How To Earn Passive Income Through Turnkey Real Estate (Even If You Don't Live There)

Cost Of Living in Lisbon & Anatomie Clothing

Kristin:  00:00:00    Kristin here from Badass Digital Nomads. Are you interested in potentially living or retiring to Portugal someday? I just put out a brand new updated video about the cost of living in Lisbon, Portugal, and it is out on my YouTube channel right now at youtube.com/travelingwithkristin. We're getting a lot of great feedback in the comments from viewers. People are saying that they love the format, they want more videos just like this, and that they found it super informational but also easy to watch. So great news all around. It's trending right now. My top three videos on YouTube, and you can watch that at youtube.com/travelingwithkristin. Another comment I've been seeing a lot of, especially from the ladies, are people asking me where I got the jacket that I'm wearing in the video. And it was made by this awesome travel clothing company called Anatomie.  

Kristin:    00:01:04    A fellow travel blogger friend actually turned me onto their clothes over a year or so ago, and I've basically been obsessed with their clothing ever since. And so I've reached out to them. I got a refer-a-friend link where we can give you guys $75 off your first purchase of Anatomie Clothing. And so I'm gonna drop that for you in the show notes. And I love it because if you know me, you know I'm an over-packer. I do not pack light. But what I love about Anatomie clothes is that it's very lightweight. You could totally do carry on only with their stuff. It's super comfortable, it's wrinkle free and it's really stylish. You can dress it up, you can dress it down. They have stuff you can wear to just work from home, but they also have clothing that you can wear out sightseeing or out to dinner or a night on the town. They have lines for both men and women. So if you wanna get $75 off of your first purchase, then use my refer a friend link at the top of the show notes and let me know what you think. And if you haven't seen the cost of Living in Portugal video, head over to my channel right now or after this podcast. And if you wanna see more cost of living videos like this one, then go watch the video and comment below which country or city you want me to cover next.  

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.  

Kristin Wilson,  Host:  00:02:53    Hey there, Kristin, from Traveling with Kristin, and welcome to episode 193 of Badass Digital Nomads. Today I have for you part two of my conversation with Matt Bowles, the host of the Maverick Show podcast. And in last week's episode, in case you missed it, we talked a lot about travel stories and destinations and just had a lot of fun catching up and talking about all of the cool places that Matt has traveled since the pandemic. And in this episode today, in this other half of the conversation, we talk about how you can invest in income-producing real estate properties throughout the United States, even if you don't live there or even if you live in the US but in a different city or state than the one that you are investing in. And so Matt explains how he created this business model from his own personal experience investing in income properties, and how now he's helping other people do the same thing. 

Kristin:    00:04:00    And at the end of the conversation we get philosophical and we talk about some of the current events and issues that are facing the world and also how as travelers or people who temporarily reside in other countries, how we can have an individual impact when we travel. And so we kind of go on a tangent there, but I think it was really valuable and interesting for me to talk with Matt about those things, especially because we haven't done any podcasts together in over a hundred episodes. So it was good to get his insights and perspectives on a lot of the current events facing travelers in the world today. If you're interested in more of what Matt is up to, then check out his podcast, the Maverick Show. I'll also link to previous episodes where he's been on Badass Digital Nomads in the podcast, and his contact info is there as well.  

Kristin:    00:05:02    Also, shout out to Sergio, who left a five-star review on Apple Podcast recently. He says:  "Kristin gets the best nomads, one of the best podcasts about digital nomads, for sure. Love the way she introduces them and makes the conversation flow. She's one of the OGs doing this lifestyle, so best to listen to her. Also, Lindsay from the United Kingdom says, great podcast, super helpful. Thanks, Kristin, for making such an honest podcast covering so much about remote work and location independence." Thank you so much for the five-star review guys, and leave a review wherever you listen and if those don't work for you, you can always leave a review right on our website at badassdigitalnomads.com and see you next week for an episode about learning Spanish in Columbia as an ex-pat or foreigner. And then travel with me to Ireland as I record an episode about my travel experiences there.

Podcast Interview:

Kristin: Well, do you have some more time, and we can talk a bit about real estate, we'll do like a travel episode and a real estate episode.  

Matt:    00:06:12    Let's do it. I'm down  

Kristin:    00:06:14    <laugh>. Okay. So we have talked about how you started your company, Maverick Investor Group, and also how you lost your job, decided to start a location-independent business, how you founded that business. So we will link to those episodes in the show notes. But what I would love to talk with you about and share with people, especially cuz I'm a bit out of the loop with real estate and investment opportunities, a lot has changed during the pandemic. The real estate market in the US has changed a lot in the past couple years. So everyone knows that you can earn an income and build wealth by investing in real estate. But for people who haven't listened to those other podcasts and this is their first chance getting to hear from you, how does your company operate, and why is it different from just investing in a property in your hometown somewhere as a traditional real estate investment?  

Matt:    00:07:17    Yeah, so my company's called Maverick Investor Group, we founded it in 2007 and we've been doing this ever since. And we have a really niche specialty that we founded our company to do one thing and one thing only, which is to help regular individual people buy rental properties in the most investor-advantaged us real estate markets regardless of where they happen to live. And the way that we do this is we help people to buy these properties turnkey. And what we mean by that is we're usually talking about single family homes that are located in a nice suburban area of majority owner occupied community, and they've been fully renovated, they have a long-term tenant in place on a lease and they have a professional property management company that's in place already that is collecting the rent, that's handling any maintenance calls from the tenant and all that.  

Matt:    00:08:14    So you get to buy and own the deeded real estate. You get all the benefits of owning the hard asset, owning the actual house, but you don't have the headaches of being the landlord being the rehabber, or having to live near the property, right? So that empowers you to be able to buy in the best markets regardless of where you happen to live. And that also obviously facilitates us being able to cater specifically to the digital nomad community because digital nomads wanna travel around, they wanna live wherever they want, stay as long as they want, move around. And with this turnkey real estate investing model, they can own real estate without having to live near it. Right? So we've been focusing on that, we've been doing that since 2007. And yes, as you mentioned, the real estate market has gone through a lot of different cycles since 2007, and we have been through all of them, and we have been helping our clients navigate all of them.  

Matt:    00:09:07    And so in terms of what's going on in today's market, yes, I mean it is a very uniquely advantageous time to be buying rental properties right now. One of the reasons is because inflation is so high, and this is one of the least understood benefits about rental properties by the way, most people understand that buying a rental property, you have the potential for home price appreciation. They understand that, and they also understand that if you buy right, your gross rent that comes in from the tenant should cover all of your expenses and then put money into your pocket and give you positive cash flow, right? But a lot of people don't understand the additional benefits of owning rental properties because when you own a rental property, you actually get five profit centers that work for you at the same time, right? So you get the potential for market appreciation, you get the cash flow, but then if you got a mortgage on the property, your tenant's rent is paying down your mortgage every month.  

Matt:    00:10:01    So you're building equity that way, right? And then you have this inflation-hedging benefit, right? And it's actually the ability to profit from inflation. And so the higher that inflation is, the more that you can profit when you own a rental property. I'll explain how that works. It's because home prices rise with inflation, and rents also rise with inflation. And if you took out a mortgage on your property, you borrowed that money from the bank in today's real dollars, but you're paying it back to the bank and in future diminished nominal dollars that are worth less than the ones that you borrowed, right? So inflation is normally considered really, really insidious, which it is if you're holding your money in let's say a savings account because what it's doing is it's eating away at your wealth, and it's a destroying your buying power, right? The higher inflation is the more of your wealth and your buying power destroys if your money's in a bank account.  

Matt:    00:11:02    On the other hand, if you took your money outta the bank account and put it into a rental property, and now you're holding a rental property with a mortgage, what it's doing is it's destroying your debt, it's de basing your mortgage debt, and you're paying the bank back in dollars that are worth less than the ones that you borrowed. And you're actually able to profit from that in addition to the fact that it's driving your rents up higher and higher every year. Which if you own that rental property is a benefit to you. So that's one of the least understood benefits of owning rental properties. And because inflation is three times higher now than it was two years ago, that inflation profiting benefit is also three times higher now.  

Kristin:    00:11:40    Yeah, that's a good point. I understand that conceptually, but it's not something that I've thought a lot about because, well I own one property that's almost paid off, but yeah, I bought it in 2008, so during the last crash. So yeah, it's, you're paying back money that's worth less now. And well actually I have a lot of questions for you. The good thing, this is a podcast I have questions Matt, do you guys manage the properties yourselves with your own property management company? Or how do you find property managers?  

Matt:    00:12:14    Right. So Maverick Investor Group, my company is a real estate brokerage, and we specialize, as I mentioned in this specific niche of helping people buy out-of-state turnkey rental properties. The way that we do that is we go into these markets that are investor advantaged markets, right? So for example, as we're approaching recession, we wanna be helping our clients to buy in recession resilient real estate markets where our clients can make money when they buy and not have to speculate on future home price appreciation in order to make their money, right? And so we go into markets like that, and we build relationships with separate companies and those companies are independently capitalized companies, and they are professional real estate companies that are acquiring properties in some level of a distressed condition. They are renovating those properties with their own construction crews and then they are leasing them out to qualify tenants. And then the management company is either a vertically integrated management company that's part of that company, or it is a third party professional local management, property management company that will be managing that property, right? And in any major city, cuz these are all in major US cities, there are a litany of professional property management companies. And so you can always have a few on hand in case one isn't performing well or isn't working out, you can always switch to another one.  

Kristin:    00:13:46    And what are some of the top regional geographic areas that you guys are working in right now?  

Matt:    00:13:53    Yeah, so that was one of the big pieces of our business model that we wanted to really make sure that we integrated was our ability as a company to be what we call market agnostic. And you know this cuz you have a real estate background. The way that most real estate agents operate is that they only have access to a certain amount of inventory and it's the inventory that's right in their local market, right? <laugh>. So if you call up a real estate agent in a local market and you say, Hey, is it a good time to buy in your market? Of course they're gonna say that it is, right? Yeah. And so what they do is that they take the inventory that they have and then they retrofit their marketing materials to try to sell it. So you take the product and then you figure out how to sell the product that you have.  

Matt:    00:14:38    We wanted to flip that completely around and we wanted to put the buyer's interest first and the reality that the most advantageous markets change over time. So we wanted as a company as Maverick to be market agnostic and say we don't care where you buy, we're gonna make money no matter what you buy, no matter where you buy. So we're not financially incentivized to drive you to any particular market. We wanna help you to buy in the best market for you, which is the most advantageous market at the time that you're ready to buy. And the reason why, just so people understand too how the profit model works in the United States, the seller pays a hundred percent of the real estate brokerage fees and the buyer pays nothing. And so the beautiful thing about that is that we don't ever have to charge our clients any money for working with us ever.  

Matt:    00:15:28    And that puts the bonus on us to deliver value because the only time we get paid anything is if we find a property that's the perfect fit for you, meets all your criteria, passes you due diligence and you end up closing on that property, only then do we get paid. But even then, not by you, we get paid by the seller, right? So Right. I love this business model cause I get to work with all of my friends, I work with my nomad friends, my best friend from college just bought, you know, a whole bunch of properties from us last year and it's just fantastic and I don't have to charge them any money, right? So I love, love, love, love, love this business model. Cause I don't actually have to sell anything. I just help my friends buy real estate and if I can deliver that value then we get paid.  

Matt:    00:16:06    So in terms of the market question though, the answer is that the best real estate markets have changed over time. Right? And you've been in the real estate game you just mentioned, right? As long as I have. And so you know that the best markets to buy in back in 2009, 2010, 2011 are very different than the best ones to buy in today. Right? Back then, and I can tell you too, I can go like each year, like our most popular market in 2011 was Phoenix, Arizona. Our most popular market in 2012 was Atlanta, Georgia. Our most popular market in 2013 was Houston, Texas 14, it was Dallas, Texas. I could tell you every year. But now all of those markets that I just named have gone up so much in value in the price and the rents have not gone up proportionally to the price. So what happens in those markets is a process of yield compression. Where now if you were to buy in those markets, you would pay way more for the property but you wouldn't make proportionally more rent. So your cap rate or your cash flow would be much lower. So it's less advantageous to buy there now, right?  

Kristin:    00:17:12    Or you might lose money.  

Matt:    00:17:14    Yes, exactly. <laugh>. Exactly. And so our clients that bought back then in those markets, they crushed it cuz now they have a ton of equity. They already locked in their price to rent ratio back when it was good and now they just have a bunch of equity and they can either cash out, refinance or sell the property and buy a couple more or whatever they want to do. But today people that are buying now, it's very important to go into the markets that are investor advantaged now, markets that are recession resilient now and markets where you can make your money when you buy so you don't have to speculate on future home press appreciation. And right now those are a lot of Midwestern markets. So they're markets like St. Louis, they're markets like Kansas City, markets like Indianapolis, markets like Baltimore, those types of markets where you can buy relatively low rent, relatively high, but markets that have lower than average unemployment markets that have the diversified economies, right? Markets that have things like this which are recession resilient dynamics and economic indicators.  

Kristin:    00:18:20    Yeah, that's a good point. Are you still working in Florida at all since the boom? Because I know before you were doing some work in Jacksonville.  

Matt:    00:18:27    So we have some properties available in what we call higher growth markets, particularly new construction stuff. So we do currently have some new construction product in southwest Florida in particular. And we have some in Charlotte, North Carolina. And so for folks that are interested in brand new construction homes, they're obviously gonna be more expensive than renovated homes. They're also more expensive because you're buying in super hot high growth markets. But we do have a segment of our client base that is super into that they're very passionate about buying new construction. They love that and they love these aggressive growth markets. And so we do have some stuff also in those markets for people that are interested in that.  

Kristin:    00:19:08    And what are the kinds of returns? I mean I know it depends on the market, the price for people that are interested in something like this, it can be very overwhelming to say, okay, I live in Texas but I have some money saved up and I want to buy an investment property. Or even if you don't live in the US, like if you live in Paris or something and you have money saved for an investment, like you have clients from all over the world, right? Yep. So you're like hey okay I have saved up X amount of money, I wanna buy a property. But then you're like, okay, let me start researching the whole US market to try to figure out, you know, where to buy. So just to give people a ballpark, like what are kind of the price ranges of properties, I don't know if you have like different categories or if you specialize in like a certain price point and then like what are kind of ballpark returns that people get for these long term tenants?  

Matt:    00:20:07    Yeah, so when calculating returns on a rental property, it's actually a little bit different than when you do it on most investments because most investments like a stock or that kind of a thing have usually one profit center, which is that you buy it and you hope and prey goes up in value. If it does you can make money but then you gotta sell and then you gotta pay capital gains tax and then you gotta hope that whatever leftover beats the rate of inflation. And if it does, you made a profit on the other hand of the stock goes down, you're really outta luck, right? Sometimes there's two profit centers, you might have a dividend paying stock or something like that. But with real estate, when you buy and hold, not flip hold a rental property, you actually get five separate profit centers, right? So when we're calculating on ROI, it's important to take that into account.  

Matt:    00:20:53    So first of all, we have the cash flow, right? So if you're buying in these markets that we're talking about a hundred to $150,000 property right now this year in a market like St. Louis or Indianapolis and your tenant's rent is covering all of your expenses and it's covering an estimate for maintenance and vacancy as well. And then what's left over on that, that's flowing to you every month, that is probably gonna be around a 7% let's say, right? What we call a capitalization rate. You know, after you take out your annual operating expenses, you have your net operating income, you divide that by your purchase price, that's called cap rate and that is about, call it around 7% I would say at this price point in these markets at this time. But then you have to remember that especially if you're using a mortgage, the amazing thing about financial leverage is that you only have to put down 20% of the price of this property. 

Matt:    00:21:47    The bank's paying 80 with the mortgage, right? But you get a hundred percent of the appreciation. So we know that the housing market is not gonna continue to go up forever at, uh, percentages that it has the last couple years, right? That's very remarkable how much the appreciation has been. So let's say that that tapers off and it slows down to normal historical rate of about 5% per year, right? Well, if the home price goes up, let's just say you bought a hundred thousand dollars home, and it goes up 5%. So it goes from a hundred thousand to 105,000. So it's a $5,000 gain in equity based on market appreciation. But you only put down 20%. So if you only put $20,000 down and you made $5,000, cuz you get a hundred percent of the appreciation, let's just say you put $25,000 down cause you have closing costs and stuff, right?  

Matt:    00:22:38    So if you have 25,000 out of pocket and you made 5,000, that is a 20% return on your cash invested, right? So now we're getting into cash on cash return plus let's say 7% from the cash flow. Now you're up to 27%. And then, oh, by the way, remember that your tenant's rent was also covering your mortgage payment. So your tenant was actually paying down your mortgage principle for you. So that's a couple more percent. So now you're up near 30% and then you've got the tax benefits, right? The government wants to incentivize you to buy and hold rental property and provide housing for your fellow citizens so that they don't have to do it. And if you're willing to do that, they're willing to allow you all kinds of incredible tax benefits, such as allowing you to depreciate the value of your property structure even if it's going up in value.  

Matt:    00:23:32    And then to take that as a loss on paper cuz of course you didn't actually lose anything and to use that to write off your tax obligation on your real estate income, right? So you can add a couple more percent from that in terms of what you actually get, get to keep in your pocket when you're calculating after tax return and now all of a sudden you're well up over 30% probably. And that's assuming the market just goes up like 5%, right? But the whole point here is that even if the market doesn't go up at all, even if it stays completely flat, your are still getting a positive cash flow, your tenants is still paying down your mortgage, you are still getting your tax benefits. So regardless of what the housing market does, you are making your money when you buy as long as you buy,  

Kristin:    00:24:13    Right? Have you ever had clients where everything just went wrong? Like they bought a property in a market where the values went down, they had it vacant for a year, they couldn't get a tenant, it flooded and the insurance didn't cover it. You know what I mean? Like <laugh>, have you ever had something like that?  

Matt:    00:24:34    I don't know that I've had anything that is exactly what you're describing about all of those things happening. But one of the things that you want to do to mitigate those things from happening is to buy in what we call the real estate investor sweet spots. Okay? So the types of neighborhoods where our clients are buying are high demand rental areas. So it would be really unlikely that it would be vacant for a long period of time like you're describing, right? if somehow the tenant lost their job and defaulted on the mortgage, and needed to move out or got evicted or some scenario like that, most of these properties are located in what are called landlord-friendly markets, which means that the process for, even if it was a non-compliant tenant that was not being cooperative, usually the eviction process is very quick in most of these markets like 30 days, and they're in high demand rental areas.  

Matt:    00:25:23    So you can release it usually within 30 to 45 days, right? And restabilize the property, right? So in those worst case scenarios, we have eviction or you have something like that, they are in markets where the laws enable you to release that property and get a new tenant in there pretty quickly. And these are in neighborhoods that have that high demand to mitigate that. Then of course as you mentioned, you're getting insurance on these properties. So if you have something happen then you know big uh ticket item happen that would usually be covered by insurance. And then of course you're always gonna do your due diligence before you close on these properties. So you're gonna have a professional home inspection on these properties, right? You're gonna have an appraisal on these properties, you're gonna have all of these things. And then the other thing is to remember is that you have these five profit centers because to your point Kristin, not all of them are always going to perform at the level that you would hope, right?  

Matt:    00:26:16    So one year you might have, the market doesn't go up in value, right? And you didn't make money from capital appreciation. Well guess what? You have four other profit centers, right? One year you might have an unusually high amount of vacancy and maintenance costs and turnover and stuff like that and that might disrupt your cash flow, but maybe the market went up in value, right? And you made all that money back in the capital appreciation, maybe one year you might have any number of other things, right? So the five profit centers, any one of them can be more or less in any given year, right? Like this year inflation is super high, the inflation profiting benefit is through the roof this year that's significantly higher than it was two years ago, right? So that is unusually high and beneficial to real estate investors this year, right? Maybe a few years from now that'll be back down low and another profit center will be higher, right? So that's why it benefits you to have five profit centers because if one or two of them doesn't perform, you've still got another three or four that can, and you can still have a net profitable year even if one or two things doesn't go your way.  

Kristin:    00:27:24    Do you have any people who are turning these properties into short-term rentals like Airbnb them or I guess it depends if it's a single-family home or if it's in a building where there's regulations on that.  

Matt:    00:27:35    Yeah, so most of our clients are doing the long-term rental thing with these properties. That's kind of how they're specialized. And as you know with the Airbnb stuff, and I've interviewed a number of people on the Maverick show that do the Airbnb thing and that's a perfectly viable model. But there's a lot of variables that go along with that. I mean, all of a sudden you can have a thriving Airbnb business and the city comes down with an ordinance and now all your Airbnbs are illegal, right? And you have to figure out what to do and how to adjust to that or how to do different things. And so with long-term rentals, it's just an incredibly safe, conservative, consistent way to do this. And you're really gonna have a really clear understanding of what your expenses are gonna be, what your rent is gonna be consistently, right? , you don't have these variable vacancy how many nights a month or all this kinda stuff cuz you're on a 12 month lease, right? So it's a really consistent stable, you might even call it conservative way, right? To buy rental properties.  

Kristin:    00:28:38    It's a lower return from the cash flow perspective, but it's also a lot less work. <laugh>, I know from experience, and just talking about this, it makes me think of, I know a few people who started investing in real estate but then they became full-time landlords. And I really like your model because I know people that own 40 or 50 rental properties, but they can never go anywhere because they're tied to that city. They own them all in the same town, but they might even have people working for them. One guy basically had like a whole construction company, you know with painters and repairman and mean like everything, but he never goes anywhere because he's the landlord of all these properties. And so I like this concept of being able to buy properties and markets that you don't know and to have somebody specialize in knowing those markets for you because you and I actually have really similar approaches to our business model, which is something that I try to explain to people who are unfamiliar with the relocation business model.  

Kristin:    00:29:50    Like if you want to relocate to another country in almost a hundred percent of the cases, you can either go to a local relocation company that will only help you move to not only that country, but sometimes only to that city. Like you might have a relocation specialist who only works in Mexico City but not in Puebla or not in Playa Del Carmen or Cabo or whatever. You might have a company in Costa Rica that they work in all of Costa Rica cuz it's a smaller country. But there's so few companies except for massive relocation company that has franchises or private offices in different places. There's not people like me who specialize in helping people relocate but don't have any vested interest in where you relocate to. Like if you contact a relocation company in Budapest, they're gonna try to get you to move to Budapest <laugh> so that you can be their client.  

Kristin:    00:30:47    But like in my case, I can be like wherever you wanna go, like I'm here to help you decide where is the best place for you to go and you pay me the same amount of money no matter what. So I don't have any preference If you go to Mexico or Costa Rica, and it's the same with the rental properties. People think it's crazy that I am indifferent to whether your rental budget is $200 or $20,000 because I am the renter's agent. Like I'm the buyer's agent helping you find the property and I'm getting a retainer for that from you. I'm not a realtor who's like making commission off of the property that they manage or that they represent. And you're doing the same thing where you're helping people buy properties but you don't have any vested interest in which city they buy the property in.  

Kristin:    00:31:34    You're just trying to get them a good deal so that they then buy more properties from you through you in the future because they're getting a good ROI. And so that's something that I think is really logical for a business model, but yet very rare in the real estate industry and the relocation industry where it's a very old model, a very old business model that's very location specific and geographic dependent. And both of us have independently, like on different life trajectories come up with these business models just out of our own personal life experience that works for people. And I don't know, I don't really know anyone else that does that.  

Matt:    00:32:14    Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? We design this business model both so that we meaning the owners of the company and all of our staff can be completely location independent, can live anywhere we want and we can run this business. And also we designed it so that all of our clients can live wherever they want. They can be digital nomads, they can be expats, they can live wherever they want to, wherever they need to do their thing. And they does not prevent them from owning real estate in the most investor-advantaged markets because the model does not impose any geographic restrictions on the owner of these rental properties. And that was absolutely by design.  

Kristin:    00:33:00    And what if you are not an ex-pat or a nomad or a traveler? What if you're just listening to this podcast and you live in Canada and you're like, well I want a property that costs a hundred thousand dollars because there's not many places <laugh>, you know in Canada that costs a hundred thousand dollars but you just live full-time in city. But you just heard this podcast and now you know, you might be in a different city or country, but you just wanna own a property in that price range and get seven or 8% cash flow. 

Matt:    00:33:28    Yeah, a hundred percent. We have plenty of Canadian clients, we have plenty of Australian clients, we have plenty of clients from Singapore and we have plenty of clients from California and Manhattan, places that are like crazy expensive in the US and make no sense at all in terms of a cash flowing rental property market. And they are buying out of state, right? Even though they're not known as, they just want to be able to own in the best market and that allows them to live wherever they want to live or wherever they need to live and to be with their family or their spouse or their whatever. And it doesn't prevent them from owning in the most advantageous markets. So absolutely.  

Kristin:    00:34:07    Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And you have people that they don't work, they just own real estate and get cash flow from these properties and then you also have people that they just, maybe they own one property and it's just a side income for them or what is kind of the lay of the land that you're seeing and the types of people that are making a income with these sorts of properties?  

Matt:    00:34:34    Yeah, so most of our clients that come in the door, what we will do is we will have an initial video consultation with them and we'll talk to them about their situation that they're in right now, their financial goals and their investment goals and where they would like to be 10 years from now, right? Most of our clients are interested in eventually building a portfolio of cash flowing rental properties. So they have one house, and then they have another house and then they have another house, and they continue to hold them. So they're getting more and more and more streams of passive income. Their houses have more and more assets that are going up in value. And also by accumulating more properties, they're also diversifying, hedging against the downside risk that you mentioned of vacancy loss or maintenance or one of those properties not performing well in a particular year.  

Matt:    00:35:22    And then they have more that perform well, right? And so for Americans that can qu– qualify for a conventional mortgage at a bank, they can get 10 conventional mortgages before they get cut off and then they have to go into private financing and stuff, which is, is more expensive. So those 10 sort of golden tickets, right as you might call them, called golden tickets because that's the least money down and the lowest interest rate that you can get, right? So most of our clients will come in the door and they'll say, okay, I eventually want to accumulate a portfolio of 10 properties. Now some people will do that buying one property a year, some people will do that, you know, I had one client that bought 10 properties last year. And so, depending on their financial position and their acquisition goals and all of that, we work with them to develop a customized plan that is best for them.  

Matt:    00:36:12    And as you know, Kristin and I have interviewed people on the Maverick Show podcast that have enough rental properties now that they just live off their passive income, they quit their job, and they travel the world full-time, and they live off their passive income. And then other people, they just wanna take their active income from their job and invest it in something that's going to put income into their pocket, put it into a cash flowing asset and just start building that portfolio. So wherever people are at in their journey, they can come in the door at Maverick, and we work with them on a customized plan that works for them.  

Kristin:    00:36:43    And what about you and your partner or your co-founder? Do you guys have your own real estate portfolios, like your individual ones, or what are your goals?  

Matt:    00:36:52    Yeah, so I just bought a property this past year in St. Louis, which is one of the markets that I mentioned to you. I actually bought that property inside of my self-directed retirement account, which is another technique that some of our clients are using, right? Because if you get a self-directed retirement account, a really self-directed one now that's kind of jargon, it's now used by some of the mainstream companies. But if it's truly self-directed then you can buy anything that you want that's not legally prohibited. There's legal prohibitions against like life insurance and collectibles and stuff, right? You can't buy baseball cards in your retirement account, but you can absolutely buy real estate. And so I bought a rental property and my self-directed retirement plan last year. My business partner has one under contract now that's actually Kristin, how this whole thing started. I think you know the story of how Maverick started, right?  

Matt:    00:37:43    Which is that I was working at at job and I just started buying rental property on the side as I was investing. And you know, I was investing in real estate on the side as I was working at my nine-to-five office job. And then my friends just started asking me, they were like, Hey, how are you doing that real estate investing? Can you show me how to buy properties too? I was like, sure, I'll show you what I'm doing. You can buy properties just like I'm doing it. I would show my friends how to do it and then they'd buy properties. And what I noticed was that the real estate brokers that were helping us to find these properties were making a commission on all the sales that I was buying that my friends were buying and that they were making money on this but we weren't paying it <laugh>.  

Matt:    00:38:22    And I was like, huh, that's interesting. That's cool that they're getting compensated. Like they're providing value to us, right? They're helping us find these properties but we're not paying them anything. But yet they're getting compensated because the seller pays a hundred percent of the real estate brokerage commissions. Yeah. So I was, I was like that's amazing. So I understood the business model. So then as you know, when I started my business I was like okay, this is incredible. Cause I could start a business model where I can keep helping my friends buy real estate, charge them nothing but make money for doing it,  

Kristin:    00:38:50    Make an income.  

Matt:    00:38:51    I was like, like sign me up for that piece of smile cuz I don't have to sell anything at all. Sign me up for that. So yeah.  

Kristin:    00:38:57    Yeah, actually I have friends who got their real estate licenses just so that they could pay themselves commission on their own properties. So that's good. When you buy properties for yourself, do you also get the commission?  

Matt:    00:39:10    Yeah. Nice. Yeah and we have a whole real estate agent network. So any real estate agents that are listening as well are welcome to join that. Real estate is a very, very tightly regulated industry in the United States. just like the securities industry, just like the mortgage industry, right?  

Kristin:    00:39:29  No,   not on never country though <laugh>.  

Matt:    00:39:31    No. But in the United States it is, right? Yeah. And so the only people that we maverick are legally allowed to pay a referral fee to are licensed real estate agents when they refer us their clients, right? Which we do. And we have a whole referral network set up for that, right? It's very different from like selling an online course where you can pay a commission to any human being that refers you a customer that buys your online course, right?, you're allowed to pay them a commission. Not so with real estate. With real estate you can only pay licensed real estate broker. But we have set up this whole real estate agent network where real estate agents can register with us and then they can send their clients to buy turnkey rental properties from us and we can pay them a referral fee for doing it right and pay them on their own properties that they buy from us too.  

Matt:    00:40:18    Because like you just said, if they have a license that whether it's their own property or their client's property, they make the fee regardless of that. And it's a pretty good opportunity for a lot of traditional real estate agents cuz as we started talking about, most agents only have access to the properties in their own market. So what this allows a traditional realtor to do is to say, Hey, now that I've built this whole relationship with you and helped you buy your dream house to live in and all that also now I have something else to offer you, right? If you're interested in buying rental properties that have access to these out-of-state buying opportunities for turnkey rental properties, if you wanna diversify into other markets to start building your rental property portfolio and those agents can send their clients right over to us and we take care of 'em and if they close then we uh, pay those agents a referral fee. So it's a really a win-win for everybody. 

Kristin:    00:41:03   Mm-hmm   <affirmative>, I should get my real estate license <laugh>, I almost got it in 2016 in the US but then I started traveling again and I didn't finish.  

Matt:    00:41:16  Well  I remember in our very first interview on the Maverick show and if your listeners don't know, you were one of the pillar episodes when I launched the Maverick show. You were episode number three in 2018 of the Maverick Show and you remain one of the pillar episodes that a lot of people continue to listen to in reference to, to me and everything else. And I remember in that episode we talked about how you were not only licensed real estate agent but you actually got on the House Hunters International and got quite a bit of a claim back in your real estate days. Yeah. And that was fun. You and I bonded over that initially  

Kristin:    00:41:48    I was licensed in Costa Rica, but at the time you didn't need a license. I just thought I should know what I was doing so I did it <laugh> so I didn't Yeah. Uh, that's great that people are still listening to that.

Kristin:   Hey there, Kristin here. Did you know that I have a weekly newsletter? You can stay in touch and receive an email from me every Friday by going to travelingwithKristin.com/subscribe. You'll be the first to know about new projects, videos, and opportunities for attending meetups live streams, and more. You'll also get a lot of travel and remote work tips, insights, and thoughts that I don't share anywhere else. Sign up today at travelingwithKristin.com/subscribe and now back to the show. What are some of your most popular episodes over there?  

Matt:    00:42:43    Oh man. You know, we've done a lot of different episodes of the Maverick Show. As you remember, we launched in 2018 and so I've been doing it every week since 2018 and I've been interviewing a lot of different people around the world as I travel notwithstanding the pandemic lockdown period and all that kind of stuff. But outside of that, 85% of my interviews are in-person interviews with people usually that I am traveling with. Right? So just recently I mentioned that I interviewed Tammer Abiyu who hiked Mount Kilimanjaro with me and we're talking about what it was like to travel in Africa for a few months together, what it was like to hike Kilimanjaro and we're sort of debriefing that kind of stuff. Most of the people that I interview, they've traveled to certainly I'd say on average definitely over 40 countries. Some people it's like 140 countries, right?  

Matt:    00:43:35    So I'm pulling out really interesting travel stories. So for some people it's like they love the episodes with like the really compelling travel stories, right? Because they're like, Ooh, I want to go to that place or I wanna do that thing or that was an amazing story and they love to hear the narrative and the story and and find travel places. In some cases I'm interviewing super high-profile entrepreneurs, right? Like people that have built location independent businesses that are just crushing the game and we go kind of granular on exactly how they built that business and what they did and what the tactical stuff is and so in those cases there's some people that are like, I really like those business building episodes and stuff. Or as I mentioned, I've interviewed a couple real estate investors that are just living off their real estate income and we talked about how they built that real estate portfolio.  

Matt:    00:44:20    So I think it really depends on the person and the listener. But we do a range of these things and I sort of keep it the sort of a range of things between going through the person's story and talking about how did they become location dependent and and design their nomad life, how did they build their business or do what they do and then what have really been some of the highlights and some of the top travel stories, places they recommend, you know, and that kind of stuff. And really kind of bring out some of those stories. So I think the popularity sort of depends on which person's listening, but we've had, uh, quite a ride and we're now over 200 episodes.  

Kristin:    00:44:54    Yeah, I think it depends on what you're in the mood for that day, too. I mean I listen to tons of different podcasts and then I even forget sometimes about my own episodes of what I published and I'll like catch an old episode and I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that now. And so yeah, it just kinda depends what mood you're in. If you wanna learn something, some tactics and tips or if you just wanna kick back and listen to a good story and get some travel ideas, which I kind of feel like <laugh> this episode was the perfect encapsulation of that because we did half the episode about travel and half the episode about making that money and business and numbers and real estate returns. I mean, but that's very characteristic of the location-independent travel lifestyle podcasts as well. And there's lots of great ones out there and I see other people's like, and I listen to other fellow colleagues like Mitko from that Remote Life and Chase from About Abroad and just had Amy from Nomad Topia on my podcast in December and she was one of the first nomad podcasts.  

Kristin:    00:46:03    And I just love that balance. You know, there's that saying you have to have money to make money but it's like you need money to be able to live on the world and to be able to travel. And so these things go hand in hand and at the end of the day people just want to enjoy their lives, they wanna meet other cool people, they wanna get inspired, they wanna accomplish their goals and I think that's one of the things that this type of podcast is really good for. And then if you need super specific info on SEO or something like that, then you can go look up that person and get on their email list and go deeper into those things. But yeah, I like it and you know, there's so many interesting people in this lifestyle that it's like there's just thousands of people that I want to talk to and and have on the show. So we need a lot of podcasters to be able to get all of this info and all of these stories out there. So you're doing a great job.  

Matt:    00:46:58    Aw, well, thank you. You inspire me as well. I love what you're doing with your show and I agree. I mean, you know, the thing is, and the reason why I really started the podcast is cuz I was just running into these extraordinary people and I was having these conversations and I was just like, this is unbelievable. I wish other people could hear what we're talking about. Yeah. Is really why I started the podcast, you know? So I mean just recently, just in the last few months here in Africa, like one of the women that was traveling with me, Jessea Lu, who I interviewed recently on the Maverick Show, she is the number one all around female free diver in the world.  

Kristin:    00:47:34    I saw that. That's insane. I haven't listened to that one yet, but I saw there's two episodes with her, right?  

Matt:    00:47:40    Yeah. It was a two-part episode that we did. Yeah. I mean she can hold her breath for over eight minutes and she can dive down over 90 meters on one breath. And she's been ranked the number one female free diver in the world for three years running. And she only discovered free diving after she had done a PhD, pursued a whole career in pharmacology, all of this kind of stuff. And then she stumbles on it as a hobby, it becomes her passion. She starts competing internationally competitively, and now she's a top free diver in the world. I mean it's like people just tell me these stories. I'm like, wait, what <laugh>? And she's traveling around and no meaning around to do like wild stuff like free dive with killer whales and blue whales and yeah, I mean like just remarkable things, right? She got sponsored to go free diving and Antarctica. Like lemme just insane stories.  

Kristin:    00:48:30    You're eating white truffles on your pasta while helping people buy properties in Baltimore. Like those two things don't seem to go together, and you're doing it from Italy. When you really look at it on paper, it seems insane. And now coming outta the pandemic, I'm no free diver, but like I found myself DJing on an island to a couple hundred digital nomads a few weeks ago. I mean, right? How is that a thing?  

Matt:    00:49:00    Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, you know, that's what I'm saying. I mean, that's how you and I initially connected, right? You were like, oh yeah, you know, I was like, what do you do? I remember this, I remember our conversation in 2018. We were on a boat, and I was like, "Wait, Kristin, wait, what do you do?” And you're like, I help poker players <laugh> relocate to, like, offshore destinations. It's like, "Wait, will you do what?” And then I was like, I have to interview you. So that's what your number three, you're the third interview in the Maverick show. But my conversation with you was literally one of the conversations. It was like, I have to start a podcast, I have to interview these kind of people cuz this is just unbelievable.  

Kristin:    00:49:36    There's a lot of 'em.  

Matt:    00:49:37    Yeah. I mean, and whenever I come across someone, I will go deep on their level of expertise and the lessons that they've learned and things that can be imparted to others that people can take away and use in our own labs. Like, I'm not gonna become the best free diver in the world, but what were some of the peak performance techniques, right? or the techniques that she used to become the best in the world at something once she got passionate about it, that could be applicable to other things that maybe I would try to do in my life or try to improve myself at. But I run across people all the time. Like I interviewed another woman that traveled with me through Africa, Dr. Aprile Andelle, she's a psychotherapist. She specializes in mental health for nomads and that is like part of her niche therapy business. She does remote therapy for nomads and specializes in mental health for people in this lifestyle. I was like, that's unbelievable. I need to draw all of that out of you and understand exactly what that is 

Kristin:    00:50:33   I didn't even know she existed.  

Matt:    00:50:35    Yeah. I'm like, me and my listeners need to understand that so can like, can we do that? So I literally, what I did for that episode, I took a bunch of tests before the episode. So I took like my Enneagram personality test. My love language test, all of this different stuff, right? And I gave it to her and then we, we actually talked about me on the episode,  

Kristin:    00:50:56    <laugh> a fair group therapy.  

Matt:    00:50:57    Yeah, exactly. So we did cool stuff like that. But then we talked about like general stuff like for nomads and this lifestyle and different things. And so I, I'm just constantly interacting with and traveling with extraordinary people that are brilliant and amazing and have incredible levels of expertise on things. And what I try to do in my episodes is just pull out the things that are generally applicable. How they did what they did or what they know or what they're an expert on and how it can add value to me personally, first of all, right? Cause I'm interested, but then also like my entire audience of people there to listening. And so I've just been doing that and it's just been the highlight of my week for five years now.  

Kristin:    00:51:36    And then all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, but five years later you become better at that skill. So even though you started in a non-profit organization and then you're in real estate and now you're a professional broadcaster, basically. And that was the epiphany I had in Madeira in December at the Nomad Island Fest was that within five years I was doing three things in one day that I had absolutely no experience with five years earlier I gave a keynote on how to make money with content, so how to do content marketing, how to monetize content, writing videos, et cetera to the attendees at the Nomad Escape. Then I filmed a video for my YouTube channel that day with a videographer from Brazil who moved to Portugal and then I DJ'ed for three and a half hours at a party. I knew nothing about content marketing, I knew nothing about making videos and I knew nothing about music production or DJing five years ago.  

Kristin:    00:52:47    Nothing like literally nothing. And that's what I love to share with people is how five years goes by really fast. And you know, we're just getting started. Well I just saw an interview online with Harrison Ford who's in his eighties and I was like, what is it like when you've been doing something for 60 years? Like he's been an actor for 60 years. Like that's mind-boggling to me. So I love kind of that trajectory for people and like letting them see that they can start a new career at any age. They can pursue hobbies at any age. And then I also love hearing those stories of like how people changed jobs. I just saw on CBS Sunday morning a profile of a woman in South Korea who quit her corporate job to make luxury paper. This paper that lasts a thousand years, I think it's called Kaji, when she realized that this paper existed, she quit her job to become a specialist at making this paper. And you know, she's not a nomad, and she doesn't travel around, but like just that kind of stuff is very inspiring to me too. And that's kind of the stories that come out of these conversations that can kind of seem normal, but they're not.  

Matt:    00:54:00    And there's like, I feel like I learn so much from my guests and they give me tips and pointers on things that can just have incredible ripple effects and lead to things. So for example, I interviewed a woman named Ivy Xu who has started this incredible community called Asian Wander Women for Asian Female Nomads, which is amazing. And she does this whole investment piece of it. And she's very into cryptocurrency and NFTs and teaches the other women in her community about like all these different investment tactics and stuff. And she's an amazing nomad, incredible traveler. So I had her on the show and towards the end of the show I said, "gimme a couple of your favorite NFTs that you've bought in that you own the project." And she gave me a couple that I actually owned as well, which was really cool. But she gave me one that I had never heard of and she said the coolest one I think that I bought this year is called The Royals.  

Matt:    00:54:55    And it is a Ghanaian NFT project. And when you buy the Royals NFT, you get the digital piece of art and all that. But it comes with utility. And the primary piece of utility that it comes with is that when you own this NFT, it serves as a ticket to get you access to a black tie red carpet gala in Accra, Ghana over the New Year's week. And I was like, that's unbelievable. And so literally when the episode was over, I went on to open sea and I looked up the thing I, it hadn't even minted out. I actually went to the website, I was able to mint, it hadn't even minted out yet. It sold out now. And I minted two, and I said, first of all, I'm going to this and also I'm gonna bring a plus one to this.  

Matt:    00:55:46    So I buy two. And then as I'm traveling around the world, I start telling other nomads about this. I was like, yo, I bought this NFT, I'm going through this black tie red carpet gala in Ghana over the New Year's Week. They're like, that's crazy. How do I buy one? And so I had multiple friends actually podcast guests who've been on the Maverick Show also some of them were start buying this NFT and they're like, can we go <laugh>? Like we wanna go to Ghana and we want to go to this red-carpet, black-tie gala. I was like Done. So a bunch of my friends buy this NFT, we all rent this big villa Airbnb in Ghana for the New Year's Week. So we go to Aro, we go to all that stuff that I told you about with the festival and the New Year's parties and all that.  

Matt:    00:56:31    And then we go to the black tie Galen Now leading up to this, I went and had an outfit cuz it's traditional Ghanaian cultural event, right? So you could wear a tuxedo like American style stuff, but the people that are going there are wearing traditional formal Ghanaian outfits, right? So I was in Dakar Senegal before I went to Ara in Ghana and Dakar is the fashion capital of West Africa. Okay? So I'm here and I go into this bespoke fashion shop and I was like, listen, I need a formal outfit. They're like done no problem. I said, however, I'm not going to this event in Senegal. I'm going to this event in Ghana. They said, no problem, we know exactly what the Ghanaian style is, we'll do a Ghana style outfit and we'll make it for you here. So I get accustom fitted the whole thing and then I roll up to the gala and I had a whole crew of people that are also there and we met the most amazing people.  

Matt:    00:57:27    Again, it was probably a mix, maybe like half plus were Ghanaian folks, but half Plus came from like around the world just like me. They had bought this NFT from somewhere, and they were there, they had some of the top Afro beat artists performing, I mean like five feet in front of us. You know, it was like a super intimate crowd. Everybody dressed up, everybody's just dancing, everybody's just, it just turns into one party where like the stars are like dancing in with the whole group and it just becomes this one party. And it was just amazing. And all of that happened cuz I happened to have this one amazing Nomad Ivy Xu shout out on my podcast and she happened to tell me about this NFT project and I told her the people about it and then we all showed up there,  

Kristin:    00:58:05    You ran with it. The the crazy, the world that we live in. But that's why I love podcasts and that's why I have a podcast too because you learn so much. But every podcast that I listen to, not just people that I interview, but when I listen to podcasts as well, it's like you get at least one takeaway, one spark of an idea, one tip from every episode you listen to every book that you read. And so that's really what I love about it and I think that's why people pay $10,000 plus to go to a conference or an event. Some of them are like a hundred thousand dollars to get a ticket, and it's because of one connection or one idea that you get that has that much value in your life. And so that's why I love podcasts cuz it's like a free way of getting ideas from really interesting people that can then result in you, in your personal life. Either visiting a place that you never heard of before or making more money or having a business idea or buying an N F T that results in you being at a black tag gala in West Africa and like <laugh> anyway. Exactly.  

Matt:    00:59:13   Exactly. And I intentionally try to interview people that are way smarter than me in the area of their expertise, right? I, I interview people that you know, speak nine languages fluently or do these amazing things that I'm never gonna be able to do at their level. But I'm curious about how they got to do that at their level and how I can do it better if not as good as they can and also what general tips and techniques and tactics can be extrapolated Oh yeah. From that and apply to other areas of life as well as people that have just traveled places that I've never traveled or done all these different things and I just wanna learn from people. So it's like totally this amazing thing to get fascinating, brilliant people to just free conversation with you and then let everybody else listen in on it.  

Kristin:    00:59:58   And People always open up cuz you forget that thousands of people are listening <laugh>. But yeah, you can extrapolate those tips to anything. The more people that I talk to and the more that I learn from them, the more I start to observe these universal truths and patterns that show up in everything. And I think that's why we're so fascinated with the stories of top performers like that Michael Jordan documentary and more recently with this Prince Harry book that came out, I haven't read the book but I heard that the ghostwriter or collaborator or whatever he is of that book also co-wrote biographies and memoirs of athletes like Andre Agassi. And I was like, oh I wanna read that book. I didn't even know that book existed. It's called Open for anyone who's interested. And apparently, it's one of the best sports bios ever written. So you know, I don't play tennis nor do I plan to maybe someday. But I would be interested in knowing about his story. And that's why those documentaries about athletes and high performers go viral because they're things that you can apply to anything, especially mindset, which brings us back to the first half of this conversation, hiking Kilimanjaro. It's as much mental preparation and stamina as it is physical. And I think that goes for everything in life and sometimes it's more mental than anything.  

Matt:    01:01:20    Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think the other thing that you and I have in common, and we've talked about a lot over the years of our podcast, is just also trying to pay attention to socially conscious and politically conscious things as we travel, right? And in those conversation topics that we raised with people and stuff. So for example, I've interviewed a number of people from countries and I know you have as well that do not have very powerful passports, right? and what is it like to be a nomad from a country? I recently interviewed a nomad from Kenya,  

Kristin:    01:01:51    Or not even a nomad, just a person <laugh>, just a person with a passport where they're limited in how many countries they can travel to. Yeah,  

Matt:    01:01:59    Yeah. I mean I interviewed a Kenya nomad recently, a friend of mine and she has traveled to over a hundred countries on a Kenyan passport. I've also interviewed a nomad who's traveled to over a hundred countries on a Philippines passport. And the experience that they have to go through to do that, yeah, is so different from traveling on an American passport or a Japanese passport or one of these like super privileged  Passports. 

Kristin:    01:02:24    I think that's gonna change with the digital nomad visas if they become easier to get and every country has one because they are open to citizens of any country. So this makes the passport power struggle issue irrelevant. And also Safety Wing is creating a country on the internet that anyone can be a citizen of and they're gonna do these bilateral agreements with different countries, governments where if you hold a safety wing passport, you can be treated as a first-class citizen <laugh> and not be discriminated against because you come from a country that's on some list of high-risk individuals that you have to apply for a separate visa. So you then wouldn't need to apply for visas to visit most countries. So I mean that's more down the road, but I hope that that's changing, and I hope that within the next 10 years, we don't have this conversation anymore, you know, or this like just not a thing. Maybe even sooner with the way how fast the Digital Nomad Visas rolled out, maybe it could be within like three to five years, who knows.  

Matt:    01:03:30    Yeah, I mean I really, really hope so another interview that comes to mind cuz you asked me like which ones have been like really remarkable, I interviewed a woman named Aline Sara and what she did is because you know this Kristin, when people are uh, displaced or they're refugees, right? And they're in another country as a refugee status, right? Or a displaced person, they oftentimes can't work in that country, right? So there's all of these restrictions on them. And so what Aline Sara did is she built a company that is empowering displaced people and refugees who cannot work in the place where they are to teach language  

Kristin:    01:04:10    That's amazing.

Matt:    01:04:11    Online or do translations or do all this other kind of stuff and basically become location independent remote digital freelancers and then marketed on the other side to people that want to pay to learn Arabic, right? So it's like Syrian refugees is what she started with, right? And now she's expanded it to a lot of other groups. But people that wanna learn Arabic Syrian refugees are not allowed to work locally, but they can teach Arabic online, they can do translations, they can do all this stuff. And the additional benefit of that is then that the people that are learning Arabic from a Syrian refugee who has been through what they have been through also gets this incredible cultural experience Yeah. That gets to learn from that person and all of this kind of stuff. And there's literally, I interviewed a guy named Lamar Brandon who runs this program called Teens of Color Abroad, right? Where he brings mostly black students from Brooklyn abroad and starts them on sort of their international travel experience during the pandemic. He had his class, mostly black students in Brooklyn doing Alene Sarah's program where they're learning Arabic and other languages from refugees and having these interactions and these are high school students. And so there's just all of these like amazing connections that get started through different variations on how can we creatively apply location independence to benefit all these different people in the world.  

Kristin:    01:05:36    And also because each of those parties might never travel to each other's countries physically. And even if you did, if you go as a tourist somewhere, you might not meet those people. And so that's also really important because you get to meet individual human beings. It like humanizes a population that's just been very stereotyped due to conflicts and civil war and religion and government and all these other things. And so then you realize they're just human beings and the 99% of them are like everybody else are great nice people that are normal people. And so I love that. I actually just finished reading Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential and I had never read that one. It's like one of his main books. And he was talking a lot about how all of the kitchen workers, the cooks, the sous chefs, et cetera, were from Ecuador and different countries and many of them were illegal immigrants or they were working with undocumented workers that were getting paid low wages by the owners of the restaurants, et cetera, et cetera.  

Kristin:    01:06:44    And I was thinking about how much has changed with that. Like in Miami, that's still huge. Actually, just three days ago, I was talking to someone who moved to Miami from Maine and is working at a restaurant here. The only interview question they asked was basically like, do you speak English? Yes. Okay, you can be a waiter. And that like everyone that was working in the kitchen, like didn't speak English, didn't have papers to be able to work legally weren't getting paid fair wages. And so that dynamic is still happening, but hopefully with remote work and all of the different opportunities, eventually people that didn't have as many options for how to work and had to like physically immigrate to another country or cross a border to try to, you know, work and then get citizenship that way they could just like stay in their countries or go to another country.  

Kristin:    01:07:35    They wouldn't be forced to move to take physical labor jobs where they're getting paid on fair wages. They could actually work online teaching whatever language they speak or doing translation work or freelancing and that they could actually earn a fair wage and instead become tourists or expats or nomads who are like voluntarily moving to other countries for lifestyle reasons and not economic reasons or because they're refugees or something like that. So I'm very excited about that changing on a global scale. And I've, of course, there's other things that happen, like people will say, oh well also more jobs will be exported and et cetera, cetera, et cetera. But we've already had those waves of things happening in the past and as hu- a human global society, we've overcome those challenges just like we always do.  

Matt:    01:08:26    Yeah, absolutely. I think there's incredibly exciting stuff coming up and there's so many people that are thinking so thoughtfully about it, and they're thinking about how we can use these things for good and how we can benefit the world and what positive things we can do with this. And I think the more brain power that comes together on that with those types of values and those types of intentions, hopefully, we can do amazing things for a lot of people.  

Kristin:    01:08:52    Yeah. Because we live in the permissionless economy, which I talked about in like the New Year's episode this year that if you have an idea, you can just implement it. You don't have to ask anybody or tell anyone, you can just do it. And now we have these amazing programs and businesses and nonprofits and all sorts of things happening because people just had an idea and they did it. And that's why Safety Wing with Norwegian co-founders are able to create a global passport without asking anyone. They're just like, yeah, we wanna do this, so we're gonna do it. Oh, we're gonna give health insurance to everybody <laugh>. Like, I mean, it's great <laugh>, that's like like a more complex business model, but you know, who knows. Well Matt, thank you so much for staying with us at one in the Morning in <laugh> in Senegal on the other side of the world. So great to talk with you and I hope that everyone got a lot of new ideas and takeaways and tips from this conversation today and from the last week's episode.  

Matt:    01:09:56    Absolutely. It's amazing to be with you Kristin. It's super, super wonderful to be in dialogue with you always about these things. Always brightens my day or my night or wherever I may be, but I thank you so much for having me back on the show. It was great to be here.  

Kristin:    01:10:11   Thank you. And everybody stay tuned because Matt's gonna be interviewing me on his podcast, so, and you can also check out 220 other episodes with amazing people over there. So check out The Maverick Show when you get a chance and I know you won't be disappointed. Well thank you, Matt, so much for coming back on Badass Digital Nomads today. And where can people get in touch with you and follow you to learn more?  

Matt:    01:10:39    Yes, definitely. So if people wanna just message me directly, the best way to do that is through Instagram. They can follow me at @mattbowlesmaverick, that's M A T T B O W L E S M A V E R I C K on Instagram. Just send me a DM on Instagram. You can get in touch with me directly that way. That's the easiest. Uh, if you wanna check out the Maverick Show podcast that is available on whatever platform you're listening to this podcast on and just type in the Maverick Show with Matt Bowles and that will come up and you can check the podcast out there. And then if you're interested in the real estate stuff and all that, wanted to just give some cool free resources to all the listeners of Badass Digital Nomads cuz I'm a part of this community and love being part of it.  

Matt:    01:11:29    So wanna try to give back. I will put a link here that you can go to, which is themaverickshow.com/Kristin. And if you go to that link, there's gonna be three resources there. One of them is gonna be a white paper that I put together on real estate investing for Digital Nomads, how you can buy cash-flowing rental properties in the best US markets from anywhere. So if you're interested in learning more about that topic, going deeper on that totally free white paper there, I'm also gonna put a link there for a free video consult with us. We'd like to get to know everybody in person, answer all your questions, learn about who you are, and just make sure that we are able to empower you and support you in your real estate investing journey if you're interested in buying turnkey rental properties in the US.  

Matt:    01:12:15    So we will offer you a completely free video consultation if you're interested in that. And then just as a super fun additional resource, I do a minimalist packing webinar, call it Stylish Minimalism, how to travel the world full-time with carry—carry-on luggage only without sacrificing fashion and style. And so I've presented that workshop at a number of different conferences, but I've recorded it, and I'm gonna give it to you guys for free. You can check that out. I will put the link at the same URL. You can get the stylish minimalist packing workshop about how to travel with carry-on luggage only without sacrificing fashion and style. I've traveled with an espresso maker, a podcasting studio, a three-piece suit, a wine aerator, all kinds of stuff. It all fits in my carry-on luggage to show you how I do it. So just go to the Maverickshow.com/Kristin, and there you will find all of this cool stuff.  

Kristin:    01:13:10    I got a wine aerator, <laugh>, and an espresso machine. That's amazing. All right, thanks, Matt. Everyone, go check out those free resources and we'll see you again next week.  

Kristin:    01:13:23    I hope you enjoyed the second part of my conversation with Matt Bowles from the Maverick Show today. And I hope that it gave you a lot of ideas about ways that you can add different investments to your portfolio or create a new passive income stream through real estate investing. And if you missed the first part of our conversation, which is more travel-focused, you can check that out in the show notes or go to Badassdigitalnomads/192 and remember to check out the new Cost of Living in Lisbon, Portugal video on my YouTube channel, Traveling with Kristin. And if you wanna try some of the Anatomie Clothing that I was wearing in the video, you can get $75 off your first purchase by using my refer a friend link in the show notes. Hope you're having a great day, Chao for now from Dublin, Ireland, and see you again next week.