Jun 05

Here is the 12th and final video recap of our last city on Remote Year, Buenos Aires:

And here is the month told in photos:

Fall trees in BA
Sunset from the rooftop of the Aspen Hotel
Sunset rooftop sesh
Bomba de Tiempo is a must-attend improv percussive show every Mon night in BA
Obligatory Kelly & Cara being cute photo for the month...
Believe it or not this is not a 7/11, it's a Walmart
House on the way to the workspace
Wine tasting
Learning about how to detect the different ingredients in wine and the difference between Malbec and Cabernet Franck.
Walked by this artistic bridge downtown after the Cirque du Soleil show
Fuerza Bruta is a must-see "Blue Man Group-like" visual/auditory melee
Drinks with the crew at Bierhoff on my b-day moments before being kidnapped by a Russian-speaking penguin
Pouty Cara and ever-laughing Kelly at the pool hall
Post-bday drinks w/ prodigal Remote Lish.
The ceviche tasting item at I Latina was the single best dish I had all month. If you go there just get the full meal of this. It's incredible.
Showing Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" on the rooftop of the hotel.
Rooftop ukelele practice sesh with Carly
The rib eye at Carniceria brings back the meat sweats just looking at it. So good though.

Highlights of this month for me were:

  • Bomba de Tiempo – A percussive show they do every Monday night in BA in this outdoor concert area. It’s like the musical STOMP in that you can’t help but get sucked into the rhythm of this thing. It’s all improv and they have an “orchestra conductor” steering things and making music on the fly. Incredibly cool.
  • Fuerza Bruta – is an immersive, raucous musical/arts assault on the senses. It reminded me of Blue Man Group in that you’re in the middle of the action and there’s just chaotic craziness happening all around you. Apparently this is an Argentina-borne show that has made it to the US. Highly recommend.
  • Cirque du Soleil – this was my first Cirque experience and it was amazing. It’s a mix of music, tumbling, juggling, trapeze acts, real-time sand painting… just a crazy hodgepodge of impressive human feats really all set to music. It made me rediscover the band Soda Stereo (I had heard them way back in the day in Ecuador but had forgotten how good they are).
  • Webinar I did with Pre-motes to cover their questions about Remote Year. Should be useful for anyone entertaining doing this adventure.
  • Charity Makeover – Merakis (the group following us, Darien) stepped up their game and successfully completed the first ever handoff of a Charity Makeover initiative started by our group. This blog post is a good recap of what we did for Proyecto Caraya in April and Merakis came in on our heels and advanced their cause by translating the site to Spanish and Portuguese, building out testimonial functionality for volunteers but most importantly, laying the technical groundwork for us to be able to do the contest we envision running across the Remote Year Nation to seed pledges for these guys and jumpstart their fundraising.
  • Our farewell party was pretty hard to top here. Huge shoutout to the Hussinecka guys for creating an unforgettable going-away party experience that melded experiences from all the cities over the past year into a progressive party night.

I’m now in Mendoza, Argentina wine tasting for the weekend before bouncing over to Santiago & Val Paraiso, Chile. I’m intending to head up to Costa Rica and spend 2 weeks there before heading to Dominican Republic in July where I plan to kite surf with my buddy Keith all month.

Gear recs

Only two this month:

  1. This universal power adapter has come in really handy this month. I thought we were good for the rest of South America on not needing any special power conditioning but the outlets here have slanted plugs. Fortunately I kept my adapter and this thing has worked like a charm. Note: it’s not a converter, only an adapter so it’s assuming you have 220v power and just need to change the shape of your plug. If you go somewhere where the voltage is different you’ll want to get a power converter to transform the voltage.
  2. These little laundry soap pods are super useful if you’re doing your own laundry on the road. Rather than buying powder soap or a bottle of liquid soap you can keep these in your bag and just toss one in when it’s time to do wash. I had never seen these before but a guy in one of the laundromats turned me onto these things and they’ve been useful.

Music

Here is the soundtrack to this month.

This was a particularly emotional month as you might imagine in saying goodbye to 50 people many of whom I’ve become close with over the last year of travel together. I’ll write a longer post where I unpack all the emotions and takeaways from this past year. For now it’s pretty amazing to have completed this year-long journey. Thanks to all who have made this past year possible. I’ll write more soon in an introspective wrap-up post for the year.

May 01

Well our stay in Córdoba is officially in the books and we’re now rounding the final turn into Buenos Aires for our last month of Remote Year. Here´s my video recap for the past month:

And here is the month told in photos:

Arizona Biltmore for David Tierney's Valley Leadership "Man of the Year" award ceremony.
Inadvertent photobomb from a hotel security guard
Consolidated down to one bag while up at the cabin. Have been living almost a year without any of this stuff and frankly don't need any of it.
Good seeing Twil
Suns game with Drew, Brian and Beth. Thx Pagely for the tickets.
Cartoon sketch by Lederman Studio of my talk for PressNomics5 on remote work
Beautiful wedding of Bo Borch-Christensen & Meghan Borch-Christensen
Adulting with El Pollo Diablo
The beginning of a 48-hr travel snafu on LATAM Airlines. Still haven't been reimbused for 2 nights I paid for in hotels... never them if you can avoid it.
Making empanadas at a home in the countryside
The gothic cathedral right outside our workspace in Cordoba
Love raking light...
Hanging with Samantha Thomas, program leader for Cousteau
How could you not want to donate to these guys via our new monkey kickstarter platform on Caraya.org?
They're just too adorable...
Walking the grounds around Proyecto Caraya with Dan McGoldenberry Gold and Jaime the dog.
Easter spread. Thx Cara for organizing. so fun.
Music trivia night!

Overall I’ve had a really productive month in Córdoba. Last month was previously my all-time best sales month for Pagely and I just beat it this month. Córdoba is a college town with not a ton of cultural stuff but an active nightlife scene. Highlights of stuff we did this month included:

  • Getting to see my brother
  • Getting to see my Dad win a prestigious award in Phoenix and to have home-cooked meals while home.
  • Getting to speak at PressNomics 5. My talk on remote work below and slides and links here:
  • Learning how to grow miniature aromatic herb gardens in an urban setting then incorporate those in making exotic cocktails.
  • Learning how to make empanadas from scratch at a house in the countryside.
  • Visiting the Umepay commune in the countryside outside of Córdoba and learning how to make vegan beet ice cream (amongst other culinary creations).
  • Leading a “Start With Why” workshop at the Junction event and getting awesome insights from 14 of my fellow Remotes.
  • And my favorite, visiting the Proyecto Caraya monkey sanctuary to gather content before our Charity Makeover event for them last weekend. They had no site prior to last Saturday and 14 of us volunteered an entire day to work together to build them a crowdfunding site and remake their digital presence from scratch. We were also able to implement some basic accounting processes and a CRM system for them to streamline how they recruit volunteers and manage communications with donors and on-premise visitors. Read about how we changed the game for them in a day and watch the video Eddie made for them that tells their story in 1min below:

Work update

Work-wise as I mentioned our small sales & marketing team at Pagely killed it this month. We’re firing on all cylinders with Rod ramping up lead flow, Chad doing qualifying and appointment setting, myself conducting sales calls with prospects and Kirill taking the handoff on new customers to ensure successful onboarding. The big news is that I have approval to recruit someone to replace me in the capacity of sales person so I can move up stack into a VP of Sales role and focus on growing and supporting our sales force while placing more emphasis on refining and expanding the Leviathan automated sales followup AI I created. The prerequisite to this change is me reworking our comp plan to account for everything we’ve learned in v1 and make it support our revenue objective for this year.

Gear recs

As far as gear I’m liking this month, I’ve gotten exceptional value from these items:

  • These in-ear noise-cancelling headphones are awesome. The workspace this month was nice but it was particularly noisey. With these headphones though I’m able to switch from my normal Apple earbuds and it’s like having ear plugs in that also play music.The bass output on these is just fantastic and at $24 for a pair they’re an incredibly good value. It’s nice to know you always have the capability to zone out and work effectively wherever you are despite a noisy environment.
  • This multi tool has come in handy a few times this month. It’s basically a half-sized Leatherman and has everything you might need with a screwdriver, a blade, can opener, leather punch, etc.
  • Simple zip ties actually make great ad hoc luggage locks. I consolidated down to just my hiking pack earlier this month when I was back home in Phoenix but unfortuantely left my luggage lock on the bag I shed. I had brought large zip ties though and these are arguably just as good as a deterrent for keeping would-be thieves from rummaging through your bags while in transit (especially now that all TSA-friendly locks are compromised now that someone uploaded the CAD file to 3D-print the master key).

Music-wise these are some of the songs that will forever remind me of this month:

I don’t know that I’d want to live in Córdoba for an extended period but the visit was entirely worth it just to meet Mayu and be able to run a Charity Makeover to help their monkey sanctuary. When you have a minute hop over to their new site we built and check out the monkeys. For just $5 you can sponsor one of these little guys and feed him/her for a week!

True to the Charity Makeover mission of “teach a person to fish vs. give a person a fish,” part of the goal in this project is to test the concept of a “revolving door Charity Makeover” wherein we leverage the RY flow of talented knowledge workers and pass the baton on what we started to the next Remote Year group. We’ve already intro’d the Meraki’s (group who is following us entering into Córdoba today) program leader to Mayu. We’ve tee’d up an amazing roadmap for them, documented processes and vision and used collaborative tools like Trello, Slack and Google Drive to make it possible to more easily advance the vision we set and build on the foundation we laid. I’m hopeful they will fall in love with Mayu and the project as much as we did and this will become a tradition amongst future RY groups in Córdoba. There are 10 in all coming over the next year – given what we’ve queued up I’m optimistic this could change the game for them in the long-term. If our revolving pilot program with Caraya goes well, Charity Makeover is something I’d be keen to throw myself into full-force once my work for Pagely is done.

Anyways, adios Cordoba, hello Buenos Aires! Can’t believe this crazy year-long adventure is in its final stretch.

Mar 31

It’s that time again as we say goodbye to our current city… here’s my video for Lima:

And here’s the month told in photos:

First night in Lima
First amazing Lima sunset
Biking through town with Cookie
Paragliders on the coast
My jury-rigged monitor stand drew fire from tenants at the workspace (I think they were just jealous of the innovation)
Pitstop on the way to Azpitia for pisco tasting
We spent a day at the Sarcay pisco winery learning how Pisco is made
Pisco (aka Rakija aka Slivovitz aka jet fuel)
NBD just doing some computing amongst the vineyards at Sarcay
Azpitia is Peruvian wine country
Danny Koppers' b-day at Amaz
ALL THE VEGGIES!
Dumb gringos seeing if it's hot enough to fry an egg on a glass table (spoiler: it wasn't)
Parque Kennedy painters showing their works in front of the church
Massive salsa mosh pit in Parque Kennedy
Paragliders at sunset over Parque Amor while we were learning how to slackline
Arrival in Cusco and the calm before the altitude sickness storm
Cusco town square

Some random thoughts on Lima:

  • As I said in the video this wasn’t one of my top cities. It has amazing food and our workspace was probably the best one we’ve had in our ten months on the road but I never felt at home in Lima.
  • Machu Picchu is worth the trip alone however. This is one of (if not the) most magical places I’ve ever been. Eleven of the guys in our group hiked 4 days along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and then some of us climbed to the top of Huayna Picchu. Bucket list item #367- check!
  • The honking in Lima is relentless. It’s funny that some people in our group who were originally from big cities seemed to like it. I guess it’s what you grew up on but it’s what I would call a “vindictive horn culture.” People just lay on their horns out of spite and it really grinds your nerves after awhile.
  • If you do go to Machu Picchu be sure to spend at least 2 days acclimating in Cusco. We came from sea level to 11,550ft and the altitude kicked my ass. I had even lived in Quito, Ecuador previously at 9k’ but the abrupt change was too much. Very humbling.
  • If you don’t do well in humidity you’ll want to make sure you have a fan if you visit. Fortunately our apartments all had fans (none had AC and AC is very rare in Lima). Unfortunately my first apartment had mold and I’m still now kicking the cough I acquired after we moved in.

I was lucky to interviewed and featured this last week on the Remote Year site. In it we talk about the backstory that led me to this program, how it’s worked out with doing my job from the road, gear recommendations, travel hacks and more.

No new gear recs this month. Hard to believe our tribe will be disbanding two months from now… Get fired up for the first Charity Makeover in awhile in Cordoba on Apr 22nd. More details coming soon.

Lastly, here are a handful of songs that will remind me of Lima:

Mar 07

Here’s my video recap of Medellin:

And here is the month told in photographs:

Overlooking the junble and coast of Tayronna Park
The cable car over Medellin
Lake Guatapé
Closing deals in Jardin
The views in Salento were breathtaking
Horse chillin in Valle de Cocora
Valle de Cocora was incredible
View of a rosy Medellin at sunset from our apartment
Happy Valentines from Fico
Danny just dominating the 1s and 2s at the Pool Party 2.0 event
The view from Envy Rooftop bar
Digital nomading hard in Barranquilla before Carnaval
Benny got talcum bombed with this irish girl
Nick history has proven time and again that those who initiate foam wars end up getting 2x the heat in counter-attacks ;-)
Thank you Carnaval
Dominoes in the pool with Andrew. Thanks for the royal ass whopping.
This pic sums up Carnaval
We didn't know it at the time but these were just guys dressing up like FARC. Pretty sketchy for a minute.

Some random thoughts from this month:

  • Medellin is a fantastic city and is on a short list of places I could/may live after Remote Year.
  • Starting this month I’m no longer trying to dissect what I like/dislike about the places we go. I explain the rationale a bit more in the video but it’s basically for the same reasons Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink argues that it’s actually counterproductive when you seek to analyze vs. go with gut, “thin slicing” on instinctual decisions.
  • Leviathan is a reality for Pagely at last. That was definitely my single biggest work accomplishment this month and in spite of having the worst sales numbers in over a year and a half for Pagely, this will be an incredibly valuable contribution to the company. The video explains more.
  • Starting this month and every remaining month of RY hereafter I’m going to focus on sharing a look at some of the other incredible human beings I’m traveling with. Up this month Nick Fico and Jess S. Strongly encourage you to read both their blogs- incredible people in their own way.

We’re now in Lima, Peru for the month of March and I’m looking forward to ceviche, hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Pichu and focusing on getting back into a running routine. I fly back to AZ end of this month for an awards ceremony for my Dad, to speak at Pressnomics and to attend one of my good friend’s weddings. I’ll rejoin the group the 2nd week of April down in Cordoba, Argentina.

Finally, here are a few of the songs from this month that will forever remind me of our time in Medellin. Adios Colombia, I’ll definitely be back.


Jan 28

Here’s my monthly update video as we say goodbye to Bogota, Colombia and make our way to Medellin:

And here is the month told in photographs:

Feliz Año Nuevo Bogotá!
Walking around Bogotá on my first day there
Parque Virrey was a 2min walk from our apartment. I ran there multiple times each week. So great.
They still had the Christmas decorations up when we got there.
First night in Cartagena with my friend Lana Banana
Cartanea at night. Fico took an identical photo when he was there- great minds...
One of many car and bus rides in our travels around Colombia
Finca Barlovento near Tayrona was INCREDIBLE
Pagely sales office for the day...
This giant condor landed and was sunning himself on the railing
I would have stayed a week here had I known it was this awesome
Hangout area at Finca Barlovento
Palapas and pools...
Lana finds a puppy
wassup yatches!
Stairs down to a private beach...
Private beach down from Finca Barlovento
beachy

Things that stand out:

  • We had two awesome city managers, Luis and Cata. Can’t say thanks enough for all they did to make us feel welcome in Bogotá.
  • There are so many perros in the city. We lived right next to Parque Virrey and it’s bustling every day with all kinds of dogs. So cool.
  • The altitude is definitely noticeable at 8,600+ feet. I’m sitting now in a taco joint in Medellin which is a substantially lower altitude and I feel like I can breathe again.
  • Colombia is a huge country. I spent the first two weeks of Bogotá traveling all over the country and we only scratched the surface- didn’t realize how huge this country is.
  • I don’t know why they don’t believe in toilet seats. It’s just weird.
  • 8 cities down, 4 more to go… can’t believe we’re 2/3rds the way through this adventure. The regular conversation now is “what are you doing after RY?” and I feel like most of us don’t know the answer at this point. Will be an interesting next few months as plans start to crystalize.
  • I know a couple people this month who were a bit depressed (the term “altitude sadness” was coined by one). While I didn’t personally hit those same blues in Bogotá (Valencia was that way for me) I can certainly respect that some people are starting to hit a wall in month 8. Medellin is a welcome change and I think will inject some literal fresh air in our lungs and reinvigorate some.

Gear shout outs

Three pieces of gear this month merit a shoutout:

  1. I picked up a Michael Kors down puffy jacket at Macy’s in a Christmas sale for $100 and it’s probably my single favorite purchase this past year. It compresses down to about the size of a tennis ball can and is super warm. I treated it with Scotchgard as well as Permetherin before leaving the States so now it’s both waterproof and mosquito proof. Highly recommend it. They have it for the same price on Amazon here.
  2. The Amazon Firestick has been a gem on this trip. It performs the same function of an Apple TV giving you apps like Netflix and Spotify on any TV that supports HDMI but it’s 1/4 the size of an Apple TV and just plugs into the back of the TV. There’s a mobile app you can use as a remote. It’s so nice to be able to throw on background music when you’re working at home or to veg out and watch a Netflix when you’re feeling like a hermit. The voice remote feature is really cool too- you can say “play Miles Davis” and it’ll immediately start playing Miles Davis jazz tunes via Amazon Music… pretty incredible.
  3. TRX. This is a resistance training apparatus that let’s you use your own body weight to perform a number of exercises. It’s been my preferred way to stay in shape this past eight months and while we’ve been doing it all along I came to really appreciate it Bogotá. I normally do it outside but there was quite a bit of rain this month so I started using the attachment that comes with it that allows you to hang it off a door inside. It’s about the size of a softball when stored so it travels really well and is more convenient than finding a gym in each city. The basic kit runs $150 on Amazon.

Tunes

Lastly, the songs below will forever remind me of our time in Bogotá.

Jan 01

This last month flew by. Here’s my monthly update video showing a bit of our living and working arrangement in Mexico City with my commentary:

Here is the month told in photographs:

Near the entrance to the Castle de Chapultapec
This wasn't at all how I had imagined Mexico City looking
View of the skyline from the Chapultapec Castle
Old vs. new
Touring Chapultapec Castel on our first day
Viva Mexico!
TRX session with Chris in the park by our apartment
power infrastructure is on point
Eating grasshopper pizza at our first EatWith.com event
One of the guests at this EatWith event was a guy who had been on the very first cohort for RemoteYear
My improvised monitor stand
Vetting a mariachi downtown at Plaza de Garibaldi for Jacinda's bday
Jacinda and Maddy
Walking through Tepoztlán to the base of the mountain we hiked
Tepoztlán
View from the pyramid above Tepoztlán
Part of our hiking crew for Tepoztlán
These little guys (Cotomundi) were everywhere atop Tepoztlán mountain. They looked cute but were super aggressive. These two eye Rob's banana peel

And here are a few of the songs that will forever remind me of this time period:

We’re now in Bogota, Colombia. Happy New Year and thanks for following along with my travels. If you want to get periodic update emails from me that serve as a recap of the highlights, add yourself below:

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