Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - New Month, New City: Why Bridesmaid for Hire Jen Glantz and BF Adam Kossoff Call a New Place Home Every 30 Days

Episode Date: January 12, 2018

Author Jen Glantz — you may know her as the world’s first Bridesmaid for Hire — and her boyfriend Adam Kossoff don’t always know where they’re headed, but they know it will be a different city every 30 days.    A few months ago, they gave up their New York City apartments to become digital nomads who would spend every month experiencing life in a different American city.   We pack a lot into this episode, including dealing with getting laid off, starting over, building a location independent lifestyle, making friends in a new city, fun things to do in Portland, and more.    Of course, we talk about what a Bridesmaid for Hire is!! Visit postcardacademy.co to see a video of Jen at SXSW, where she talks about how she built her brand and offers lots of actionable tips to do this yourself.   If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and forward this show to a friend. If you’re feeling especially kind, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps people discover the show. 🤗   Have a beautiful week, wherever you are ❤️ Instagram, Twitter, Facebook  Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host, Sarah Micatel, and I hope your 2018 is off to an amazing start. Have you made any travel plans yet? I was suffering from a bit of travel paralysis. There are so many places I want to visit this year, and I think I'm finally figuring out a loose plan. My guests today don't always know where they're headed, but they know it'll be a different city every 30 days. I'm talking to author Jen Glantz. You might know her as the world's first bridesmaid for hire, and her boyfriend, friend Adam Kossoff. A few months ago, they gave up their New York City apartment so they could spend every month experiencing life in a different city in America. We pack a lot into this episode, including getting laid off, starting over, building a life where you can work from anywhere, making friends in a new city, fun things to do in Portland, what the hell am I doing with my life?

Of course, we will also talk about what a professional bridesmaid as. Jen and Adam are so much fun. I had a blast talking to them, and I hope this episode will put a smile in your face. Now into my conversation with Jen and Adam. So welcome, Jen and Adam. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having us. So this year, you guys decided to become digital nomads and live in a different city every 30 days. Before we dive into that, I'd love to start by talking to you, Jen, about how you set up the kind of career to enable this lifestyle. So you're brilliant at PR, you're a business consultant, and you're also a professional bridesmaid. So how did you become a professional bridesmaid? That's such a good question. I like to say

that a lot of the big success moments that I had in my life happened by accident. I had gone to so many weddings as a bridesmaid's for my friends in my early 20s and there was one night in particular where two distant friends asked me to be a bridesmaid and I just thought to myself, wow, if I can do this for friends I haven't spoken to in a couple of years, perhaps I can do this for complete strangers. So that prompted me to start the business bridesmaid for hire about three years ago. I was working full time while I started that business. So essentially for a couple of years, I was working two jobs at once, and I loved it. I loved being so busy.

I loved having so much to do. But all of that came to a halt when I got laid off for my full-time job. And after that, I remember when I walked out of that door after being told I was essentially fired, I thought to myself, I never want to work for somebody else again. It was heartbreaking. I didn't want to do it. And from that moment on, I tried to build a lifestyle for myself where I could work from home or work from anywhere. Yeah, sometimes these things are just a blessing in disguise, right?

Oh, big time. And I remember my mom told me, she said, Jen, you know, your legs were hanging off of the mountain. You needed someone to push you because if you didn't get laid off, you might have worked a full-time career for somebody else for your life. I think you needed somebody to tell you, go off and spread your wings, and that's exactly what happened. So what sort of services are you offering for brides and maids of honor? So I offer the weirdest service you ever heard of, which is the Brides Made for Higher Service, where brides will pay me to put on the bridesmaid dress and walk down the aisle for them. I also have packages for Made of Honors where I do speech writing for them.

I also have a consulting package for both brides and made of honors where I let them know what to expect for their role. Because being a bride or a maid of honor is an unnatural thing. Most people have never done it before, so I'm there to help them out. And an extension of Bridesmaid for hire, I do have a day of coordination business as well where people can hire me to be that background person for their wedding to help out with all of the things that happened before their wedding and on their wedding day as well. And I think a lot of us, like our gut reaction is we feel sorry for these ladies who need to hire somebody to be a bridesmaid.

But what's the reality of the type of women who hire you? I think the reality is that they just feel very alone in the wedding. planning process, planning a wedding is really hard. It's really stressful and a lot of people are lucky. They have close friends. They have family members to hold their hand and be there for them, but not everybody has that. And some people have that, but they feel bad burdening them with it. So they reach out to me and I'm there for them from start to finish of their wedding. I'm not their wedding planner. I don't help them pick out the flowers or the tablecloths, but I am there to help organize their thoughts. I'm there to go with them on appointments. And I'm there to make them

feel supported and confident before their wedding and of course on their wedding day. And so you are so brilliant at media and that's part of what you're doing now. Could you just share the Craigslist story and then how you capitalized on that situation to grow your business? Sure. So when I got the idea to start Bridesmaid for hire, I figured, okay, I've never started a business before. I was a poetry major in college.

What do I do to test this idea out? So I went on Craigslist. I posted an ad there. about two days later, I realized that the ad had gone viral. A lot of different publications all over the world picked up the weird ad that I wrote about being a bridesmaid for hire and spread it everywhere. So I used that as an opportunity to start the business, but I also used that as an opportunity to get the business in the news over and over and over again.

I knew I didn't have very much money to grow this business, and I thought that PR would be my greatest asset to get people to learn about the business and hire me and for different opportunities to happen. So I worked in PR for about a year and a half in my early 20s. It was a tough job. It was one of my hardest jobs they've ever worked because it's essentially sales. You're calling reporters, you're pitching them an idea. Most of the time they hang up on you. So because of that job, I had that backbone of PR knowledge and I was able to keep my story in the news for a good two and a half years about on a weekly basis. Someone would write about the story, would write about something new that happened to my business. And because of that, I did get a lot of eyeballs on what

I was doing, and it helped me just expand the business even more, eventually write a book about what it's like to be a bridesmaid for hire. And it's been really cool to get to think about and strategize how to keep a business in the news over such a long period of time. And so your book, always a bridesmaid for hire. Is that a memoir or is that a business book? It's a memoir, and it's a little bit interesting because there's multiple sections of the book. There's a great section of the book that talks about my early life, what it was like growing up in Florida. There's a big section of the book that talks about my big personal life with dating and how I've struck out a lot when it comes to that. And then there's a big section of the book that talks about

what it's like to start the business bridesmaid for hire and go to all of these weddings for complete strangers. And a lot of the people that I've met at these weddings and throughout my life who have shaped me and made me who I am. So it's not a wedding book. It's not a business book. It's really a book about what happens to a person when they least expect it. And that's what all of the stories have in common inside of the book. Amazing. Okay, I'd love to bring in Adam into the conversation. Hi, Adam. Hey, Sarah. So you guys met a year ago, and at some point you made a promise to each other that every month you're going to move somewhere new. How did this idea, where did this idea come from? Oh, man, I think we saw how much we were spending on rent in New York City and said ourselves, well, what?

we could use this money and travel. We could go explore and live in different places. And, you know, this is the perfect time in our life to do it. So why a new city every 30 days as opposed to just living in a cheaper, cool city? Oh, yeah. So, I mean, living in New York, you meet so many people from so many different places. And, I mean, for me especially, I grew up in New Jersey right outside of New York City. I went to school out in Los Angeles.

I lived in two major cities, right? L.A. and New York. And I knew that there was so much more out there that I wanted to experience. And the only way to do that was to really plant some roots in some way in different spots. And I felt like, you know, I traveled a lot for work and it had been, you know, in different cities for a few days at a time. But I never really got to fully immerse myself in those cities for just a few days. a week. And, you know, we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into if 30 days would be enough. But so far, so good. I think we really do get a chance to live like a local after hitting

a 30-day mark no matter where we go. Now, there's certain cities already on the short list that we've already been that we'd love to go and spend more time in. But I think we know that we don't have forever to do this. So we want to try and explore as much as we can. So we sort of cap it at 30 days at the moment. You know, it's kind of interesting because, you know, I mentioned a lot of what's happened to me in my life has been an accident that turned into a blessing. And the honest truth with us is that we, yeah, we made the commitment that we were going to switch things up and not sign a lease. And the idea started out as a road trip. We were originally going to road trip. We had a whole map of where we were going to go. We were going to spend a couple days here and there. And as it

got closer, I personally started to panic a little bit, just thinking about how crazy that would be. And And I remember there was a day where we didn't have a plan, but our leases were up, and we were subletting for one more month in New York City. And I just remember looking at Adam thinking, you know, we have no plan. In three weeks, we're going to be out on the street practically. Well, what should we do? And that's really where we decided, okay, let's change this from a road trip to living in one place for 30 days.

Like Adam said, that way we can blend in like locals. We can get more of an experience. And the most important thing for us was that we could still work. I think what differentiates our adventure from other people is that we still wanted to fully commit to our jobs while being on the road. And the 30-day thing helped us do that. So how does this work logistically? Let's talk about moving to your first city, which I believe was Portland. Like, how did you set things up?

Did you just show up and find a place? Or did you do some work on the back end before you left to organize? Well, that day, when we were looking at each other, we said, okay, let's go to Wednesday for 30 days. we thought, where do we go? You know, we didn't really have an idea. And I believe Adam said, well, why not Portland? We know nothing about it. Neither of us have ever been there before.

It seems like a city where you don't need a car, which was another one of our requirements, because we don't have one. And we decided, okay, how do we do this? We went on Airbnb, and Adam started looking at places. He started to research the best area of town to live in where you wouldn't need a car, but you can still access different places. And we found a great Airbnb.

It looked beautiful. and we put in a request. We put in a request to say, okay, let's live there for 30 days. And we waited kind of patiently to hear if we got it or not, because by then we were super excited by the idea of Portland. And we got accepted to live in that Airbnb for the 30 days. And I think we had about two weeks to prepare to get there, and we didn't do much preparation.

I think one of the reasons why I love traveling with Adam and being with Adam in a new city is because we both have the same idea when we get there. We don't have a list of the touristy places to check out. We don't care about the best restaurants. We like to plant ourselves in a location, go outside of the door and start walking around and exploring. And that's pretty much what our plan was to get there. And that's what it was like the first couple days we were there. And Sarah, looking at it from like a budget perspective, we realized that Airbnb being a place for 30 days or more, you do get a discount, quite a big discount.

Whether it's just saving on the city tax that you would normally incur if it was less than 30 days, or a discount that's passed on through the host, as they prefer many times to have someone there for 30 days or more. So, you know, that played a big factor as well. But, yeah, we found a great home and a great place in Portland to kick it off. Yeah, and I think that's something that people don't realize who don't travel so much is it can be cheaper, the longer. Like, when you're doing that kind of slow travel, it is easier to just plant yourself and then explore. And, yeah, I love that type of travel as well. So, Adam, what kind of work are you doing that allows you to travel and work at the same time?

Yeah, I'm a marketing consultant. I found myself in a similar position to Jen last October where I was working at a startup and things, they were struggling. And I was hoping that it could hold on long enough that it could get to the summer when we would ultimately kick something like this off. But it was a tech startup and funding it run out and basically had to let everyone go. So at that point, I was thrown into a position where what do I do? I had a lot of great experience in the sports nutrition industry, made a lot of great contacts, and I started sending some fuelers out, and I found some, I mean, for lack of better words, odd jobs in the marketing space.

I had worn a lot of different hats, so I basically took whatever I could at the time. And it sort of landed me in a great position where I come in, I help different companies, whether it's with their branding strategy, their social media strategy. I get hands-on running their Facebook ad campaigns, or I'm running and launching influencer promotions campaigns and the sorts. So, yeah, I'm just a marketing freelance consultant. And, you know, I would have never had imagined doing this, you know, when I was in my job, my career full-time, working for one company.

But, you know, the circumstances have led to this. And now, like, Jan, it's sort of hard to imagine doing anything else as it's been going well. I'd love to hear some specific travel tips for one of your cities, either Austin or Portland. Do you guys have a preference? We both have fallen madly in love with Portland, which I find funny because, again, I didn't know anything about the city. And I thought that I would only ever love New York. And I have this deep connection with Portland. And I think Adam does too.

And it's just, it's crazy to us because it's the complete opposite direction than New York. but it speaks so loudly to both of us. We found, yeah, as far as like a travel tip goes, when we had our Airbnb in downtown Portland, what we would do every weekend was rent a car, whether we plan to really get away or just to have some added flexibility. So for us in Portland, fortunately, it was super cheap

compared to other cities, I would say, where it was, you know, $20 a day, $40 for a full weekend. If you rent it from, you know, Friday at 6 o'clock to Sunday, six o'clock and we were able to get out of the city and explore and hike and see new and an amazing different areas of you know Portland so it it allowed us to really get to get a full experience of the city another thing that we did and we we try to do in every city that we are in is try to find different workout classes to go to we both really like to work out and of course when you're traveling that sometimes is that's the last thing on your mind so what we did was

we tried to explore different workout studios and we found one in Portland that did hot yoga and neither of us had really ever done that before. But we started to go quite frequently and we just, we built such a great relationship with the people who went there and we made friends with people in the classes. And again, I think that's important if you live anywhere for 30 days is to have those connections, to have people smile at you and say hello and know your name because the last thing you want to feel like is a tourist. Do you want to feel some connections in a brand new city? So by going to workout classes, by going to conferences, by going to events, and just trying to meet people is very important because you don't feel as alone in a brand new city.

Yeah, go to Fuel PDX in Portland. We love them there. And we're not hot yoga fan. We love them. Yeah, you guys both seem super friendly. Do you have any tips for maybe introverts who want to do some traveling at, and they want to meet locals? But they might be a bit intimidated by that whole idea. I think it's interesting. I sometimes get a little bit of social anxiety in situations. You know, I think I'm friendly sometimes on stage or on podcast, but sometimes walking into a room where I don't know anybody can be scary. So a lot of times what I do when I go to an event or I go to a new workout class is I force myself to say hello to somebody in the first minute.

Because I find that if you wait any longer than a minute, you'll start getting stuck in your head and you'll start to think, okay, no one here wants to talk to me. I feel very awkward. So I make it a goal before I walk into the door that I'm going to smile and say hello to somebody immediately. And a technique like that forces you a little bit out of your comfort zone, but also shows you when you do that automatically that pretty much the first person you say hello to is probably going to speak hello back to you and you'll feel a little bit better. So it's a good baby step for a person who's a little bit scared to walk into a room filled with strangers.

I would say insert yourself into a group setting where you know, they're there for a certain period of time and no one's going to leave where it lends itself well to people introducing themselves and introducing or talking about their story, which would be a conference like I went to in Austin, which, yes, it included a lot of people who were visiting from out of town, but I met a lot of great people that were there and local in the workout classes that we would go to where everyone was really just friendly and everything was super casual. I think it's hard to put pressure on yourself to go out on a Friday night alone and go to a bar and make a new friend.

It's possible, but there's more pressure that I would put on myself in that kind of situation versus a casual setting like a conference or a meetup or something else. And one of the things I actually did that I want to share is every time I go to a new city, I go on Facebook and I find really cool Facebook groups for that city. So I find Austin women entrepreneurs or Austin women who like pizza or, you know, It doesn't matter what the topic is, but I join like 10 Facebook groups that are local. And I post the same thing in each one. I post, you know, hello, my name is Jen Glantz.

This is what I do for a living. I'm in the city for 30 days. Does anybody want to meet me for coffee? And I love pizza. So I say coffee or pizza. And you'd be surprised. I mean, there's a lot of people who want to meet you for coffee. So if you are more introverted, maybe having that one-on-one coffee date with a new person can be amazing.

And I did that in Austin recently. and I met somebody who was so wonderful and I hope to have a long friendship with her. And, you know, she was willing to introduce me to her friend. She invited me to many events. And doing something as simple as just joining Facebook groups and starting to connect with people there is a great first step. These are all great tips, guys. Thank you so much. So let's pretend you're still in Portland since you guys have such a deep love.

I'd love to learn more about that city. So you're still there. I'm going to come visit for a weekend. Where would you guys take me? What are we doing for the weekend? The first place I would take you is Powell's bookstore, which is a massive bookstore. I think it spans a couple blocks or at least one whole city block. It's four stores worth of books.

They have over a million books. They have a beautiful cafe inside. It's a great place on a rainy Portland day to hide out, read some books. I spent hours there reading entire books in one sitting. The cool thing about Portland, too, is that everybody talks to you and they really genuinely want to get to know you. So just sitting in the cafe talking to strangers, that would be my first stop with you.

Yeah, and then we'll take you in our Subaru car rental, as they only drive Subarus in the Pacific Northwest, especially Portland, and take you to Anna Bananas, which is a really funky, cool coffee brunch spot, which is, I don't know how to describe it other than funky, but they got an amazing food. They take so much pride in everything

that they do. And we just made some really close connections there. So for food and drink, I think, you know, bananas would be our next spot. And then after that, I would tell you to put on your most comfortable pair of shoes because we're going to hike Dog Mountain, which has a reputation of being the most brutal bike hike in Washington, where you climb up about three miles. It is extremely steep and scary when you reach the top. I think it took us a couple hours to get to the top and then get back down.

Our legs were completely numb, but it felt really cool to do that and to see the scenery and being in New York for so long. You know, you don't really get to understand nature, to connect with nature. So spend an afternoon doing that is something that's just incredibly beautiful. And if you finish that with us, we will then take you for ice cream. And there's a lot of really cool ice cream shops around Portland. And there was one in particular I remember going to where they had like an ice cream tasting where it's kind of like you've seen like beer flights before. They had that for ice cream where you can taste like six different types of ice creams in one sitting and it just looked amazing. And downtown.

But the best tip that someone gave us about Portland was any place that a salt and shirah is, which is a popular ice cream spot also in Portland, that's an area that you can walk around. They just sort of have planted themselves in these downtown districts all over. And that actually helped us discover new areas. So just we'll take you to a salt and straw in some other farm place. And for dinner, because we value money and we don't want to blow it on this adventure, we find the best happy hours happening in the city. So we find the places that have the best happy hour of food, the best happy hour wine and beer. And Portland had quite a few of them.

So that's usually how we would spend our nights out. What about the food trucks? I hear so much about, like, Portland's food trucks. What does that seem like? Yeah, I mean, it was really cool because they'd have, like, they had to have, like, parks, and around the parks, they'd have, like, a ton of food trucks parked all around them and just, like, a square.

And they had all different types of food. Adam's more adventurous with food than I am. I really have a diet of pizza and ice cream, but Adam loved some of the food trucks. Yeah, I'd go there quite a bit for lunch. It was, yeah, too much. to offer. And I think, you know, the only other city that I'd been to with so many, you know, so many great food trucks was Austin. So it was funny that we went there next. But,

yeah, it was amazing and bright quality. So you guys, after Portland, you went back to, why did you decide to go back to New York next? We went back to New York for the month of November. I had a couple of classes. I teach classes in New York sometimes. And I had a busy schedule to be in New York in November. And we also figured since it was Thanksgiving in the holiday time, we would just come back to Brooklyn, do an Airbnb there. And toward the end of the month, I would go visit my family in Florida. So I had also never lived in Brooklyn before. So even though it was a brand new city for me to get to live in and experience, and we both lived in a part of Brooklyn that neither of us have really spent much time in. So we did feel like we

were still on this adventure because we got to explore a brand new area that I took. turned out to really like. Yeah. Yeah, I lived in Brooklyn for seven years. And, yeah, the commute into Manhattan, it can feel like quite a different place. So I would dig in and just live in Brooklyn for a while and not even go into Manhattan. Oh, yeah. And you don't even realize how set in your ways you get when you live in a certain pocket of New York City.

I mean, I lived in Williamsburg for a while. Jen lived in Murray Hill. Then we Airbnb a place in meatpacking. Neither of us are a house kitchen. You're right. I get the two confused. But Hell's Kitchen was, you know, an area that we had never, ever been in before, which we got to get to know a little better.

And then going to Brooklyn, which was basically on the corner of Cable Hill, not Cable Hill, Clinton Hill, and Bedstey, again, started to see another area of the city, which never had really explored or gotten to know. So I feel like I'm able to connect so much better with my fellow New Yorkers now, I know so many different parts of the city where a lot of people live or at least appreciate them in new and different ways. But it's hard. And it was really hard for me because I don't really like change.

I was living in an apartment, the same apartment for six years with a roommate who I adored. It was really hard for me to give that up. It was also really hard for me to be open to other areas in New York to live in. You know, when you live in New York, usually you find your area and all of a sudden you just hate everywhere else. And that's kind of how I became. So it took a long time for me to adjust to this adventure. And even to live in Brooklyn, you know, the first couple of days in Brooklyn, I felt very weird.

I just told myself I wasn't going to like it. So it was a big adjustment. And, you know, this adventure, it seems so cool and amazing on the outside. But there's a lot of internal struggles that I think we both experienced throughout it. So what kind of travelers are you, Adam? Are you more of like the spur of the moment and Jen, you're more of like the planner? Yeah. Well, I don't think you're a planner.

I think that we travel really well is because we're both kind of chill about it. We have the same type of lifestyle where we like to try to do something active. We like to, you know, do something outdoors if that's an opportunity. If there's a cool concert happening, we like to schedule that in. But we're not the kind of people who say, okay, we have 12 hours today to see 16 different things, let's go. You know, we take it very, very calm. And we also try to do work during the day, too. We even try to do work on weekends when we're traveling.

And that's, you know, part of why we're able to do this. It's because we do have the lifestyle where we freelance. And that means that you're always on call sometimes. Yeah, I think just flexible go with the flow. We've set up our lives to be able to afford us the great opportunities to be able to do that. So, I mean, we do more or less have a plan of action every day. But it changes and depends, depending on the weather, depending on what's going on in the city, depending on who we just met that told us that we should try something.

We'll normally just go for it and grab that. Yeah, so you guys generally, it sounds like you find, you discover new places on your own just walking around. And then I'm guessing probably speaking to locals as well and getting their advice on what you should do and say. Exactly. And I think that's, I mean, for us, that's the best way to travel. because we really want the local experience. We don't want to feel like tourists. We come from a city where it's easy to feel like a tourist

because there's so many tourists around you. And we just wanted peace with going to a new city, having no expectations, no grand plans, and waking up in the morning and just exploring. Yeah, and I think it's great the point that you made Jen about having anxiety going into a new situation. Because this lifestyle, it's not just for people who will do anything at any second and have no fear. It's quite normal to like go somewhere new and be

a bit nervous about it. But it's just about working through those nerves so you can experience something completely new and special. Definitely. And you know, it was very hard for me. I had to give up and give away a lot of things. I had to sell all my furniture. I had to give away, I'd say like 75 to 80% of my belongings because I no longer have a place to keep them. I store like seven garbage bags worth of stuff and Adam's parents out in New Jersey, and that's literally all I have to my name. And things like that sound easy to do, but it's really taxing and hard to let go of things. I've become so good at it now.

I'm really proud of myself because I don't really like shopping anymore. I don't find a need to go into a store and buy something new, because if I do buy something new, I have to carry it with me for that 30 days and potentially forever until I get a real place. So that's curbed my enthusiasm to go shopping and just buy random things, which I think is really, it was good for me to learn how to let go. And then how does this work with your bridesmaids business? Do you just fly out as needed for different weddings? I do.

So I will fly out for the weekend or fly out a couple days before the weekend to still be able to do that. And it's, you know, it's definitely been a little hectic. I think I've been on a plane about 75 times this year going back and forth. Sometimes, you know, when we were in Austin, I flew back to New York for just 24 hours. So even though I am living in new cities, I do spend a lot of that time that month on an airplane. And yeah, how did you end up in Austin? I saw that you spoke at South by Southwest. Jen, did that inspire you to go back and spend more time there?

Definitely. You know, we were, Adam and I were both there for South by Southwest. That was my first time in Austin. Adam was there for a couple times for work earlier. And I liked it a lot, but I realized during South by Southwest, it definitely, that's not how the city normally is. So I wanted to go back and experience it in its pure Austin form. We got really lucky in the sense that Adam has friends who live in Austin.

And for a big chunk of December, they were going to be on vacation. So they said to us, okay, you guys can stay here and live here for free, as long as you babysit our two pit bulls. So that was an automatic, okay, we're going to Austin in December. Yeah, so we're professional dog sitters, too. If anyone in a cool city would like to hire us, we're pretty good. We love it. Yeah, that's another good tip.

Airbnb is fantastic, but if you can leverage friends who are going out of town, yeah, that's another great way to save money. Yeah, I think there's other things that we'd like to explore, too. I mean, we found the place in Hells Kitchen on Facebook. What was it? Gypsy housing. Craigslist, you find opportunities that come and go in a lot of cities. Airbnb is the most secure and regular where you're going to find a steady stream of inventory.

But there's a lot of different ways that you can find yourself in a new city for an extended period of time. And is that sort of how you choose the next city? It's sort of the opportunity that pretty. presents itself or how does that work? Like, where are you guys going next? Yeah, California. It's only perfect. Everywhere throughout the entire year, yes, we would be even more flexible.

But I think we both want to escape the cold as much as possible, living through so many here in New York City. So we're going to Venice Beach next. And that was just someplace that Jen and I had eyed for a while. And again, it's crazy to think, you know, five years ago you would never say LA is a city that you could live in without a car. now at the Lyft and Uber and how affordable is to get around with car sharing services, we'll be heading there next in just a few days.

So exciting. So what advice would you guys give to somebody who wants to try to live a similar type of life? Well, if you're sitting at a desk right now, sitting to this podcast or you have a desk job and you feel like it's impossible to break away, start working on your career to set yourself up to have. have this opportunity to do it. I think Jenna and I really are a good example of a couple that hasn't taken a step back. And it's not bad to do this at all if you just are in between jobs and go and travel. But you don't have to put certain things on hold in your life to be able to do

this if your career and your profession is important to you. So I would say just start trying to morph your life, including your career, to be able to go for this and do it. I would say, know the truth about it. Know that it's not glamorous. Know that it's not an experience where every day you're adventuring and traveling and exploring. Some of our days are spent at home by the computer, not doing anything until 4 p.m. Know that it is terrifying. It is scary.

There will be moments when you question what the heck you're doing, giving away your comfort zone. But know that when you put yourself in a situation where you're packing up and going and living somewhere new every 30 days, you learn so many crazy things about yourself that you will never, ever learn living in the same place for a long time. And if I end this adventure tomorrow, I feel like I've learned a good five things about myself that I ignored being in the same place for a very long time. So I, you know, admire anybody who is sitting here listening to this, questioning their life and want to change. Maybe that's just taking more vacations or maybe that is figuring out a new career. for yourself. I admire anybody who has that itch inside of them, but know that it is going to be

a lot of ups and downs. And the best part about it is that you will learn so many things about yourself. Well, thanks, you guys. This has been such a fun conversation. Where can people find out more about you? People can find out more about me at genglance.com. And I'm on all the social media channels at at Jen Glance. Jen's way more interesting than I am. Do you want to pitch your freelance business Yeah, of course. No, well, I mean, you can find me at Adam Kossoff, A-D-A-M-K-S-O-F-F on Instagram and Adamcosoff.com to learn more about what I'm doing. So that's where you can find out about me.

But like I said, Jen's way more interesting and cool. So follow her. I think you're both cool. Thank you. Thanks, guys. So wait, where are you going to head next? I am really thinking about doing a trip to Bolivia and maybe somewhere, So I have this like obsession with Italian and, you know, I've lived in Italy on and off and I like practicing the language.

And there is a tour group that's just for Italian people. And it tends to be a lot of people who just join last minute because they happen to have spare time. And so it's a good way to like practice my Italian and then also explore a new place. So I think I'm going to go with them to Bolivia. That's so cool. Then you'll have a group that you're with. I mean, you'll make friends. It's so awesome.

And a brand new country. Yeah, I did that this summer in Jordan. I went with this group and it was so fun. So, yeah, that's what I want to do. So who's normally in this group? I mean, are they like all different age groups or what's the story there? It's mostly, I would say, 20s, 30s, 40s. And a lot of people just solo traveling, there were a few pairs of friends.

But yeah, for some reason in Italy, it seems like the lifestyle is like people don't always know. when they're going to have a vacation. They don't know when they're going to get time off. So if they get it, they're like, all right, I'm going to go on this trip. And so it's a good, like, last minute thing to do something cool. Yeah. And you were in London for a while. Do you plan on going back to London anytime soon? So I've been living in London for the last seven years. But I came home for my nephew who was born a month ago. And now that I've been pulled out of London for a bit, which I love so much, I'm thinking, my God, that city is so expensive. And I'm thinking of doing something similar to you guys and sort of digital nomadding it for a bit this year.

Somewhere warm. So, yeah. So that was another reason why I was especially keen to talk to you. I feel like I'm between countries, Adam, and I don't know what I'm doing. So I would love to go back to London eventually. But now that I've been gone for a few months to visit family for the first time really in years and years, I'm like, I love London. But there's so much else out there. So I wouldn't go somewhere else.

That's my opinion. I would say keep on going and going and going because you don't know who you're going to have a love affair with. You don't know what place you're going to love more than London. We need to keep going to go out of the country. All right, guys, I'm going to find someplace cool and then you can come and stay with me. Yeah, I was going to say keep us posted and we might be your next door neighbor. Wait, sorry. Yeah, are you, do you have dual citizenship?

Yeah, yeah, I have dual citizenship with Italy. So I moved to Italy seven or eight years ago. I had traveled there on and off. And then I figured out that I was eligible for dual citizenship through my great-grandparents. And so I went there and applied and got citizenship and then stayed for like about a year and then before moving to London. Got it. Oh, man. So my grandfather is 100% Irish.

So I potentially have the ability to receive dual citizenship through Ireland as well, which I'd never taken advantage of, which I totally should. should. Oh, Adam, you definitely should. Because Ireland and Italy are the two easiest countries for people to get dual citizenship. Oh, I love them. Yeah, and you never know when that could change, right? I mean, before 9-11, it was even easier. I think that they would, that you could get the, passport without providing so much paperwork. You just only needed a couple of things. Now you've got to go a little further, but it still sounds pretty easy. To be honest with you, it's easier if you're actually in the country. So in Italy, like if I had applied in the U.S., which is what I started to do, it could have taken me up to a year and they still could have said no just because of bureaucracy.

But moving to Italy, I had my passport within two months. Oh, wow. That's awesome. Yeah. All right. Well, I remember you in Ireland. Let's just spend a month in Dublin and call it a day. Sounds like a favorite. Then we'll go to Italy. Yeah, get it done. But Sarah, what do you do full time? Oh my God, I have like the same story as you guys where I have worked in several places in London. So I was working for Apple for a few years. And then I ended up working at a tech startup myself. And it was so crazy intense.

And I was like, if I die tomorrow, am I going to be happy doing this? Not really. And so I left there. And I want I'm starting my own marketing sort of side hustle myself. Nice. And what do you specialize in? Copywriting. Like Jen.

Writing is definitely my background. Good. There's so many opportunities in writing. I mean, gosh, we're traveling. We're having fun. It sounds like you're doing an amazing thing, too. So this is all good. I'm glad we were able to connect, Sarah.

Yeah, I hope our paths cross in reality at some point. Yes. Yeah, I'll stay in touch. Thanks, guys. All right. Thanks, Sarah. Bye. I definitely plan a meeting up with Jen and Adam.

we have so much in common, including that we've all been laid off from our jobs at some point. This can be terrifying and stressful, especially if you have kids and or a mortgage. But for a lot of people, including us, these closed doors are the greatest gift. You cry for a few days, you dust yourself off, and then you move on to something incredible. Highlights of today's show can be found on postcardacademy.com. For all of you interested in striking out on your own this year, I've included a great video of Jen speaking at South by Southwest, where she breaks down some specific actions you can take to grow your brand or your business. If you like today's episode, please share it with a friend

and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you'd like to get in touch, you can email me at sarah at postcardacadmy. Or find me on Instagram at Postcard Academy. However your 2017 went, I hope 2018 is better and filled with new and happy experiences. That's all for now. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahygotele.com slash blank no more.