Nov 03

Barcelona Week 2 recap:

Started out with an insanely good dinner with my friend @toldbyalyse
You should try @eatwith if they have it in a town you’re visiting. These are some of the most amazing culinary experiences wherein you dine with complete strangers and are served by local independent chefs (and sometimes just people cooking out of their house). This one did not disappoint.

Woke up the next day on the beach in Ibiza.

We toured around (some of us on quads, myself in the jeep) and explored some beautiful ocean views.

Contrary to the looks of these ominous clouds, the weather cooperated with us the whole time.

We hiked down a fairly steep sandstone rock face and found this swimming cove and all these really cool rock formations.

We saw some stunning sunsets from the western-most point of the island.

It was pretty surreal.

This one on our last night with beautiful cirrus clouds above.

It’s been an epic two weeks with the @wifitribe crew. We’re t-minus 6 days from the Charity Makeover event in Barcelona and it’s completely sold out so I’m excited. Unfortunately I woke up with a crazy shooting pain in my right shoulder and I’m headed to get an MRI tomorrow to figure out what’s going on. Feels like sciatic nerve only radiating from my T2 vertebra to my right shoulder to my fingertips… hoping it’s just a pinched nerve and heals quickly on its own. If anyone has a theory on what this might be or what I could do to alleviate the pain I’d welcome any ideas.

?Anyways…
If you dig these periodic photo updates you should subscribe to my semi-annual email update here: https://scrollinondubs.com/about (at Barcelona, Spain. Gracia)
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Oct 24

Barcelona? week 1 update:
I’m in Barcelona, Spain for the month participating in my first ever @wifitribe chapter. Our first weekend here a group of us went to Mont Serrat to do some hiking.

It’s called Mont Serrat because it’s a ridge that looks like a serrated knife’s edge (I used to sell CUTCO – it’s no Double-D edge but it’s an impressive ridgeline).

We took the funicular up the mountain. “Funicular” I found out is the name for this counter-balanced train that goes up a steep incline. It’s two cars connected by cable and they just swap places all day long taking people up & down the mountain.

Anyways we get up there and it’s all these impressive alien-like rock formations with a monastery nestled at the base.

These mountains look like they’re from another planet. Apparently long long ago they were actually under water and they are formed via ocean sediment. Crazy to think the sea used to be this high.

The water receded and what’s left is this rock aggregate. As my old geology teacher from Ecuador would say “Rocks on the move!!”

I was able to get in some cloud computing… bad dad joke.

This is part of our group. There are actually 20 of us in town coworking, doing weekend sidetrips and exploring the city. It’s similar to the @remoteyear citizen house program only they have multiple chapters running concurrently all over Asia, Europe, Africa and South America at any given time.

Yesterday I went with a few people on a walking architectural tour around Barcelona. Gaudi was the centerpiece of this tour. His style is best described as “hobbit.” It reminds me a lot of the buildings from the old games Myst and Riven. I had been to Sagrada Familia before but it’s always impressive. They’re aiming to have it completed by 2026 – the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death.

Anyways, so far so good. Running here is interesting. The blocks are relatively small and all the intersections are octagonal so you end up zigzagging and a 3mi run becomes a 4mi run. That’s good though because their pintxo finger food scene is fire Beware Barcelona: I will be eating all the pintxos and tapas this month. (at Barcelona, Spain)
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Oct 08

Greece Weeks 3 & 4 update:
Meet Frank. Frank is our on-property goat. We feed him leaves because he’s eaten all the ones that are within reach. This is really the only reason Frank needs us but we’re cool with the relationship.

We’ll regularly come out the back door and find Frank doing sun salutations in the back yard. Frank loves yoga.

Last week we to go hike the massive Samaria Gorge of Crete. On the way there we stopped to grab a lunch of smashed panini sandwiches atop an amazing viewpoint. The sandwiches were mediocre but the view was spectacular.

We found out the Samaria Gorge is actually the longest gorge in all of Europe (so long they have a whole brand of purified water named after it).

32k steps and 5hrs later we nearly missed the last ferry out of there.

We met this little guy who unfortunately had a busted paw but played a solid sympathy begging game. He got more of our food than we did.

Plakias beach was a welcome restful spot after the gorge hike the previous day.I knocked out most of a book on channel sales here.
We hiked to the secluded Agio Farago beach the next weekend at the suggestion of @bennyb0y and were not disappointed.

Here we discovered a roving orchestra of cowbell-playing Cretan Mountain Goats. They were headed to a gig and wanted nothing to do with us.

All in all it’s been a great couple of weeks. The desserts have been(I discovered chocolate baklava cake is actually a thing). One more week then back to Lisbon for a brief stopover before Spain. (at Kournás, Khania, Greece)
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Sep 24

Crete week 2 recap:

We find a beach where the water is impossibly blue.

But to get there we have to share this single-lane dirt road with some Cretan mountain goats. Crete doesn’t believe in guard rails and these goats don’t believe in road rules so it makes for an interesting car ride.

@benlakoff and I finally get our Oura rings. I propose to it immediately on the beach (she says yes). Feeling quantified AF now.

Next day we find this gorge with a waterfall. It was gorgeous.

Jon-o decides he’s going swimming but enters by doing a Triple Lindy off the rock ledge.

We drove to the western most point of the island and get there just in time for sunset.

In spite of applying half a bottle of SPF 1000 I’m a potato crisp (thank you Irish genes).

After dinner that night I get replaced by a mannequin. It’s more photogenic and gets less sunburned.

That’s fine though because I discover the Greek dessert Kataïfi and commit to ordering my body weight in this sugary walnut goodness while we’re here.

It just means daily TRX sessions which i have zero issue with given the view.
In summary, Crete is pretty fantastic. Good food, good people, good times. For more fun check out the Pagely podcast we just launched: pagely.com/podcast (at Kournás, Khania, Greece)
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Sep 17

So first week… lemme recap:

We’re staying in what appears to be either a new or newly-remodeled triplex compound on the island of Crete.

2nd day we’re exploring the 4000-year-old palace of Knossos which apparently is the oldest ruins in the oldest civilization in Greece. It’s really old.

They’ve got old jars. On the one in front you can see the thumbprint of its creator on the handle. A 4000-yr-old thumbprint!

There are some really old paintings like this one but most burned in a fire ~1300BC. It’s a stone palace but a) all the columns were cypress trees covered in plaster b) the floors were wooden c) they were using olive oil lamps. Doh!

This is the place where the mythical Minotaur was allegedly underground in the catacombs. Turns out that was just a misinterpretation of a weird procreation screening ritual that involved grabbing a bull by the horns and jumping over it. If you couldn’t then… you didn’t. We didn’t find any Minotaurs but we did find the oldest known throne.

It’s crazy to imagine people living here 4000 years ago. They even had flushing toilets. My Airbnb sometimes don’t even have those…

Anyways this peacock shows up like it owns the place…

So we left and went to dinner at a bombass restaurant called Peskesi (highly recommend).
This is the view off our balcony. Not mad about this for a month. Opa! (at Kournás, Khania, Greece)
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Aug 02

As far as an update on the professional front, I’m still with Pagely having just celebrated four years with the company. It’s been a great experience starting a fairly early-stage (employee #8) helping grow it to a 42-person company. My role has morphed considerably from what it was when I first started. I’ve been lucky to extricate myself entirely from the day-to-day operational sales role into primarily a strategic one nowadays. My
trajectory with the company has gone from their sole sales/marketing person -> sales director -> growth hacker marketing commando and I’m now transitioning into a fourth phase as content producer having produced a bunch of different stuff. I’ve begun doing educational webinars, booting up a podcast and conducting video case studies with our customers. Historically the our biggest deals have come not from advertising nor marketing but via well-established relationships and the thinking here is that these endeavors will be a way to advance that cause at scale. I will let you know next update how that bet
plays out.  

In terms of my side hustles, I’ve just minutes ago interviewed my 30th guest(s) for Nomad Podcast and have amassed a solid repository of advice and experience for people seeking to take their lives abroad. The weekly podcast is designed to work in conjunction with the course I developed which supports the same goal of facilitating the transition to a location-independent existence. The root motive of the project is two-fold: 1) to develop a source of passive-recurring revenue that covers my living expenses while simultaneously 2) working in alignment my Simon Sinek Why of helping others to beat gravity so they can be free to do what they’re born to do.  The Nomad properties are an important project to me. This post explains why if you’re interested.  

I hit a key milestone in episode 22 of successfully outsourcing all the production work involved in delivering the show (about 5hrs per episode). I now have a guy in Macedonia who does all the grunt labor for $12/hr. That process of extricating myself from the operational grind and delegating that work should pay dividends once it comes time to implement the same for Pagely. Gaining leverage via delegation and automation has become a recurring theme. Mastering this skill and then teaching it to others I believe is part of my path.   

Personal-growth-wise the achievements I’m most proud of this past six months are improving my skills significantly in the sport of kite surfing, notching up the quality of the podcast in all respects and adhering fairly consistently to a morning routine. Being on Europe hours gives me the mornings free and my full routine at this point consists of a gratitude journal, doing the Sam Harris Waking Up meditation, Wim Hof method, alternating between TRX & minimalist running, cold showers and intermittent fasting. I’ve found this combo of activities gives me an optimal state to be at peak output most days. You can find discussion of this routine in a recent interview I did for The Maverick Show here.  
   
We did a Charity Makeover back in May after the last Nomad Cruise and built out some useful digital assets to support a couple local causes. In thinking about what’s next once Pagely runs its course I’m intending to channel my energy into turning Charity Makeover into a global movement similar to Startup Weekend. If I’m successful in lobbying Pagely to sponsor me in that regard it may happen sooner than later but ultimately I believe this is where I can create the greatest impact and contribution to society.   

Per the subject line of the email I’m currently in Martha’s Vineyard on my last day of vacation with my parents celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. I was lucky to sit down with them just now and interview them jointly as my 30th guest(s) for the podcast. If you’re interested in hearing about their 50-year journey together be sure to subscribe. They will be episode number 30 airing Sept 9th and you can subscribe via any platform using the header link of this page.  We talk about how they met in the Peace Corps in
Venezuela, building the law firm in the early days of Phoenix, AZ, their respective professional careers and the immigration issue facing the US.

With each of my guests I always end the podcast by asking a series of standard questions. I’ll now start a tradition of answering these below myself and plan to incorporate this practice in my semi-annual updates going forward. The scope with me is obviously constrained to the past six months instead of the lifetime frame that I ask of my guests:   

Most influential book: Super Thinking & Sapiens. Super Thinking is along the same lines as Charlie Munger’s “Seeking Wisdom
and teaches 600+ mental models for improved thinking and decision making. Sapiens is history of humankind delivered in an engaging format and should IMO be the text book for history in high school. Super Thinking was powerful but a lot to digest – I’m now in process of converting the 650 mental models into spaced repetition cards via this app.  

Gadgets: ZoomH6 and Zhiyun Smooth 4. The Zoom is compact device I use to capture high-quality audio for the podcast interviews and is excellent at what it does. The Zhiyun Smooth 4 is a stabilized selfie-stick I started using to shoot the video trailers with podcast guests starting at episode 24.   

Movies: Winter on Fire. I haven’t watched many movies lately but this was a powerful documentary on the revolution in Kiev Ukraine back in Winter of 2014.  

Music: Wookiefoot & this 90’s playlist. Wookiefoot was a discovery that came via my Spotify Discover Weekly list. Try this
song
first and if it resonates just put them on shuffle and listen to all their music because it’s all excellent. I don’t know how to classify their style but they remind me of Phish meets Flobots meets a bluegrass band using sitars, tablas and other ethnic instruments. They have some really thoughtful lyrics that grow on you over time. For the 90’s music I went down a rabbit hole one day constructing a playlist of a bunch of 90’s songs and 235 songs and hours later I created arguably the most exhaustive song list of tunes capturing the music from my college years.  

As amazing as Lisbon has been as a place to live I have yet to establish deep roots community-wise there so there is no telling where I will be for the next
update but I will keep you apprised of my unfolding journey and plan to email you again in early 2020 (BTW how the heck are we more than halfway through 2019??). At any rate thanks for your continued interest in my weird life. If I can help with anything you’re doing don’t hesitate to reach out (and/or just to say hello). If you do subscribe to the podcast any rating or review you can leave greatly helps grow the audience for that and thereby supports the goal of that project.
cheers

-Sean

PS. if you’re on Instagram and want to keep up with my travels I post  pics regularly here. Below is a photo with my folks earlier this week at Farm Neck Country Club in Martha’s Vineyard.

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