
you know.
But I would say like big traveltravelers, you know, I think
they'd they had done a studyabroad program in Europe, they
did, um, just after I graduatedcollege.
So they'd gone over there andthey'd spent a few weeks, but
supervising high schoolstudents.
So that was like their kind ofbig international travel.

(30:23):
But I think it's not because oflack of curiosity, but I think
just in that generation, my parparents just wasn't it wasn't
normal for someone, it wasn't aseasy or normal for someone to
go, you know, travel the worldas you know I've had the
opportunity to do, you know,post college.

SPEAKER_00 (30:37):
Did you have any do you have any memories from kind
of before college?
You you mentioned sports, youmentioned going out and
pastoring the guys at thesporting goods store to get
trail maps and stuff like that.
But I'm curious, at an earlyage, were there travel things
around?
Sometimes that might look likeNational Geographics.
That seems to be a popular,popular theme coming up.

(31:00):
But I was wondering if there wasstuff like that around you that
maybe influenced you.

SPEAKER_01 (31:04):
Yeah, 100%.
So one of the kind of oddballthings I was interested in as a
kid was tropical fish.
So I was a tropical fishhobbyist.
Yeah.
And so if I wasn't, you know, towhen I was in high school, I'd
go, I'd go down to the outdoorstores.
But starting from four yearsold, I think my mom took me to
uh a country fair and I won agoldfish.
And then from there we went tothe we went to the fish store.
It was called the fish store inuh over in Isquahwa, Washington.

(31:27):
And I saw these aquariums, youknow, and I think by the time I
was 10, I had 30 aquariums inthe basement of my parents'
house.
And I was supporting themthrough breeding and selling
tropical fish, mostly cichlidsfrom the Amazon River Basin.
And I wow massive library ofbooks, and one of them was
written by uh Jack Watley, whowas an early explorer from
Florida, who would go down tothe Columb uh to Colombia and

(31:50):
to, you know, as as we can talkabout, but into the Amazon
region of Colombia, and he wouldlook for these different types
of discus strains, which hewould bring back to the United
States and breed them to bringout these new colors of
turquoise, etc.
So I grew up reading these booksabout tropical fish enthusiasts
and their expeditions into LatinAmerica, and that's um since I
was my first book report waslike why I want to go to Latin

(32:12):
America and why I want to go toBrazil and the Amazon River.
And so that's where my travelinspiration came from, from the
you know, Jack Jack Watley'shandbook of Discus book from
probably when I was eight yearsold.
And I'd, you know, customdesigned my filtration systems
and you know, if people, if youask my friends from like
childhood, you know, what theirmemories of me, they'd be like,
oh, he's the he was the fishguy, you know.

SPEAKER_00 (32:36):
I was gonna ask you, how long were were you involved
in the the fish?
Like when did did you get to apoint where you're like, okay,
I've shifted focus to uhbackpacking and hiking and stuff
like that, or like at what agedid you give up the I shouldn't
say give up the fish?
That sounds bad, but you knowwhat I mean.

SPEAKER_01 (32:53):
Uh yeah, one aquarium that I brought to
college with me.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
And then after college, thefish, the fish went away, and I
was you know, starting to workand starting to travel and and
and starting to get interestedin girls.
Yeah, yeah, bro.
Yeah.
I don't think I don't know iffish you know, it's funny
because I didn't what I didn'tknow, I never thought about this
because I was a total fish nerd,but like having an aquarium in

(33:14):
your dorm room in college islike the most cheesiest pickup
thing.
Like, hey, come back to my fishtank.
At least, you know, I don't knowwhat it's like now, but back
then, yeah, so it was kind oflike a sketchy, like a like a
oh, that guy's a little bitsketchy type thing.
I got an aquarium in my in mydorm room.
But I just, you know, I don'tthink these, you know, if a
woman came to my dorm room, shepretty learned pretty fast that
it probably wasn't a tactic,like a romantic tactic.
It was something that came fromlike you know, she'd probably

(33:36):
scare it off because as a nerdand I'd be talking about discus
from the Amazon region, right?
It would probably not be a greatline.

SPEAKER_00 (33:43):
It might sound a little weird, like, yeah, it's
but it's funny you say thatbecause when I was about in that
same age range, I was reallyinto snakes.
And I had I had severalaquariums with snakes in it, and
then I had the uh for everyaquarium I had with a snake in
it, I had three aquariums fullof mice or things that I you

(34:03):
know.
I won't discuss why I had micein the room, but I had snakes in
the room, so you maybe you canmake the connection.
And yeah, and looking back atit, like that would be even
worse.
Come back to my dorm room andsee my snake.

SPEAKER_01 (34:14):
See your snake, yeah.
That's that's that doesn'tthat's not that that's much
worse, actually.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's not advised that wouldbe.

SPEAKER_00 (34:25):
I'm happy I asked that question.
That's uh that's a pretty that'sI did not hear that story
yesterday.
So um very, very cool.
All right, so you took the youtook the aquarium.
Actually, I had a thought.
The you I don't know if they doit anymore, but you go to the
fairs or the festivals and youcan win the goldfish.
You mentioned that.
Wonder, man, if those guys havelike a commission arrangement
worked out with the local petstore.

(34:46):
And if they don't, they sureshould.
I just that was a business ideathat popped in my head.
They had a 100% when they giveyou the goldfish, they should
hand you a 10% discount card ata pet store.

SPEAKER_01 (34:56):
Yeah, first thing I had to do is go buy the go buy
the goldfish flakes at thewhatever pet store was closest
to my house.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So and then those guys had thoseguys, those guys had me, and
again, they're the guy who ranthis general manager of that
store was named Carl.
And I remember this, and this iswas this was you know four 45
years ago, right?
Four years ago.
Good.
Carl, and he worked there as asales rep.
And then he ended up buying outthe store.

(35:17):
So for about 20 years, he waslike my almost like my
babysitter.
So I would ride my bike overI-90 Bridge, right?
My bicycle that didn't have abike lane at that time, and go
and I'd be at that store all daylong with Carl.
And I would volunteer and I'dhelp clean the fish tanks.
And we go to the SeattleAquarium together.
He would drive me there, and wego to the tropical fish auctions
of the Seattle Aquarium, andwe'd look at all the new fish
species, and then we go um tothese guys that were designing

(35:39):
field races.
So he became almost like this uhmentor of mine in the fish
world.
And uh and you know, I don'tknow why I didn't and I still to
this day I'm not sure why Ididn't study biology in college,
but when I was a kid, yeah,that's what I did, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (35:51):
That's that's that's a really cool connection to just
white, and then 40 some yearslater, you end up in Columbia in
the in the mountains with andactually yesterday when we were
walking around your finca, wewere looking at the river.
You've got a couple rivers rightthere on the Finca, and you'd
mentioned about some somecichlids or something that lived
in the river, and I had to findyou like, oh, he knows, you

(36:12):
know, you know what you'retalking about.
Yeah, yeah.
So all right, that's cool.
Okay, so anyway, you go you goto school, you've got your fish
tank, and you're on the trackteam, and you're doing triple
jump, you hurt your knee.
What did what were you?
I should ask this, what were youstudying in school?

SPEAKER_01 (36:26):
So I did a retro year my first year.
So that in college, that meansinstead of finishing on four
years, and when you give ascholarship, they pay for you to
study for five years.
So you don't compete your firstyear.
Uh so basically my my big my bigbrother was uh a Pac-10 champion
in triple jump as well.
And so he was four years aheadof me.
So when I got there, um theydidn't want both of us to
overlap and be competing thesame year.

(36:47):
So they didn't want me to burn ayear of eligibility, my freshman
year.
So they do a thing calledredshirt.
So you don't compete, you justtrain with a team.
Basically, you're like on apractice squad, right?
And then my sophomore year, Istarted competing, so for four
years.
So I actually went to theUniversity of Oregon for five
years, and so I finished mymajor, which was um sports
psychology in four years.
So I really got into sportspsychology, uh, you know,

(37:08):
University of Oregon, my whatwhat a lot of people, you know,
I tell the story in LatinAmerica, but my coach was Bill
Dillinger, and we would go to uhup to Bill Barman's house.
And if you don't know the story,University of Oregon track and
field team, my coach foundedNike.
So Bill Barman founded Nike, itwas founded from you know, with
with him and also with uh anathlete it who was on the
University of Oregon track andfield team.

(37:30):
So we had a lot of that uh rundeep.
That the the the face of Nike isPhil Knight, the co-founder was
our coach.
So Phil Knight would actuallycome in for track meets, we'd
write him notes, we would meethim, we'd go to Bill Barman's uh
river house and meet him andtalk to him.
And these guys are some of themost iconic coaches in history,
anywhere in the world.
And they also built one of themost iconic brands in the world.

(37:51):
And my fifth year, my senioryear, I'd completed my sports
psychology degree, and that wasincredible to study sports
psychology and be in that kindof environment where these kind
of coaches who are kind of sendmasters of the sports psychology
invented, you know, the sport ofjogging, right?
And my fifth year, uh, I hadfinished my major and I wanted
to do some other stuff.
And so I had some friends thatwere involved in the journalism

(38:11):
school, and the journalismschool in Oregon was also
combined with the ad school, soadvertising basically.
And I really became fascinatedwith advertising and marketing,
right?
And there was a guy who wouldcome down every year and do an
internship program, and you'dyou'd apply, and they'd pick
like 10 students from the adschool every year to do the

(38:32):
internship program for him.
And I didn't know at this time Iwas pretty naive, but he uh but
uh he was named was Dan Wyden,and he was the founder of Wine
and Kennedy Advertising Agency,also known as the agency and the
guy who invented just do it andthe Nike brand.
Right.
Right.
So I was able to work with him,be with him, and do a really
intense, incredible, likelife-changing internship

(38:54):
directly with him.
He drive down to Oregon fromPortland, where his company was
based.
And some of the guys that was inthat per internship program have
gone on to just do likeincredible things in in the
world of business.
And that was a really specialprogram.
So I I kind of came out ofOregon in that time.
I was also transitiontransitioning to become a
professional athlete.
And so I think my first my mydrive from from a kid to go down

(39:18):
and experience the tropics.
There's a guy who ran for theUniversity of Oregon who was
from Brazil, and he actuallytransitioned from Brazil to the
University of Oregon to trainunder the coaches at the
University of Oregon, which werewho are the best coaches in the
world.
His name was Joaquin Cruz, andhe went on to win multiple gold
medals in the Olympic Games andlong distance running, right?
A really iconic guy.

(39:38):
And at some point, I think hewas I was talking to him and he
was up visiting Oregon, and Itold him about my dream to go
down to the Amazon.
And he said, Do you know that wehave the best triple jump coach
in the world in Brazil?
So you guys, like 10 years ago,you your university brought me
up.
So now I'm gonna talk to myuniversity and we're gonna bring
you down to Brazil.
So that way you can you can youcan come down here, you can

(40:01):
train with the best triple jumpcoach in the world and prep for
the Olympic Games, right?
With this coach.
And you can also uh uh live outyour dream of being the tropics
and maybe go check out theAmazon, right?
So I went down my like my fifthyear, I actually did an exchange
program, and I went down withwith Joaquin Cruz and trained
with some of the leading theseguys all coached in Cuba, etc.,
and trained with their Olympicteam for the triple jump and

(40:23):
kind of was able to combinethose pursuits of you know my
athletic career and my you knowfascination with tropical fish
and in the Amazon.

SPEAKER_00 (40:32):
I gotta I gotta ask you, I gotta ask you this.
Why the triple jump?
It to me it because I'm not inthe sporting world, I don't
really know much about it.
So it seems random to me.
I'm sure it's not, but maybe itis.
Like, how do like did you know Iwant to do well?
I guess your brother was doingtriple jump, so that might have
had an influence.

(40:53):
But do you just kind of starttrack and everybody just kind of
finds what they're the best atand that's what they pursue, or
how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 (41:01):
Yeah, so it's it's a good question.
I think in the public schoolsystem, at least in the United
States where I grew up, there'sa thing called recess, right?
So three times a day, you know,they let you out.
I don't know if they still dothat, but I remember that.
I don't know if they do.
Yeah, so you have you go out andthere's a playground and you go
and play for like 15 to 30minutes, depending on the
recess.
And you kind of like for littleboys at that time, is like

(41:22):
basically we'd all go out andwe'd just go crazy, right?
Because we'd all this built-upenergy and we'd we'd play in
every sport we could, running,chasing, tag, everything.
And so I think by the timeyou're like in second grade, you
all the boys know who thefastest, fastest guys are,
right?
Yeah, and then that time we hada thing called a presidential
fitness test, which they don'thave anymore, I don't think, but
it was like a mandatory test ofyou know, pull-ups, running

(41:43):
fast, climbing a rope, you know,all this jumping.
And so I think by by the secondor third grade, I knew I was the
fastest kid and I knew I couldjump really high.
And so my dad put me in trackand field, and like when I was
in fifth grade, I broke the therecord, the US national record
for like the fastest kid who didhurdles shock put and high jump
and like 100 meters, right?
So I wow right at that point, sothey kind of took me and put me

(42:03):
in this thing called the juniorOlympics program.
And uh I did that all the wayuntil my freshman year high
school, and then I I didn't gothrough puberty.
So my I went from like beingthis kid who broke the national
record, you know, uh in thejunior Olympics to like not
going through puberty.
So high school, I just ran thehigh school track team, but I I
didn't even I didn't qualify foranything.
And then my senior year, I hadthis massive growth spurt and in

(42:24):
high school, and uh I won thestate championship and uh in the
triple jump.
Um because I don't know, I don'tknow why I picked the jump, but
I just knew I could jump.
And so I did the triple jump, Iwon the state championship.
And then Oregon came and re andall these colleges started
recruiting me to go, you know,and my and I think my parents
are pretty happy about thatbecause you know getting a
scholarship from a U.S.
university out of state is likeyou know, hundreds and hundreds

(42:45):
of thousands of dollars.
So it's a good it's a good deal.
You know, it's a great deal.
It's even more now.
It can be, you know, for a biguniversity be three, four
hundred thousand, five hundredthousand uh by the time you get
your room aboard paid for andstuff, you know.
So it was a it was a that waswhy I did the triple jump, I
think.
It was a good ticket to freeeducation as well.

SPEAKER_00 (43:01):
It's it's pretty cool.
And again, it sounds random tome.
People that are into track andfield and sports and stuff like
that probably are like, yeah, Imean, I'm not saying it's random
and like it's not cool, it'ssuper cool.
It's like, wow, that's that's soyou had a random event.

SPEAKER_01 (43:13):
It's not it's not a well-known event.
People call it the power of LA.
So it is uh most people aren'tfamiliar with, but it's true.
Columbia, when I first moveddown here, uh there's a woman in
Colombia called Katarina Bargan.
She won the Olympic gold medalin triple jump.
So it's cool to follow her herein Columbia.
So I've talked to her, I've I'veyou know, I've hooked up with
her a few times and and talkedto her and try to understand um
what she's doing here to workwith kids in Colombia and in and

(43:35):
track and field.
So one of the things that wepromise ourselves is this thing
called the you know the the menof Oregon.
There's even a book about themen of Oregon, but it's people
men who have gone through theUniversity of Oregon track and
field program, and it's one ofthe things that is kind of like
a unwritten rule is that youneed to get back in the future
through coaching if you can.
So a lot of my contemporaries,guys I train with, uh, have got
gone on to coach kids in highschool, won state championships,

(43:57):
and just do some reallyincredible stuff.
So that's I think one of thedisadvantages of me living
abroad internationally is I havebeen able to tap into that and
kind of get back through thatathletic program and something I
want to try to accomplish herein the next you know decade of
my life.

SPEAKER_00 (44:09):
Yeah, yeah, very cool.
So so you stayed in Brazil for Iguess one year, a semester.
How long were you actually inBrazil?
Six six months.
Six months, okay.
And then kind of walk us whatwhere did you go from there?
Because were you finished withschool by then, or was did you
still have a little bit left tofinish?

SPEAKER_01 (44:28):
That was during my during my fifth year.
So then I had to come back, Ihad to finish my academic year
at the University of Oregon, andthen jump into the college track
and field season, which is theend of the year.
And so then I went to the umInstitute A Championship, which
that year I I think was in inYork, being the Institute A
Championship, and then that yearalso qualified for the US
national championships, which isthe entire, you know, all
professional stuff.

SPEAKER_02 (44:48):
Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 (44:49):
And then I I got a sponsorship from uh Brazilian
sponsorship.
So the these guys in Brazilactually offered to bring me
back to Brazil and train withthem.
I really got along well withthem.
It was great.
And uh Mizuno came in, they'responsoring me as a professional
athlete.
And then I went to the USNational Championships, and from
there I was gonna do a circuit.
Around Europe and then uhhopefully go that year wasn't an
Olympic year, it was theoff-Olympic year, which they

(45:09):
have a different type ofOlympics.
And so that was that was thatwas really gonna happen that
summer.
But so what happened was I blewup my knee.
I was still under my insurancepolicy at the University of
Oregon.
So I went back to the Universityof Oregon and I had this
incredible doctor rebuild myknee.
And when he got when he finishedrebuilding it, he was basically
like, You're not gonna triplejump again, but you can like go
do trekking.

(45:30):
And we wanted you to protectyour knee and let's do this
rehab.
So he put me on a bike and wedid a lot of rehab.
And it was that it was duringthat summer that I was basically
had to stay at the University ofOregon that I founded where
next.

SPEAKER_00 (45:41):
Okay.
All right.
And let's let's tie that to theinternship you mentioned with
the the marketing and and adinternship.
Because that was before Brazil.
You did that internship.

SPEAKER_01 (45:53):
That was after I came back from Brazil.
That was after my last year,yeah.
Yeah.
At the end of my college, mycollege academic career.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (46:01):
You founded Where Next at that time, but you were
because I've heard a little bitof your story, but you went and
had a corporate job as well atsome point.
So help me tie that together.

SPEAKER_01 (46:13):
So Where Next started during that summer when
I was rebuilt rehabilitating myknee, and I really stuck there.
So the internet had juststarted.
And so and that was when thewhole internet revolution in
Seattle started.
So I had this idea because I'vebeen traveling quite a bit for
my um track and field career.
I've been going to Europe andcompeting in the summers, etc.
And I've been using, you know,in each of my track meets, I go

(46:33):
and travel and try to see asmuch as I could see, right?
And so I've been using Let's Goand Lonely Planet quite a bit.
And what I discovered with,especially with Lonely Planet,
you know, and also I've beenusing Rick Steves.
Rick Steves, who was a guidebookwriter out of out of Seattle.
I really loved him.
But the key with these uhguidebook guidebooks is so um
the journalists for the Let's Goor or Lonely Planet would go,
let's say in 2017, they wouldgo.

(46:55):
And by the time all theirupdates were integrated to the
guidebook, you might be in 2019,right?
And then someone would be usingit in 2020, you'd be using well
something that came out 2019,and you'd be using
three-year-old information,right?
So the information was out ofdate.
We'd uh raise some capital,venture capital, and I started
um where next, and where nextwas a digital guidebook for
travel, and so we had ninecountries in Europe represented,

(47:16):
and we had local reps in everycountry, right?
And so we had a database, whichthat time was like a big deal,
right?
A database behind like apublic-facing website.
This was like 1998, right?
And the database, we we'd we'dupdate the database every week.
So all these writers wouldupdate content, stories, if the
address changed, if somethingwould recommend, like a hostel

(47:36):
or a hotel or there's an event,they everything was always live.
And so that was also the earlydays of internet dating.
I think there's a thing calledmatch.com at that time.
And so we'd use like a similaralgorithm to match.com, but we'd
match people to travel.
So you'd log into the website,you create your own account, and
you'd say, I want to go toEurope during this date range,
right?
I want to go to these countries,and then you'd do a like a we

(47:57):
called a psychographic profile.
And so you'd say, you know, am Ithere to party?
Am I there for arts?
Am I there for food?
And you'd kind of do this test,and then we'd match you to all
the database that we call themattractions to all the stuff
that we had.
We went over to Europe severalyears and we had this really
extensive database of you know,every hostel and all the key
cities, everything was allreviewed and up to date, and all

(48:17):
the content was important tothis database.
And then we would render yourown custom guidebook that you
could print out and take withyou.
So your guidebook was like noone else's guidebook, right?
So this was before smartphones,so like we're a little bit ahead
of our time, you know.
But so people would print itout.

SPEAKER_00 (48:32):
You print it and take it with you.

SPEAKER_01 (48:33):
Yeah, you print it and take it with you, and then
on and then integrating theoutput of the printing, we'd
have like coupons andadvertisement stuff that those
guys in Europe would pay.
That's like the revenue model.

SPEAKER_00 (48:42):
So who was creating?
So let's just call it thecontent creators.
Who was who were the onescreating these the content that
then needed to be updatedbecause you said it was
constantly updated.
So I'm just curious.
We don't need to go too far.
I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_01 (48:57):
Yeah, so I would go over there with a team of other
people, and we'd go over thereevery summer and we create and
write all the content initially,and then we'd have we'd hire
local um personalitiesambassadors who would live in
each country, and they would beresponsible for maintaining that
content up to date.
And then they do like two orthree different articles every
month that we post like as adigital magazine.
Wow.
It's kind of yeah, it's verycool.
Actually, you can go to theWayback Machine and you can see

(49:19):
the website still and you cancheck it out.
Yeah, it's still on there.
And then we had the dot-comcrash in early 2000s and we had
to shut it down.
Okay.

SPEAKER_00 (49:26):
So you shut you shut that down.
When did you start actually getwhen did you get when did you
jump jump from?
When did you when did you movefrom the stationary bike to to
actually uh going places on abike?
And and then I'm trying totrying to lead into this big
story that I know that thatyou're gonna share with us.
It's very fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 (49:45):
Yeah, so then you know, this the one thing, the
key interesting thing we had atthe time was we had this really
beautiful dynamic database thatwe created for this for where
next initially.
So when I left there, I gothired by a database marketing
company, the first with Oracle,and I worked with Oracle as a
salesperson, and then moved tothis company in Seattle that
would had a system that I was Iwas familiar with and I knew how

(50:05):
to sell, right?
And during that time, I hadcontinued my rehab, right, with
my knee, and I'd really gotteninto cycling.
So I started doing all theselike things called randeneurs.
So there's a a group of guys inSeattle called the Seattle
International Randeneurs, andit's a style of French
ultra-endurance cycling, right?
And so every four years, there'slike a huge event where they
ride 1200 kilometers withoutstopping in France called the

(50:26):
Paris Brest Paris.
And we were kind of like the topgroup of guys out of the US that
would go and qualify for that.
So we're like the randomAmerican club that would go over
there and compete.
And so I started training forthat.
I and you start with a hundredkilometer ride and you have to
go, it's kind of like acannonball run, and you have
these grocery stores, and youhave to buy something at the
grocery store in the timestampand have the guy to prove that
you did the route, right?

(50:47):
And interesting.
Yeah, and then you do then youdo like 200 kilometers, and you
do 300 kilometers, and you have400 kilometers, you have 600
kilometers, and you have to doit in a certain time to qualify
for the next one.
So you actually have a seasonthat builds up to it.
And if you do the 600 kilometerone under a certain time, you
qualify, you can apply andqualify to go to the big one in
Paris, right?
And so that's when I startedriding bikes, and I still kind
of poured on my Olympic ambitionto do this like ultra-extreme

(51:09):
bike races and bike rides untilmy dear friend called me up and
he he had just lost his motherto uh gestational diabetes.
And so he had done signed up fora bike ride called with the
American Diabetes Associationcalled Tour de Cure on the
California course.
And he knew I was into cycling,and he was a friend of mine from
college, and he was like, Hey,you want to jump on with me and
do this fundraising ride?
And so we did it, and then wekind of we did a couple more,

(51:31):
and we started learning thatlike a lot of the funds that we
had raised through friends andfamily, you everyone gets hit up
by these things everyone's well,hey, I'm doing a marathon or
hand doing this, can youcontribute?
Right.
And so we we discovered that oneof these particular events that
we had done together, that a lotof the donations were like hung
up in administration andbureaucracy and salaries for
that kind of stuff.
So we decided to do one on ourown.

(51:52):
So we created our own websiteand we rode down the um Pacific
Coast from Seattle to SanFrancisco together.
And we had no clue what we weredoing.
And that was before like biketouring was cool because it's
very cool now, you know.
And so like there's very few ofus, but there's a company an
association called the VentureCycling Association, so they had
a map that you could research.
And this is like early 2000s,right?

(52:12):
When we did this 25 years ago.
Plus.
And so we rode down the wholecoast and we raised, I can't
remember what we raised, Brooks,my partner in that.
He did like most of the heavylifting, and it was an
incredible thing for him to dowith his mom.
He got very close with AmericanDiabetes Association.
So that was like a reallybeautiful series of rides we did
during the summers.
Um, the next summer we did theuh national parks route.

(52:33):
So we went up to like near Banffand we were all the way down
through Glacier National Park,uh, Yellowstone National Park,
Grand Teton National Park, downto um Jackson, and then flew out
of Idaho.
So we started doing those everysummer.
And and and that was uh that'swhat kind of sparked uh, I
guess, the inspiration for thenext big adventure.
And I can say I was gettingintroduced, but during one of
these rides along the Pacificcoast, we pulled into like a

(52:56):
roadside diner.
Because one thing when you'reriding your bike, you're burning
a lot of calories.
So you're like doubling ortripling your calorie necess,
you know, necessity every day ifyou want to like kind of strike
an equilibrium, right?
So you just go and you starthitting these truck stops, and
you're just you know justchowing down big pancake,
breakfast, and all this kind ofstuff.
And uh we went in, it was arainstorm, and we pulled into
this, you know, diner and we sawanother cyclist, right?

(53:19):
And this guy, you know, helooked like he didn't look very
good, right?
He was looked like he was he hada tough day, and he was just
kind of like head down eatingthis plate.
And we we of course we werelike, hey buddy, how you doing?
Tell us about what's going on.
And uh he'd actually just whatwe discovered, which he told us,
he just smoked like a giantreefer uh before going into
before going to the restaurant.
So he was like out of it.

(53:39):
He like looked it up.
I remember this so clearly, helooked up and he's like, dude,
I'm really stoned right now, soI just can't focus on talking to
you.
I just need to eat this plate offood.
But yeah, like I'd riding mybike, I'd riding my bike all the
way down to Mexico, and I gotlike a website, so you can like
check it out.
And he like gave me a card.
So, of course, like when I gotback from that trip, I followed
his bike trip all the way downthrough Mexico, and I was like,
Oh, that's the coolest thingever on his and he had to hit a

(54:02):
blog, you know.
So then that's when I pitchedafter we finished our great
national parks ride.
I pitched to my friend, I waslike, you know, I needed
something to replace my Olympicdreams for track and field.
And um, I pitched riding thelongest road in the world, which
was from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska,all the way down to Ishway,
Argentina.
So self-supported bike trip, andhe said yes.
And so it took us like three orfour years to save up the money.

(54:23):
That's when I was kind ofworking a corporate that
corporate job in software.
And I was living, you know,really simple.
I was living with three or fourroommates in uh in Seattle, uh
saving up all my dough so that Icould self-finance this bike
trip.
And then my friend, you know, wewere gonna do it one summer, and
then he he he didn't he wasn'tquite ready, so we pushed off
one year.
And literally, like two monthsbefore the trip, he had bought a

(54:43):
Mini Cooper and the whole carblew up.
And so he hired a lawyer andthrough the lemon law got
reimbursed this this settlement,which gave him enough money to
do the bike trip with me.
And he was like, we're good togo, dude.
I just won my lawsuit.
I got my Mini Cooper, like,let's go, you know.
So we flew up that summer of2005 to Prudhoe Bay on fully
loaded bikes.
And of course, he worked in heworks in marketing sponsorships,

(55:04):
and I had this background.
So we got the you know, at thattime we got some sponsors.
We had outdoor research in inSeattle, a really cool outdoor
clothing brand.
And then we had CoMotion, thecycling company out of Eugene,
Oregon, right by the Universityof Oregon, who knew who I was.
They donated the touring bikes,they made tandem bikes, so they
made these custom touring bikeswith tandem bike tubing that's
like extra strong, so we couldput all the pennyers and all the

(55:25):
weight on the bicycles.
Okay, so they did sit they uhgave us bikes at a really
discounted rate.
And then uh we got a coupleother people to donate some of
the gear and stuff, and we areon our way.

SPEAKER_00 (55:35):
And we uh I'm I'm trying to imagine like how much
stuff you start with.
I like what's the r the rundown?
Maybe uh the bike, things to fixthe bike with, some clothes and
a tent, and what else do youtake?
Because I'm trying to get anidea for what you started with,

(55:55):
and then you just replace foodall along the way, or yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (55:58):
So it's interesting.
So um, after I finished thisbike trip, um the the Seattle
Times did an article about it.
And so from there I got a lot ofthese um different types of
rotary clubs and stuff aroundthe country that asked me to
come and do these andpresentations, you know, and
then I have companies coming,outdoor companies and stuff.
I go and do presentations forthe staff.
So one of the first things I doin my presentation, I show the
picture of the bike.
And so the bike has these thingscalled panniers, like or

(56:21):
panniers, whatever they'relooking at a French term, and
it's like these saddle bags thatsit in different spots on your
bike.
So generally, the old school wayof doing it, you have two in the
front, two in the back, and thenyou have one on your handlebars,
and then you have one over thetop of the two on the back on
the rack, right?
So you so you have like six bagsin total.
And so everyone has it does it alittle bit differently, but I
had my I had everything really,you know, I had a really tight

(56:42):
program on how I packed my bike.
Both of us did.
We're like OCD on it, so thebalance weight balance was
perfect.
So you think a lot of thinkabout like you're packing a
backpack, right?
So you want the heavy things atthe bottom, you want everything
clearly organized.
You're doing a lot of your youryou know, prepping your tents
and breaking things down anddark.
So you need to be able to dostuff like you need to know
where everything is.
So I'd have my handlebar bagwhere I'd have my camera, then I

(57:04):
have my notepad, and I'd havelike my wallet up there.
And then I'd have my kitchen andeverything on on the front left
panier.
So I'd have, you know,everything to cook, clean, some
food stuff.
And on the right side, I have mymy rain jackets and my rain gear
and the stuff.
Like if a storm hits, boom, pullit out really fast.
And on the back, you have yourtent over the back on the
saddle, uh, you know, over thetop, and then you have your

(57:24):
clothes, and then you have yourlike sleeping bag and stuff on
those side.
So everything's in cart andcompartments.
You know, this was this was over20 years ago, and I can remember
I can close my eyes and I knowwhere everything is on my bike
still.
So I can tell that.
Yeah, and then and then on yourbike frame, you have mounted
different water balls becausethere's there's sections in the
trip where there's no water fora couple weeks, so you had to
figure that out.
So yeah, you there's certainsections where you the first you
know, thousand miles acrossAlaska, you know, few stops are

(57:47):
few and far between.
Yeah, and the Prudobay, thepipeline road where you're
riding riding through the oilpipeline, there's only like one
stop and like 450 miles.
So you got to bring everything,like just like you're on a
backpacking trip, you know,think about it that way.
And then when you're ridingthrough more like dense uh urban
populations, you know, you'rejust hitting truck stops.
Truck stops are the best, youknow, or you get a truck stop
because you know for like 12bucks at that time you just get

(58:10):
a massive plate of food thatwould be like you know,
breakfast and lunch combo.
You know, it's just about justpiling on calories, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (58:16):
And and a sh and a shower.
Yeah, a shower.
Truck stops were great.
I don't know if you took thoseor not, but so I I know we could
talk for hours about the wholetrip because it took you well
and a lot of things happened,but I guess first question how
long did it take you to get fromPrado Bay to Ushwaya?
And was it generally straightthrough?

(58:36):
I mean, where where there stopsand starts?
What did that look like?

SPEAKER_01 (58:39):
Yeah, so the overall trip took me two years, and I
guess the trip in a nutshell wasyou know life-changing
experience.
When I look back on it, theinspiration was fun and
exploration, and also kind oflike um a frustration that I
didn't accomplish my Olympicdreams in track and field, and I
wanted to do something big,right, for myself.
Yeah, I wanted like I wanted awin.
Win, I wanted a big goal, and Iwanted to accomplish it.

(59:00):
So that was my inspiration.
But over the two years, um, whenwe talk about transformation of
travel, I think that like I lookin the mirror and I'm like
everything for my life is likepre-bike trip and after bike
trip, right?
And I think now uh, you know, wejust had a little girl like in
the last few weeks, and I cantell that it's happening again.
It's like pre-kids and afterkids.
Like it's just like it was justa major mark marker in my life

(59:21):
that everything changed andnothing's been the same since
I'd done this bicycle trip.
And I guess in the nut in anutshell, the bicycle trip took
two years.
My dearest friend Brooks startedthe bicycle trip with me, and we
got into Mexico and we took acouple of roads.
We were very confident at thattime, you know, two young men
really conquering the world onour bike.
By that time, you know, a fewmonths, four or five months in

(59:41):
the trip, we were like superfit.
You called like frog people.
Our legs were just like fullmuscles and ripped in, like we
were really lean.
You know, we could get off atany tourist attraction and just
run to the top of any pyramid.
You know, in Mexico, we stoppedsome of those ruins in Mexico's
that are high altitude, and wewould just like run up and like
gazelles.
It was just like we're we werevery confident from our you know

(01:00:02):
psychological fitness, and wewere very free, physical
fitness.
And I think we made a couple uhuh moves going into places that
were conflict zones and in theborder of Mexico and Guatemala,
and we paid the price for that.
So uh we basically got attackedby a criminal gang and we almost
were murdered.
Um it was a very very difficultsituation to talk about, but we
were almost murdered.
We almost recapitated withmachetes and uh we we managed to

(01:00:24):
escape the situation.
Uh it was a horrible situation,it was a really horrible thing.
Both of us had you know somestress issues, uh post-traumatic
uh stress issues after that.
Yeah, and he he decided to calltwits after that.
So he he went home and he hadsomething to go back to.
He had uh, you know, it's anincredible fiance at the time,
which she went home.
They married, they have abeautiful family with two great

(01:00:44):
kids, and he went to go pursuethat.
And I continued, I decided tocontinue on my own.
And so that's uh and when I wason my own, I kind of really had
to stop and think about why am Idoing this?
Because this isn't just like meconquering the world and having
fun anymore.
It's like some of the places andpeople that I'm meeting are
different, you know, and like99.9% of the people in the world
are good, incredible people,they're there to help you.

(01:01:06):
But there's a reality that likewe almost were murdered, and it
was pretty close, and you haveto really think through like, is
this worth it now?

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:12):
Well, and I I don't know, but I imagine, you know,
if and I've traveled enough inLatin America and I've let's put
it this way, from Pruto Bay tothe Mexican border, not much.
I mean, there's thingshappening, of course.
But when you get to southernMexico and you have that issue

(01:01:33):
right there as you're gettingready to go into Guatemala, I
can imagine that you're lookingat, well, geez, there's a lot of
potentially challenging stuffahead of me.
It's not like I'm almost there.
The easy, you know, the hardparts behind me.
It's like, no, because thenemotionally, psychologically,
okay, yeah, I'm going intoGuatemala, and then maybe uh,

(01:01:54):
you know, Honduras, El Salvador,all these all these places,
Colombia, stuff like that.
Yeah, and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:01):
We were just getting into it.
We're just getting, I mean, youlook at it, the next secession
of countries, Guatemala, whichis an incredible place, but and
especially during that time, itwas very insecure.
And then you have, after that,you have we went into Honduras,
right?
And then El Salvador, right?
And and those like those are prein in that time, 2005, the
pretty hardcore place, and youknow, El Salvador is like the
security situation approvedthere.

(01:02:21):
But like I was just in Honduraslike a couple months ago, and
it's still, you know, it'sbetter, but it's still like a
little bit, you know, and uh andthen going from there, you're
you you're going down toColombia, and in 2005, Colombia
was not a safe place.
I mean, it was just gettingsafe, but it was still pretty
sketchy.
And then even along the coast ofPeru.
So it's like this isn't, youknow, in the United States, the
the biggest risk we had forsafety were RVs, and they, you

(01:02:42):
know, so many RVs they forget toput their ladder up, or they put
their ladder up, so the ladderwould be like shooting out from
the RV inside this mirror.
So like these RVs would comeblown by you and they just take
you out with your ladder andlike gone.
So that was like the biggest Ithink safety risk were like RV
guys who forgot to put thestepladder correctly.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:59):
And you're and you're you're so exposed on a
bicycle.
It's one thing on a motorcycle,you're still exposed on a
motorcycle, but it's hard tooutrun people on a mo on a
bicycle, too.
I mean, I'm sure you're veryfast on a bicycle, and if
they're on foot, maybe you canoutrun them.
But other than that, uh thatthat's uh yeah, you're kind of
exposed.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:16):
So no, these were very experienced criminal
organizations, and they theywere hiding in on uphills, which
are in around blind corners, andthey they're very coordinated.
So, like these guys, and it'sfunny because uh learning about
living in Latin America and itbeing in some of these in
certain situations, the uhperception of some of these
places isn't necessarily alignedwith the actual reality of the
situation at that time.
It's usually it's usually pushedback, it usually takes a couple

(01:03:38):
years.
So if a place kind of goes southfor security, the general public
doesn't know about it for acouple years.
Like that takes a while for thatperception to kick in.
And then when it cleans up, andthe security is stronger.
It takes a while for it to catchup.
So, like in that part of theborder, southern border between
Guatemala and Mexico at thattime in 2005 was already facing
some serious security issues.
And basically they had thismassive wave of migrants come

(01:04:00):
you know moving up to the UnitedStates, and they all had money
to pay on the Cayotes, which waslike six to seven thousand, up
to ten thousand dollars to getsmuggled across the US border.
So there's a very strong uh bandof criminal organizations
working that border in Mexicowho would, you know, kidnap
these types of migrants andsteal their money, right?
And so that was the area that weknew we were going through.
We didn't we think you knowwe're untouchable, they're not
gonna touch us, but theydefinitely saw like us as an

(01:04:22):
opportunity as well.
And you know, we didn't reallystand a chance.
These guys were professional,you know, professional, you
know, organizations.
And so, like a couple green, youknow, a gringo guy growing up on
Rosh Ryan Bame John Washingtondidn't stand a chance against
these guys.

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:34):
You're and and I'll tell you, you're a tall guy,
you're a big looking dude.
I uh yeah, yeah, so they're notafraid of that.
Okay, so let's let's moveforward because I want to get
into a little bit about what'simportant to you about creating,
you know, tourism.
You've been involved in somesome kind of I guess I don't
know if it's NGO organizationsor projects to help increase

(01:04:59):
exposure and tourism.
And I know probably want totouch on that a little bit, but
but your bike journey is such abig thing.
I feel like I could just keepasking a hundred questions.
What's I will ask you this ifwould number one, knowing what
you know now, are you happy youdid it or do you wish that you
hadn't?
I think I know the answer tothat question, but I don't know.
I'm gonna ask anyway.

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:19):
Yeah, so I think the bicycle game, like I said, is
the single most transformabletransformed experience of my
life.
Before I started my trip, youknow, I was a software salesman.

SPEAKER_00 (01:05:28):
But hold on, but cancer, uh a cancer scare can be
a big transformational thing aswell, but you might say I don't
want to do that again.

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:35):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, again, I I I would Iwouldn't I wouldn't trade that
my bicycle trip for anything,and a hundred percent.
And I think, you know, I startedas a software salesman living in
Seattle, who I, you know, I'ddone some travels and stuff, and
I'd like, you know, again,really privileged upbringing and
and very lucky for that.
But by the time I came out theback end, you know, look at look
at me now.
Um I I've lived abroad for 20years.

(01:05:56):
I speak I I speak in a differentlanguage every day.
I'm married to a woman not frommy culture.
I have a kid who's who has fournationalities, and I have a
completely different careerpath.
Like I I don't know really muchwhat else could have changed in
my life more than like what'schanged.
My career, my you know, my myfamily situation, kids, where I
live, even to like, you know,when I speak when I speak

(01:06:18):
different languages, I feel likeI'm a different person, right?
So it's uh it's been a majortransformation.

SPEAKER_00 (01:06:23):
Do you think your you know, I really should have
asked this.
Your parents, when you two twoparts.
When you started the journey,were they supportive?
Because it sounded like theywere pretty supportive overall.
So when you said I'm gonna go dothis bicycle ride, were they
supportive?
And did that change at all?
And how did that change when yougot to the Guatemalan border and

(01:06:44):
had that incident?

SPEAKER_01 (01:06:46):
So yeah, well, before I left, I'd say like one
of the least supportive I feltfor my parents was on the spicy
trip, but I'd I'd alsoanticipated it.
So I'd like prep for the spicytrip for years and saved money.
I didn't tell anyone about itexcept for my riding partner,
Brooks.
Like very few people ever knewabout this bicycle trip, so I
kept it a secret for my parents.
And then a few weeks before Ileft for that bicycle trip.
I actually found them.

(01:07:06):
Um, I I set up a time to go talkto them.
And I was dating a girl at thattime, and she knew that I was
gonna leave them the bike trip,so it was kind of like a
temporary type thing, you know.
And but they thought it was moreserious than it was.
So I was like, I gotta meet youguys, you know, we gotta go and
I gotta tell you something.
So I sit them down, we'resitting at the table at their
house.
I remember, and I'd like, okay,I gotta tell you something.
And my mom jumps up with herhands up, it's like, oh my gosh,
you're getting married, youknow.
And I was like, no, sorry, mom.

(01:07:28):
It's something totallydifferent.
So like I quit, yeah, yeah.
So like at that point, I like itkind of like from the outside,
like this nice Americanlifestyle, picket fence type
thing.
I just bought a beautiful homein Ballard, you know, at a young
age and had this great careerand I had this nice girlfriend,
all this kind of stuff.
So, like, you know, I think fromthe outside everything looked
like it was it was going well.
So I was like, you know, I'mselling my home, selling

(01:07:48):
everything I own, you know,splitting up with this
girlfriend and taking off toride a bicycle from Alaska
Routine.
I think it was just like kind ofa pretty big shock for them.
And then um when I had thishappen uh in, you know, on in
Mexico on the border of uhMexico and Guatemala, they
actually my whole family kind offlew down to Guatemala and had
an intervention with me.
And so they all they came down,had an intervention, and they

(01:08:08):
tried to convince me to to tokind of rethink everything and
maybe move back home, right?
And so uh that was a reallytough moment for me, and I
decided to stick with it, keepgoing against kind of the uh the
the push of my family.

SPEAKER_00 (01:08:19):
Yeah, I I get that.
So for those of our listeners,we get to enjoy the Colombian
music there they're at yourplace.
If anybody that he has that,it's great.
It's part of what makes ColumbiaColombia, and I love that.
If you have not experienced thatin your life, come on down.
It's it's there's always good,good, good stuff going on.
So I can I can completelyimagine why they did that.
And I wonder, so here's thething, you were thinking about

(01:08:41):
doing this, not thinking, youwere planning this trip for
quite a while.
Yeah, they're looking at you,you've got the house, the
girlfriend, and and do you thinkin hindsight, or did have they
shared with you becausehonestly, if my kid came to me
and said that, I would think shebroke up with him and he's lost
his mind, and he's gonna go geton a bike.

(01:09:04):
Like he I'm I'm assuming he justcame up with this like within 24
hours of the breakup.
And did they fully understandthat that was something you'd
been thinking about for a while?
Uh did they even want to hearthat, or did they just think you
just lost your mind?
Boom, like that.

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:19):
I don't think they I I don't know.
I think at a certain pointthey're used to me being a
little bit of a different kid,you know, you know, asking for
tropical fish for my Christmaspresent, you know, uh that kind
of stuff.
So they're used to me doingdifferent kind of stuff, but not
that kind of big of a departure.
And I think also my brother wasgetting married at that summer
as well.
So one of the things when I cameback to the US, I rode down and
like flew to my brother's to hiswedding, right?

(01:09:39):
So I think my mom was veryfocused on that because you
know, on one side they had thekid, the black sheep who's going
off and doing this, and theother side they had my brother
who was made this, you know, mysister-in-law is awesome, you
know, met this incredible woman,is getting married, and it's
kind of like so they had thatnice little balance, you know.
So I think they could float backand forth.
So I think I gotta thank mybrother, I give him a high five
for getting married just at thattime and uh, you know, kind of

(01:09:59):
easing easing the the burden ofmy parents examining my
lifestyle decisions.

SPEAKER_00 (01:10:04):
Okay, so now let's fast forward to you get to
Ushuaia, and I assume you callthem or something, and was it a
my God, thank God, please don'tever do that to us again?
Or is it like, you know what?
I'm proud of you for pushing onand great, great thing.
And they might be listening tothis.
I get that, but I'm just curioushow that changed after the fact.

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:25):
So you have to understand that like by the time
I got to Ushuaia, it'd been twoyears.
They'd been pretty, I thinkeveryone got pretty used to me
being on the road and and havingthis type of adventure.
So I think by the time I gotdone with Ushuai, I was like
looking for the next thing.
And I knew I couldn't come backto the states.
So for me, like most of thepeople around me were like,
where are you going next, right?

SPEAKER_00 (01:10:42):
You know, what's the next one?
Wait, hold on, hold on, Greg.
You said I knew I couldn't goback to the United States.
Help us understand that.

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:49):
I think by that time, you know, living in a tent
on the side of the road and andgoing through that type of
travel experience, I said it wasvery transformative.
I developed also literallyhaving it beat out of me when we
were had that terribleexperience in Mexico.
I can back up one of the thepositive thing that came out of
the experience in Mexico is thatthrough this kind of PTSD I had,
the way I got through it waslike one of the best pieces of

(01:11:09):
advice I ever got was from avery close friend from Seattle
who been through some trauma inhis life.
And he said, the way to getthrough this is to be like a
dog.
And what do dogs do when theymeet new people?
They sniff butts.
It's like, go sniff butts.
And it sounds weird, but fromthen on, you know, going through
El Salvador and Honduras and allthese places, people had guns

(01:11:30):
all over the place.
There's guys with machetes onthe side of the road all the
time.
And you still can't forget that99.9% of them are the most
friendly and credible people youever know, and they'll invite
you to their house, you know, tohave dinner and pitch your tent
in their backyard.
So what I did, instead of shyingaway, I went into it, right?
So when I see a guy on the sideof the road with machetes,
instead of freaking out andriding my bike with the other
side, I rode up to him and Ipracticed him in Spanish, and he

(01:11:52):
just big smile, you know,missing teeth, you know, the
hat, the whole deal, and waslike, oh, you know, come, you
know, come meet, you know, we'rehaving uh quincianera for my
daughter, you should come, youknow.
It's like all of a sudden Istarted sniffing butts.
And so that opened up this likeextraordinary sense I think it
developed during this bicycletrip of people and feeling
something, right?
That's the motto of my businessfeeling something.

(01:12:13):
So it was like my sense, my kindof sixth sense of people through
that fear and through thatpost-traumatic stress issue was
so elevated, like I would justfreak out over everything for
like the first month afterwriting.
And then when I started applyingthe sniff butts, I learned how
to flip that into like acuriosity and like instead of
going back, go forward, but likefeel that, you know, that sense

(01:12:33):
you have for these people, andinstead of going backwards, go
forward, run into it, right?
And so that was my own kind ofeducation throughout the rest of
the trip.
And by the time I got done withthat trip, it was like, oh my
god, something happened to mehere, and I can feel stuff, and
I can sense stuff, and I can putmyself in a position for
serendipity and luck andbeautiful experiences that I was

(01:12:54):
not able to do before, right?
And even I had a comments withsome of my friends, it's like,
hey man, like when I travel withyou now, or when my film crews
and stuff, when I work withthem, I'm not normal, right?
Like, I still I try to open thatstuff up and feel that, and
like, you know, I'm chasing downpeople down alleyways and doing
stuff, so we always end up inthese incredible moments that
are not scripted because thebest stuff for travel and

(01:13:17):
production work is not scripted.
It's the best stuff, and you canonly get to that stuff if
someone is shepherding you intoit who knows how to do it, or if
somehow you've opened yourselfup to exploring it, right?
Because the majority of peopleare scared and they don't they
they kind of have that stayaway, right?
And so once they figure that outand they can flip the switch and
they can feel confident divingin and moving forward and and

(01:13:39):
creating those situations, thenit's like something really
beautiful.
So that's like you know what Ilearned trip that I like use now
when I design experiences forother people is sniff butts.

SPEAKER_00 (01:13:48):
That's what I got.
And I thought sniff butts as youwere as you were saying that I
was like, that'd be a prettycool brand, actually.
Like uh sniff butts media, sniffbutts travel, sniff butts
expeditions or something.
I don't know, I don't know.
It sounds pretty cool.
But all right, so that's so yougot a lot out of this, and you
said I couldn't go back to theUS and it's because it's
transformational.
You just didn't want to go, butit wasn't that you couldn't go

(01:14:09):
back to the US well, dependingon how you define the word, but
it's that you chose not to.
You decided I don't want to goback to working a marketing job
for somebody else.
And so where did where did yougo from there?

SPEAKER_01 (01:14:21):
Yeah, so I actually moved to the US, I rented an
apartment and I tried to livethere.
So number one was a physicalyeah, physical thing.
After two years of sleeping in atent, I really struggled to
sleep inside for multiple days.
Like it struggled, like I feltlike oxygen was out of the room
and I really struggled.
So that was like one thing.
And number two is like I was soused to moving from place to
place to place to place that uhI struggled to stay in one
place, right?
I started just it to, you know,so after a couple weeks in this

(01:14:42):
apartment, I I started freakingout.
So I call it like the most theworld's most expensive storage
unit, you know.
So like after like a month, Icould never be there, so I just
hit the road again.
And so luckily that time I gotus I I through some of the work
that I'd done, I'd startedblogging.
The National Geographic found myblog and they asked me to start
blogging for their theirmagazine, and they gave me a
scholarship, right?

(01:15:02):
And so I gone out to theNational Geographic headquarters
in DC, and I met all theseincredible photographers and met
their editors, and they startedgiving me some spec work.
So I started traveling around asa photojournalist.
And so I had for like thosefirst six months of doing that,
I had like that apartment as abase camp in Seattle, and I
that's when I came, I came downto Columbia and I did my first
kind of assignment for as a specassignment for the adventure

(01:15:24):
magazine they had there.
And then I did some some otherwork in Columbia, and then um
that led to like a 10-yearcareer as a photojournalist
where I ended up turning in thatapartment and just basically
living, like I say, I'd sayhomeless.
I didn't have a home, but it wasby choice, you know.
I mean, I was very frugal.
I was very like much by the end,the end of this bike trip, I was
very much out of money, youknow.
But I was just scrapping by as atravel journalist.
I would I was sleeping in cars,I was still sleeping in tents.

(01:15:47):
I did my my dear friend in inSan Francisco Incredible, he had
a closet in his in his house,just like a rent, he was like
one of those random rooms thathe was just using as a storage
closet, and he moved all theboxes out, and I slept in his
closet for like six months.
I used that as my base camp.
So I was like pretty much apretty hardcore vagabundo, very
broke for a long time, reallypushing his career as a as a
photojournalist.
And at that time, 2007, thewhole industry crashed for

(01:16:09):
magazines.
So people were like combiningthe photography and the writing.
So I was able to start writing.
So I started writing a lot and Iwrote a lot of um feature
stories for magazines.
I probably like about 50 hundredfeature stories for a lot of
different outdoor lifestylemagazines and traveling the
world as a photographer.
So I think I probably went tolike 30 different countries,
most of them on assignment formagazines, pretty incredible
time.
And then I got uh a call from ExOfficio, which uh is a lifestyle

(01:16:32):
uh clothing company out ofSeattle.
They're known for like theirsafari gear and like their fly
fishing stuff.
And they saw an article aboutme, uh about my trip in the
Seattle Times, where somehow Ijust randomly mentioned to the
journalist interviewing me.
She asked me like how many flattires and how much water, and I
think she asked, like, you know,how many pairs of underwear did
you have, just like randomly.
And this sounds gross, but Ionly had two pairs of underwear

(01:16:52):
for those two years, right?
And a lot of it's because you'rewearing bike shots and you the
underwear is like yourcomfortable thing, you slip on
with them today when you go tosleep because you're like in
bike shorts, right?
And then so ex officio saw that,and one of the new products
they're pushing was his travelunderwear, like antimicrobial
that you could like wash in thesink and you could travel with,
right?
I remember, yeah, I rememberthat.
Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, so they called me and theybrought me in, right?

(01:17:13):
And they're like, just curious,did that underwear happen to be
ours?
And I was like, yes.
And because I'd, you know,during my bike trip, I'd gone
into their outlet store and I'dbought my underwear at the
exoficio outlet store.
So I'd ridden with theirunderwear just casually, and
they're like, oh my god, we gotto use this.
So they created a campaign, twoyears, two pairs of underwear.
And my bicycle with theunderwear was in the CTAC
airport for like eight years onthe wall.

(01:17:34):
You know, everyone could walk byin front of their store, and it
was the whole story of like mybike trip and two pairs of
underwear, and then theunderwear became 60% of their of
their product, the sales.

SPEAKER_00 (01:17:43):
Greg, uh their underwear.
Were the were these was this adcampaign?
Did this include you standingthere like just in underwear
with a bike over your head orsomething?
What I mean.
So it had Were you an officialunderwear model?
That's where I'm trying to go.
Is that on the other hand?

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:57):
So this is this is this is like one of the most
random times of my entirecareer.
They um took some of the fitphotos from my bike, right?
And so they had like they dolike you know underwear and then
a picture of me on the bike,right?
So they keep them separated.
So they started running myphotos from my bicycle trip in
their campaigns with likeunderwear on the side, saying,
Greg, two years, two pairs ofunderwear.
It wasn't ever me like in myunderwear.

(01:18:17):
And then uh they starts, youknow, so they start seeing some
of my work in magazines andstuff, and they said, Hey, you
know, we want to we do a catalogevery year.
Can you, you know, maybe you canshoot some photos for a catalog?
So, like five for five or sixyears, I was the ex officio
catalog photographer, and which,you know, became like an
underwear photographer, right?
So it wasn't too bad if so I Iwas able to, um, this is how

(01:18:38):
this is the whole origin storyof our next and my marketing
agency.
So I was able to go, that's whyI started going to these
different travel conferencesaround the world and negotiating
with different tours and umdestinations.
Like, hey, I got this catalogfor a clothing company in the
US, and I think it had like amillion distribution.
And what I pitched to ex officiois like, let's make it a
destination piece and let's goto a destination every year and
make it almost like a let'swrite stories about traveling to

(01:18:59):
the destination and let's findreal people, real travelers.
Let's bring them and let's dothese incredible trips and we'll
photograph them in your clothes.
And I think it was a little bitahead of his time, but we ran
that for like five years and wedid incredible stuff, man.
We went to Australia, we didoutback outback Australia.
We are on a like a sailboatyacht off the coast of
Australia.
We did bush flights inAustralia, then we went to um

(01:19:20):
the Azores in Portugal, uh, youknow, this beautiful group of
islands.
We travel all through theAzores.
We went to South Africa incooperation with and beyond the
like most luxury top safarilodges in the world, and we for
and we shot on safari for liketwo weeks there.
And then on every every shoot, Iwould bring these very
attractive people and we'd do anunderwear session, right?

(01:19:42):
So I'm not gonna say like youknow, it was only we'd bring men
and women.
So I became a men, a men's andwomen's underwear photographer
for them for about five years.
And then a couple of the modelsgot really, you know, they'd
launch a career like underwearphotography from this stuff, you
know.
So like we go back and we shootthem over.
And sometimes we just would dounderwear shots.
So I'd fly up to Seattle andwe'd rent studios and we just
did underwear photography.
So it was a really incrediblerelationship that actually

(01:20:03):
funded the initial growth of mymarketing agency.

SPEAKER_00 (01:20:06):
Right.
So let's let's touch on yourmarketing agency and how that
turned into very much thetourism promotion stuff.
And we can move through that atwhatever speed you want to move
through that.
But I I do want to touch on thatif we can, real quick.

SPEAKER_01 (01:20:19):
Yeah, so that I started moving from through that
work with Exoficio, one of thedestinations I picked was
Columbia.
So ProColumbia actually helped,and some local um people in
Colombia helped fund uh amulti-reek shoot through
Columbia, and this was likeprobably back in 2010 or so,
before Columbia was on the radaranywhere.
And I met some people inColombia at that point, and
they're like, hey, you know, whydon't you come down here more

(01:20:41):
often?
You know, I was familiar withthe company from a
photojournalist perspective, butnot from a commercial
perspective.
So when I decided to start thismarketing agency, you know, at a
certain point I was like, hey, Igotta put down roots.
I need to start, I and I starthiring people, so I'd be with
crews of five, six, seven peoplefor these shoots that I was
doing.
And I needed an office and Ineeded a place to put hard
drives, so I decided to do it inColombia, right?
And then my clients, commercialclients, start figuring out I

(01:21:02):
was in Colombia, right?
And so we're doing shoots allaround the world and I started
hiring a team in Colombia, kindof like accidentally, right?
And then I had clients likeMerrill, so we do all this stuff
for Merrill Global.
We did Columbia Sportswear.
Um, and so these guys all said,Hey, you know, what if we come
down to Columbia?
How cool would that be?
You know?
And so one of the challengesthese lifestyle companies have
is like when it's winter in theUnited States, they got to shoot

(01:21:24):
their summer catalogs with alltheir summer stuff.
And so, like, can we come havesummer in Colombia when it's
winter?
I might be obvious now, but thisis like 15 years ago.
And then when it's summer insummer in the US, can we have
winter in Colombia?
And because Colombia, theverticality of the country of
Colombia, you can get any seasonat any time of year.
So these guys all started comingdown to Colombia.
And then the uh the Minister ofTourism starts seeing all this

(01:21:45):
work from this random AmericanAmerican guy.
You know, this was a lot we'regenerating a lot of publicity
for Colombia, like millions andmillions and millions of pages
of catalog work and you know,running photos of Colombia in
these massive global adcampaigns, right?
And so they took note of thatand they called me in and they
said, Hey, you know, who are youand why are you here and how you
know how can we work together?

(01:22:06):
So they actually invited me,this was never my agenda.
They invited me to bid on aproject to position Colombia,
the country, to internationalmarkets for the first time in
history.
Because before, you know, onlycould travel really existing in
Colombia was outbound, likeColombians leaving, going to
Miami, going to Europe, etc.
And no one was really, therewasn't enough people coming into
Colombia to to justify reallyany investment in marketing to

(01:22:27):
bring people in.
There was no DMO stuff like thattime.
So this was like one of theirfirst DMO things.
And that's when I flew toNamibia to represent Colombia
for the first time on a globalstage at the Adventure Travel
Trade Association.
I did the keynote there.
First time Columbia was spokenabout on a global stage.
You were there during thatevent.
That's when we met, right?
Yeah.
And uh just an interesting sidenote.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.

(01:22:48):
So we met during that time andthen and then came back and they
asked me to they're like, hey,you know, one of the challenges
we have in Colombia, obviously,people know about this, is we
have a perception issue, right?
We have perception issue, andpeople think when they think
about us, they only think aboutone thing.
So we need to, and like, so ourstrategy of talking to them was
like what we need to do is notlike change the perceptions
really hard.
When you have narcos, like thetop Netflix series in history

(01:23:11):
was running at that time, right?
It's like really hard.
You're not gonna no one's gonnaforget that, but like let's
embrace that, let's acknowledgethat, but let's like dilute that
with what else does Columbiahave.
So we look for things, and theand and the minister had some
ideas about this.
Columbia just discovered thatthey have more birds than any
other country in the world.
And you can see some, you know,these bucket list things where
we can say we are the best or wehave the most.

(01:23:32):
They work really well marketingbecause they're really singular
and they're really simple tocommunicate, right?
So they had this idea we havemore birds than anywhere else in
the world.
Birding is an incredible,incredible uh mechanism uh for
sustainable tourism andcommunity-based tourism because
people go to these smallcommunities and the and the and
the cash usually goes straightinto those communities, right?
And so we created a campaign in2000, we started working on it

(01:23:54):
in 2016, it ran until 2022, toposition Columbia as the leading
birding destination in theworld, and we did it.
And it's one of the mostincredible, successful campaigns
in the history of any ministryof tourism anywhere.
And we did a series ofdocumentary films, we partnered
with the Audubon Society, wepartnered with the Orno, the
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,eBird, which is an app that has
like millions and millions ofusers that we use to identify
birds around the world aroundthe world.

(01:24:15):
We brought fan groups, webrought lots of different
birding companies to Colombia,and then once that campaign was
done for international markets,we were asked to pivot it to the
national market and educateColombians on their birding um
biodiversity they have.
And now Colombia, whenever youtravel in Colombia, everywhere
you go, there's Colombiansbirding.
And it's like it's like areally, really cool thing to do.
And a beautiful thing aboutbirding in Colombia for foreign

(01:24:37):
travelers is like unlike some ofthese other countries where you
go to, and it's just likeforeign travelers, you know,
retired people, you come toColombia and you're gonna be
birding alongside Colombians.
You're gonna meet Colombians whoare young and fun and cool, and
they're gonna be talking to youand interacting.
It's not just like a singularthing that only foreigners do
here.
So you you're birding and you'rediscovering it alongside people

(01:24:57):
from Colombia.
And I think that is reallyspecial, and that's why I can
say Colombia is one of the mostinteresting places, not just
because we do the campaignbusiness to country, but I think
it's one of the most interestingand fun and engaging places to
bird anywhere in the world.
Not just because of the birds,but because of the people you're
birding with.

SPEAKER_00 (01:25:11):
And that's that is definitely a thing with
Colombia.
You know, I've been to a lot ofplaces.
People are great, there's greatpeople in a lot of places,
pretty much everywhere.
But boy, there's something aboutconnecting.
Like when you travel inColombia, you connect with
people.
There's there's places in theworld you can go and have a
whole week-long vacation and notconnect with anybody if you
don't want to, I guess.
But yeah, here there's justyou're just gonna connect.

(01:25:34):
You know, you might walk into aconvenience store, you're gonna
connect with somebody, somebodyon the street.
There's a lot of charactershere.
It's just a magical place.
And when I say characters, Imean uh in a very, very good
way.
And yeah, from my perspective,you know, you've got more time.

SPEAKER_01 (01:25:47):
So the the interesting thing about Colombia
is if you look at the history ofColombia and the security
situation, most Colombians untillike not too long ago were never
able, never able for multiplegenerations to travel and
explore their own country.
They're very much isolated andthey had to stay, you know,
within Bogota.
I mean just leaving from Bogotadown to my finca, you had to go
in a caravan with militarysecurity, et cetera, right?

(01:26:07):
So traveling within Colombia wasnot an option for Colombians for
generations, right?
And so most Colombians would gointernationally if they travel
somewhere.
Now Colombians are discoveringtheir country, you know, really
for the first time, you know,this is the first generation out
and about exploring the countrywithout like, you know, too many
hangups about historical thingswhen, you know, insecurity and
things from the past, right?
So Colombians are out and about,they're exploring.

(01:26:28):
And so when you're aninternational visitor and you're
exploring as well, you'reexploring alongside Colombians.
So it's very cool.
Yeah.
So like Colombia is very muchculturally in this phase of
like, let's learn who we are,let's see who we are, let's
explore all this cool stuff.
So when you're the WhatsAppgroups and you're in chat groups
and you're in Facebook groups,you know, the vibe is very much
like, hey, did you hear aboutthis new cool place, this new
cool river, this new place wherewe saw this new burden?

(01:26:50):
Like it's very much exploringand discovering, which uh most
countries around the world havebeen fully explored and
discovered.
Colombia hasn't yet, you know.

SPEAKER_00 (01:26:57):
You're right, because I imagine just uh, you
know, going to an interestingplace here in Colombia.
Let's call it a I don't know,there's just a a cool place.
There's a lot of cool places.
So I'm gonna go to a cool place,and I'm not going to a cool
place to hang out with a bunchof uh people from the US.
I was almost said Americans, butit's not a bunch of people from
the US.
It's like there might be a fewbecause people do come here.

(01:27:18):
It's a fascinating place.
But yeah, you'll have, you know,there'll be a couple there from
Cali, and then you'll meetsomeone else from Cartagena, and
then you'll meet someone elsefrom Boca Ramanga, and it's it's
so cool.
And they're exploring theircountry, they're excited about
it, they're sharing it with youas opposed to, you know, I
there's I know there's places inEurope, like there might be
other Europeans, but therearen't gonna be too many French

(01:27:40):
people there because the Frenchpeople are like, I'm not going
there, there's too many touriststhere.
Yeah, and you don't really getthat here, you know?
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:27:47):
So maybe Cartagena now you do a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 (01:27:49):
Well, yeah, maybe that wasn't a great yeah, yeah.
Cartagena.
But it but even then, you know,it you don't have to go too far
to get away from the the I don'tknow, the US crowd, the the the
regular tourist crowd.
Yeah.
Because there's it's just notoverrun with tourism, you know.

SPEAKER_01 (01:28:08):
So maybe the I would say I would say car I would say
Cartagena and Medin right now inColombia in the last five or six
years is you can be on the youcan be in a peak season weekend,
it'd be a lot.
But if you you like you'reright, if you go a couple
kilometers out of the maingathering points, you're you're
gonna be they're gonna be yeah,that's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 (01:28:23):
There's you know, there's a couple neighborhoods
that you and I both know inMedellin that if you go there,
you're gonna see a lot oftourists, a lot of tourists from
outside the country.
But literally, you can go get onthe metro, go two stops down,
and you don't see any of them,yeah, which is pretty cool.
So it's not the whole city forsure, but uh but anyway, so

(01:28:44):
let's so you've got themarketing agency up and running,
you're doing all these things topromote tourism to Colombia
within Colombia.
Um, I don't know if you want totouch on this this big special
project.
I know you had a big specialproject promoting tourism kind
of not just in Colombia.
Um, I don't know if you want totouch on that because it kind of
leads into I think what you'redoing now.

SPEAKER_01 (01:29:04):
Yeah, so the evolution is our marketing
companies, we we started togrow.
We probably had 20 employees orso, and we're doing and an
incredible team of talentedColombians.
And uh we saw a big uh a bid bythe US government that came out.
The US government has had an armof the US government called
USAID, and it's basically ourinternet international
development funding to I'll saywin favor and support foreign

(01:29:25):
governments, right?
And so in the in Colombia, thethe administration that is just
ending right now four years agofund with a uh a massive push to
replace the extraction economy,which would be like oil and gas
extraction, with asustainability economy, which
like on service sounds reallycool and really fun and great,
and like all about that.
And one of the key components ofsustainability is tourism,

(01:29:46):
right?
And so they said we're gonnareally look at how can we
develop sustainable tourismthroughout Colombia.
And so the US government gotbehind that, and um, I think
maybe with through funds, sothey established a 40 million,
42 million dollar fund todevelop sustainable tourism
activities in regions inColombia affected by the by
conflict.
So regions of Colombia that wentthrough the 2016 peace deal,

(01:30:09):
where you know there's certainpockets of Colombia, swathes of
Colombia that were basically acocaine or an illicit economy
only, right?
And they were and they werecontrolled by the the the Far
Gorilla or different factions ofthe guerrilla, right?
And so when the peace deal wasmade, brokered, you know,
brokered everyone laid intheory, everyone laid down their
arms, right?
But then the big problem youhave there is okay, okay, now

(01:30:31):
what do people do, right?
Because all these jobs wentaway, you know.
So the the idea for this programwas to go and develop a
sustainable tourism product indemand and monitor the effect
that that demand had on thoseecosystems because a lot of
these places were like some ofthe most biodiverse places in
the world that the gorilla wereoperating, right?
So it's like not only do likecan we go develop product in

(01:30:51):
these regions, but um, can wecreate demand and send high
value tourism to those regionsto support those economies,
right?
And then what's the impact ofthose tour, like depending on
how they behave?
So can we like look at certaintypes of regenerative tourism
activities they can do in thoseregions, and then can we measure
them?
So there's like a whole likesatellite imagery and camera
traps and stuff to see like ifthese tourism in these areas

(01:31:13):
actually affected in a negativeor positive way these
environments, right?
Because what was happening islike the fight there was okay,
there's not going to be somesort of illicit economy, then
also an illegal mining comes inand then illegal um, you know,
cutting down trees and creatingcattle farms.
So it's like you're kind oflooking at those two things.
And so let's go ahead andmeasure that.
So that was an incredibleprogram.
Our our our our company won itas the local uh subcontra uh

(01:31:35):
subcontractors with implementingpartners.
So we had scaled up about 50people in our team.
We had four offices in Colombiaand all the different regions,
and it was really expressincredible experience with me
working with the with the USgovernment and you know, highly
regulated, controlledenvironment, and then having all
these teams, and really the theidea of that project was a
really good feel-good project.
And unfortunately, that projectwas was one of the USAID

(01:31:56):
projects that was initiallykilled like right away by the
new administration.
Or I wasn't killed, but likethey shut it down, right?
And so uh during that time, thatwas that was obviously a very
strong impact on my on mycompany.
I was a legal representativehere in the United States.
I was the legal representativein Colombia for that project.
So it put me personally on thehook for all unpaid debts
associated with that project.
So when those funds were werefrozen, my family, myself, and

(01:32:18):
my wife were on the hook forpaying, you know, for a lot of a
lot of dues owed uh from thatproject.
And so we are able to, you know,through our retained earnings in
our company that we've beenpretty careful about, we're able
to pay those.
And it was a very difficult,very stressful time for me uh
business wise.
We're very much on the brink ofcollapse.
But, you know, one thing abouthaving an incredible wife is she
set me down and said, you know,look, I've never seen you as

(01:32:39):
like a consultant, right?
And you've been a consultant,you were the guy behind the
scenes, I was the legal guy, Iwasn't out in the field doing
stuff.
And if you know my story now,like I thrive when I'm out doing
stuff and making connections andmeeting people and being
inspired, being creative, and Iconverted to like an office guy
for that project.
And uh and I sat down and reallyhad to think, and it was like,

(01:33:00):
you know, for the past 10 or 15years, I've been building these
marketing programs forgovernments, and I've been
building marketing programs forbrands, and really in campaigns
to inspire people to dosomething.
Mostly would be like to traveland explore the world and have
fun and like grow as a humanbeing, you know, and and change
in a good way.

(01:33:20):
But at the end of the day, Inever controlled the experience
piece, right?
So one of the frustrations I hadwith the Colombian, the US
government project in Colombiais at the end of the day, we
never delivered any high-valuetourism to those regions.
So people are trained, they'recapacity built, there's
conferences, there's a lot oftalk, and there's a lot of
philosophy, and there's a lot ofmeasuring, and there's a lot of

(01:33:41):
like systems put in place, butthere was never significant, I
guess, high, high impacttravelers delivered to any of
these regions.
And that was frustrating for mebecause we were doing making the
promise, and then on the groundlevel, I never saw that happen,
right?
And so I had thought I had anopportunity to uh combine my
marketing experience with anexperiential travel and connect

(01:34:03):
everything.
So there's no one to blame butme.
So it's like if I'm making themarketing promise and painting
the picture and design thisstuff, and then we're also in
charge of like delivering theexperience, like I'm the one,
like I can't we can't blameanyone, like I'm the one
controlling both sides.
And so I was like, what if westopped just marketing travel
and actually designed it andexecuted on it?
And that was where I came, whereI've come up with with where
next travel, and that's where westarted with DMC.

(01:34:25):
And we actually started in 2020,and I was behind the scenes as
an investor in that, and nowI've come and become an active
role, and we've drawn itthroughout Latin America, and
that also came with buying theagriturismo that we went to
yesterday.
I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 (01:34:37):
So when you say, so when you say agriturismo, I kind
of know what that is, but I meanit basically is it fair to say
that's the finca.
So anybody that hears you say webought the agriturismo, I don't
know what that means.

SPEAKER_01 (01:34:50):
So yeah, agritorismo is like more of an Italian word
of you know, the hotel that areother in rural rural areas, and
you go there and you relax, andyou're surrounded by nature and
you eat great food that'sbasically comes from that
region.

SPEAKER_00 (01:35:02):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I kind of understand theconcept of what that is, but I
just wanted for our listener andfor me, just to make sure I
understood.
So you you bought the Finca,you're you're using that to
create experiences for peoplethat are coming out there and
staying through a variety ofdifferent uh different sources,
and then you're offering otherservices as we discussed earlier

(01:35:22):
in Colombia, Peru, other placesin Latin America as well.
Or what is that?
What do you want our listenersto know as far as what areas?

SPEAKER_01 (01:35:30):
Yeah, so we're growing to Argentina as well,
and through partners, we'reoffering experiences in Costa
Rica.
So we're starting to look atthat as well.
But the the vision over the nextfew years is to have a network
of offices, you know, 10countries throughout Latin
America, all branded, all withthe same level of quality that
uh, you know, one of our clientscan through us create
multi-country, or they cancontinue to offer experiences

(01:35:51):
throughout Latin America to havea higher high return on
investment for their gueststhrough us, through working with
a singular entity.
Because right now, there's nottoo many multi-country country
DMCs in, especially in LatinAmerica, that have unified
systems, any unified like brandvisos and how you how you manage
your clients.
And so if a client works with usin Colombia, they can also
connect their their guests to toPeru seamlessly between the two

(01:36:12):
destinations to have amulti-country destination
without having to work with twodifferent two different DMCs.

SPEAKER_00 (01:36:19):
And yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:36:20):
Yeah, and then when they're when their guests have a
really strong experience ofLatin America, then also okay,
okay, yeah, what else can we doin Latin America?
Maybe in two years they want tocome back to Latin America, they
go back to Europe, and then twoyears they they've done
Columbia, they did a ColumbiaPeru trip.
Oh no, maybe we can offer themour Argentina.
And then that client knows theycan trust us because they worked
with us before.
They know their they know theirguest has been with us before
and they and they kind of uhvetted the experience and

(01:36:42):
they're you so they can continueto book and send people
throughout Latin America withconfidence, knowing that they're
working with the same sameorganization.

SPEAKER_00 (01:36:49):
I I think just real quick, I I I don't know if this
is controversial to say this,but I think you've got an
advantage or benefit that's thatserves and supports your clients
because you've got you know theUS connection, the the
experience there, but you'vealso spent so much time, like on
a very intimate level in LatinAmerica, to have that ability to

(01:37:12):
kind of bring those twotogether.
It's kind of be like a liaison.
And you've done it also with thewith the you know the creative
agency and all that stuff.
It's the same type of thing.
And that's not knocking somebodythat runs a DMC that is born and
raised in a particular countryor anything like that, but it
just it it potentially adds awhole an a new level that could
be beneficial.
I get that.

(01:37:32):
Do you do you feel that as well?
Or you want to add to that, oris that just me talking out my
butt sniffing?

SPEAKER_01 (01:37:37):
No, I think you know, as it as it as an as an
entrepreneur, uh, that you Ithink something that I think is
very important in my developmentas an entrepreneur is to look in
the mirror and be very honestwith myself.
Like, where's the where's thebest and best use of my time,
right?
So obviously at a certain pointwhen you're starting a company,
you gotta do everything, right?
You're doing everything.
But as you kind of grow and youhave different people who are

(01:37:57):
leading different regions, likeI'm able to have country
managers in each country, andthen they have people who work
for them, etc.
And where am I where's the bestuse of my time?
I think something that's reallyunique for me is you know, I've
I'm America, an American fromthe United States, and we we
deal in luxury travel.
And I happened, you know, myparents were educators, we were
like middle-class family, but Ihappened to grow up on Merchant

(01:38:18):
Island, Washington, which isprobably one of the wealthiest
communities in the world, right?
My neighbor was Bill Gates, theother neighbor, you know, was
Jeff Bezos, founded Amazon, andthe other guy was Howard
Schultz, right?
So like very few places in theworld have such like an
incredible, like massive wealthbeen created than Merchant
Island, Bellevue, Seattle,Washington, right?
So I grew up understanding umthat culture and actually seeing

(01:38:38):
my friends and their families,you know, take blood suit trips
to Hawaii.
Like I'm familiar with thatworld, right?
And I I feel like I understandthat world to an extent.
And then I've also lived inLatin America 20 years and I've
worked with government projects.
I understand how things movedown here.
You know, I've I've gone througheverything.
Like I've basically almost beenkidnapped and murdered down
here, and I've also won thelargest sustainable tourism
project in history down here inManchester with the US

(01:39:00):
government.
So I think that combines, like Isaid, those two worlds of
something like that's reallysomething special that I have.
And like, where can I focus mytime?
Where can I focus my energy?
Like, let's look at the emailthat I think that's why I've
tried to, you know, leveragethat kind of I guess situation
that I found myself in.
And it seems like you're doingthe business.

SPEAKER_00 (01:39:17):
A great job.
And just on a very, like, very,very surface level, as you know,
I in my travels, I've spent alot of time working in tourism.
I can, you know, I'm very I'mfamiliar with a lot of it, but
I've also spent a ton of timejust in the last few years in
Airbnbs.
And most, most of them that Iwalk into are missing something
that's just culturally, it's ait's a cultural nuance.

(01:39:37):
And it's like, ooh, you know, Iwish I could think of a great
example, but there's a lot ofthings it's like, I don't think
the person that owns this Airbnbhas ever maybe traveled to
upscale Airbnbs in the US, forexample.
Yeah.
Um, you know, and I walk, andwhen I was in your place
yesterday, I was like, yeah, youguys have everything.
Like I I don't think like Icould have picked a single thing

(01:39:59):
that I was like culturally it'smissing, but at the same time,
you had the Colombian culture aswell.
So you had like both.
And you know, even just thewonderful, beautiful family that
you have working with that youout there is just such a fun
experience.
Um, so yeah, I I just sense thatyou you've you're in a unique
position to do that.
Greg, we've discussed a lot.
I know we spoke quite a bitlonger than we thought, but

(01:40:20):
there was there's so much toshare.
Is it I'm curious, is thereanything you wish I would have
asked you or that you want totouch on before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_01 (01:40:28):
Yeah, I think, well, you know, thanks for all your
time and all your questions asit's gone along, but I think I
would love to to talk about thethe Finca a little bit more
because we were able to go outthere yesterday.
And one of the reasons I wantedto bring you to the Finca is
just to hang with you because Ithink I want people to know that
you and I have a reallyinteresting relationship that we
kind of figured outaccidentally.
Yeah.
15 years ago, when I firststarted working, my marketing

(01:40:50):
agency first started working forProColumbia in Colombia, one of
the things that we were lookingat promoting alongside birding
was fishing.
And so, in your former careerlife, you're the head of travel
experiences for a brand calledOrvis, a fishing brand in the
United States.
I was and so we uh had emailedfor probably a month, and I had
put together a fishingexpedition that was like

(01:41:11):
incredible, flying on a bushplane out of Bogota into the
Yanos Plains, which is like thisplains like out of Africa.
This is a transition zone intothe Amazon.
And this area region wasformerly controlled by the
gorilla, and and gorilla, farkgorilla people, these you know,
these these military, thesethese groups didn't eat fish,
they ate cows, and it has theseincredible river systems.

(01:41:33):
So we were going to fish riversystems basically for the first
time in a generation ever formonster peacock bass and flying
in on bush planes becausethere's no other way to get
there, right?
So it's a pretty awesome thing.
And the last minute youcanceled, you bailed on the
trip.

SPEAKER_00 (01:41:47):
Well, I didn't I don't think I got to the point
of saying yes, but here, Greg, II love I love that you brought
this up because it was aseriously profound moment in my
life that I've I have very, veryseldom shared the story.
But yes, I was working at Orvis,I was running the travel
business for Orvis.
I think you and I actually firstmet, must have been in in
Namibia at the Adventure TravelTrade Association, because we

(01:42:08):
figured out that we were boththere and started chatting.
You'd reached out, said, Hey,there's this great opportunity.
And I went to my boss and Isaid, Hey, what do you think?
He was generally like, Youcould, Jason, whatever you
think, because you know, this isyour thing.
And I went to him and he's like,Yeah, I don't, I don't know how
well we can sell Columbia, butyou know, it's pretty cool, you
know.
Yeah, if you want to do it, goahead and do it.

(01:42:29):
We'll we'll support you.
And then I went home and I wasso excited.
I went to my my wife at thetime, it's a wonderful woman,
very supportive woman in so manyways.
And I said, Sweetheart, I'mgoing to Colombia.
And she said, Oh no, you're not.
Like, what do you mean?
And like I was so excitedbecause I'd been to so many cool
places.
She's like, No, no, no, no.
I don't think this is, you know,whatever.

(01:42:50):
And we won't go into too fardetails, but you know, there's
some preconceived ideas aboutColumbia.
And it turned out where I waslike, you know, if mommy ain't
happy, ain't nobody happy.
And I think it went back to you,Craig, and said, geez, I it
doesn't look like this is gonnait doesn't look like this is
gonna work out.
So fast forward uh severalyears, quite a few years later.
15 years later.

(01:43:11):
Yeah, yeah.
I'm divorced and I'm divorced,and I'm sitting in Phoenix,
Arizona in my apartmentthinking, I really wish I was
traveling.
And then I thought, you knowwhat, I'm just gonna go travel.
I had a great situation with myson where he could potentially
travel with me and do all thisstuff.
So anyway, I sold all my stuffand I thought, okay, where am I
gonna go?
The only place that anybody evertold me that I couldn't go was

(01:43:33):
Colombia.
So guess what the first planeticket I bought?
I bought a one-way ticket toColombia and I'm going to
Colombia because, you know,that's yeah.
So, and here I am, you know,four and a half years later, out
of the last four and a halfyears traveling full-time, over
two of that has been spent inColombia.
And then you and I bumped intoeach other.
I I think rebumped into eachother on LinkedIn, and we had a

(01:43:56):
quick little video call, andyou're like, You used to work at
Orvis, right?

SPEAKER_01 (01:44:00):
I'm like, Yes, so when I figured that out, I was
like, you know, whether we dothis podcast or not, like this
guy, we're gonna hang because wewere supposed to hang 15 years
ago, and like we're gonna hang.
So you're gonna come down to myfinca and we're gonna hang for a
day, like just to get the water.
We did walk the river, we didn'tfish it, but we did walk the
river, so that was cool.
So yeah, and so that was likekind of the kind of story behind

(01:44:23):
getting you to the finca tospend some quality time as a
couple of American guys inColombia hanging out together.
And for me, the the impetus ofthe finca is when I bought this
finca with my wife, it was aone-year labor of love to re-you
know, renovate the entire finca,and we've replanted all the
coffee, right?
We had to rip out all the oldcoffee because an organic coffee
farm, but all the coffee hadbeen let go.
So we took it all out, we'vereplanted it.

(01:44:43):
And my wife and I, after the thethe crash of the USA ID and we
lost that project, it's likeagain, kind of like the bike
trip was like we needed a win,like I wanted a win, right?
So we said, like, we're gonnaturn this finca that was our
recreational cabin into anactual agriturismo, like in a
tourism experience.
So what we discovered is like80%, 60 to 80 percent of all

(01:45:05):
tourism, you know, employees inthese regions in Colombia or in
Colombia in general, areinformally contracted, right?
So we're gonna do it right,we're gonna apply all these
things that we learned aboutduring the US government
project, and we're gonna makethem a reality in our own little
micro business, right?
So we hired people.
My wife works in humanresources, so we hired a staff
for the first time in theirlife.

(01:45:26):
They had a formal contract, theyhad vacation.
This woman had been workingseven years in tourism hotels,
she had never had maternityleave in any of her three kids
she had.
She had never had vacation, shehad never spent Christmas with
her family for five years,right?
That's what means, what it meansto be informally contracted in
Colombia, right?
So through a formal contract, bylaw, you have paid maternity

(01:45:48):
leave in Colombia, four months.
It's incredible paid maternityleave.
You have holiday, you havevacation that's paid for, you
have health, right?
And she uh and her husband orher partner were contracted for
the first time in their life.
They're able to have Christmaswith their family for the first
time, but they're also stillable to serve, you know, work
with our guests.
And it was like a reallybeautiful experience to have
that staff and then integrateall these members in the

(01:46:09):
community around to come and dolike honey tasting experiences
from the honey farmer who liveson the hill, to have the local
biologists come and do bird birdtourism to talk about the
history of indigenous culture inthe finca.
And the valley of our finca is avery important piece of
indigenous culture and uh atransit route.
The name of our finca is calledGualiba, and in the indigenous
language of that region, itmeans the way home.

(01:46:30):
So people travel up and down thevalley of our finca from their
hunting and and and gatheringmissions back to their to their
um where they're actually based,the indigenous culture.
So we thought that was reallyspecial for us, um, you know,
the way home, being a foreignerand actually buying my first
residence in Colombia.
And so we've been able to,through through the doing that,
all the renovation staff, um,and also you know, 30 to 40

(01:46:51):
percent that we walk through isvirgin forest.
It's never been cut down.
So we've been able to kind ofthrough this mechanism of
renting this finca, protect thevirgin forest because you've
seen some of our neighbors,they've all cut the forest down,
right?
And we've been able to preservethis forest.
And over the last year, we'veturned this finca into the
number top 1% finca in the worldfor Airbnb.

(01:47:12):
And that's in something reallyspecial for us.
So it's yeah, so they gave us anaward and we're just like you
can see it on our website.
And so we just feel like a highfive moments, our own little
project.
And so, like, what can we learnfrom this little micro
enterprise, the finca, thebusiness within the business?
What can we learn from that?
Like, and so we've had all thesehands-on educational experiences
from this finca, and it's justbeen really special.

(01:47:32):
So it's cool for me to walkthrough the Finca with you
yesterday and kind of show thosethings is in it.
Since we've bought this, you'rethe first guest I've had that
really, you know, speaks Englishthat I've been able to do that
with.
So I've I haven't been able toshow that before.
So that was a really cool momentfor me.
And thanks for thanks for comingand checking it out.

SPEAKER_00 (01:47:48):
Well, uh, thank you so much for inviting me.
I mean, and I've been fortunateenough to see enough of Columbia
to to first of all appreciatehow beautiful the country is,
and also to appreciate howspecial your place is.
So I'm not I'm not turning, I'mnot saying anything negative
about the rest of Columbia, butyour place is really special.
It's this sweet little gem.
And you said, Well, you noticesome of my neighbors are cutting

(01:48:09):
stuff down.
I don't want anybody to hearthat and think that you're
sitting in a little patch offorest with a bunch of bare
mountains around you, becausethat's not the case, right?
So I don't want anybody to hearthat.
Yes, I saw where some some stuffhad been cut, but it it's so
amazing.
The trees and the mountains.
And honestly, if you hadn'tpointed it out, I wouldn't have

(01:48:29):
even thought anything about it.
I grew up in Wyoming in themountains, and I've seen I've
seen clear cutting up in themountains there.
It's still beautiful, but Ididn't, I wouldn't have even
noticed it had you not pointedit out yesterday.
Um the other thing is I lovethat you touched on was the
thing about the informalemployment.
Because last night when we weredriving back, you said uh
they've always workedinformally.
And the first thought thatpopped into my head was, oh,

(01:48:50):
like under the table.
And then I think a lot of peoplein the US will say, Oh, I got
this great job, it's all underthe table.
And so I said, So what's wrongwith informal?
And then you explained to me,informal means, yeah, there's
there's no can just what yousaid about, you know, vacation
time, maternity time, guaranteeof pay, just all that stuff.

(01:49:11):
So I'm happy that you clarifiedit for me last night, and then
you brought it up again to uhtoday as well, because uh I get
I get that now.

SPEAKER_01 (01:49:18):
So yeah, I think it's something, I mean, you
probably know in the car I getvery passionate about and I get
fired up.
So I apologize if I put youthrough that on the drive home
last night.
No, no, also I also I alsoapologize for leaving the
sunroof open in my car while itwas parked during a rainstorm.
So you had to sit on a wet seatthe entire week.

SPEAKER_00 (01:49:36):
But you know why you know I but Greg, I know why you
were so excited because wepulled in there.
You were so excited to get outand walk around and show me the
place that you forgot to closethe sunroof.
Hey, I get it.
It's it's no deal.

SPEAKER_01 (01:49:46):
Anyway, it's also the first time I've been there
in over a month, and uh becauseyou know, we just had a baby, so
it was the first time back thereyou had a baby.

SPEAKER_00 (01:49:53):
Right, and yeah, you mentioned that.
So um I look forward to seeingyou again soon and collaborating
with you on some projects in thefuture.
It's a fascinating conversation.
I know we covered an awful lot,and we probably really need to
do adjustance, probably need tocome back and do some more.
But anyway, Greg, thank you somuch.
I appreciate you sharing yourstory, your fascinating story,
starting with the the thegoldfish at the festival.

(01:50:14):
That was I'm so happy we got tothat point.
We almost missed that.
So I'm happy we got there.
Greg, thank you so much.
I appreciate you.
All right, bye bye.

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Adventure Travel with Gregg Bleakney - WhereNext Travel

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Adventure Travel with Gregg Bleakney - WhereNext Travel