The Best One Yet - ☎️HOTLINE: Hack your life with Travel Guru, Jo Franco

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Nick & Jack invite Jo Franco to answer your travel, money, and trip-optimizing questions.Jo Franco speaks 8 languages, visited 50 countries, 6 continents, 2M followers on YouTube, the host of “Not Your Average Jo” podcast, and a Netflix travel host, a CEO & the author of Fluentish. This episode talks about…Jo’s journey to the best job ever How to build a travel budgetNick’s ice cream-themed trip When *exactly* to book flightsSolo female travel tips Travel credit cardsJack’s overnight oats & TSAGoogle Maps “Want to Go” 1 must-do on every tripJo’s retreats & journaling: https://joclub.world/ Jo’s podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PRsT54aCU2oYM3AsXuqlq Jo’s social: https://www.instagram.com/jo_franco Send a Question: [e-mail] (we love voice messages)Saturday Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter  ABOUT: Sit down (literally) with the voices of pop-business, Nick & Jack — The ex-Wall Streeters (now besties) answer questions on investing, entrepreneurship, work, life, and the financially responsible way to eat a strawberry. Guac is always extra, but this advice isn’t.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

one term that everybody should learn in any language is let's go, because it's just like, you know, let's get the vibes right, let's go. So in French, it's parti is let's go, but like slang, it's party. It's going to take me a few reps to get that right. Can you say it one more time, John? And you got the cool version. You got like the MC Soler version, Jack. It's party. It's party. Now, I recently taught my son to say potty, which it sounds like we're saying this year with a French accent.

Say potty. Let's start the show. Hey, you've reached Nick and Jack at the T-Boy Hotline. We couldn't get to the phone right now, but you know what to do. Leave a message after the beach. Leave a message. Ask us any question, and we will answer your question live on the T-Boy Hotline podcast. We'll get back to you. You know what to do. Yeties, our guest today speaks eight different languages. From Dutch to Greek, to Arabic, and just about everything in between.

And our guest today has visited 50 different countries on six different continents. But she wasn't allowed to leave our country until she was. She was 18 years old. She's got 2 million followers on YouTube and has a wonderful fantastic podcast. She also has a travel show on Netflix that Nick and I both personally love. Bessies, if you want to know the best place to visit in the world and the best way to do it, you ask Joe Franco. Because Joe Franco is the ultimate travel influencer and our brand new vacation guru.

Joe is a writer, a founder, a polyglot, a creator, and a TV star. Oh, and she has the coolest job you ever imagined. You didn't even know it existed. Because she gets paid to stay at the world's wildest vacation homes. So, for this T-Boy Hotline episode, we are thrilled to have as our guest, Joe Franco. This is Nick. This is Jack. And today's T-Boy Hotline pod is our best one yet.

Live from the Zoom, this is T-Boy Hotline. To the bone? To-the-bon. To-the-bon. Perfect. Language hack of the day. To do-du-bon. is how, is everything good?

And then you could just respond to the bon. Joe, you're going to realize really quickly in this episode that I am decently well educated, but I'm not well-cultured. It's like a funny quadrant that I live in. Jack, come up with this amazing quadrant. Jack, you got to explain this more. Well, basically, educated and not culture, cultured and not educated. Educated, not cultured.

A lot of times if you're highly educated, you're also highly cultured and vice versa. But I'm in this rude quadrant. I have like a lot of studying I've done in my life. but I haven't, like, personally experienced as much as maybe you think. So that these expressions, Nick pulls out from, like, other parts of the world, they're usually going over my head. Like, Jack can tell you the GDP of Greece right now, but he cannot tell you about Spanacopause.

No, I can't. No, I can't. But listen, listen, I feel like you guys are doing great because you travel, and that's already step one. Like, you're doing the work by putting your bodies in the place and then the learning just happens organically. You don't need to, like, study out of a textbook. It's like street smarts.

Right. Jack's going to pick up that spinach pie while he's jumping into the numerical. Is that what Spanacopanis is? GDP reports. Yeah. If you know, you know. Yeah. Pita, Spanacopita.

It's Spanakia. Yeah. Spenaki is Greek. It's like a whole thing. Honestly, the coolest language to learn is Greek because everything, like, did you know, taxi comes from the Greek word to travel? You're kidding. Taxi. Yeah, like a travel is the taxidi.

So if somebody's like, oh, Bon voyage, it's Calotacidi, like, have a good travel. And then you see taxi. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's the root of taxi like that. Isn't that cool? Yeah. It's not all Greek does. It is Greek. Greek is the basis of everything.

This is beautiful. It's always good to know how to say, let's go in the language and cheers. Now, Joe, we've been following you for a while. And honestly, to call your story inspiring would be the biggest understatement we've ever said. And this is what we find fascinating about your story. You are a travel influencer, the ultimate travel influencer right now. But for 12 years, you legally could not travel or leave the country. Tell us why.

It's crazy, guys. This story's crazy. I'm like trying to draft some movie scripts at one point. It's very much the American dream story. So I was born in Juji Janeiro, Brazil, so I shouldn't be speaking English. That's something I always like to start with. because it's crazy that you could be born in a country, and then you relocate to a new country, learn a new language,

and your whole life changes. And so that was my five-year-old reality. How crazy is that? Like, little Joe pulling up, you know, Rockwell Middle School in Bethel, Connecticut, little brown girl in a sea of all-American kids. No one spoke anything other than English, not even Spanish. And so we grew up. My mom went from having a village of support in Brazil

to chasing the American dream for her kids because she didn't want us to end up, you know, in a dangerous situation, the way she was raised. So it was very much mom doing her best, and it created this insane life story that we grew up waiting for our documents to be processed for 12 years. So in those 12 years, we couldn't leave. And all I wanted to do as a little kid was travel

because I learned English and quickly saw like, wow, this is crazy. Like, I'm a five-year-old translator. That's insane. So much power. Yeah. You translated for your mom? I translated for my mom, for permission slips.

I translated for the new kids when the new kids came in because eventually the, you know, new families started coming in. And there's no power like being an eight-year-old kid who the entire school relies on to help the new family. And you know what? To be honest, I love languages and I'm a big nerd, but I didn't like school. Did you guys like school? Were you like into school? I dreaded my middle school dances because I was nervous to go on the dance floor. But otherwise, I enjoyed school.

Okay. Well, I was just like I was trying to cut. class. And when you're a translator as a seven, eight year old, you get plucked from class and you get rewarded from it. And so it was like this amazing, you know, in Super Mario Party, you like kind of find that loophole and you jump in and you're like underneath the ground. And you get, that was language to me. And so to me as a kid, I was just like, wow, imagine if I did this in French. So I took French and then Italian and then Italian. And so even though I couldn't travel, I traveled through those languages that I was learning in Connecticut. Also, another way your child's news was different from

Mars was you were working with your mom as a young kid while you're learning eight languages on the side. Yeah, listen, okay, the other languages came later in life and any language lover will tell you some days are rustier than others. You know, it's not like I'm 100% fluent. I actually coined the term fluentish because you're never going to be 100% fluent in any language, maybe not even English. So growing up in Connecticut, my mom, was basically working as a nanny from seven in the morning till seven at night. We would go to school and come home. And the one rule was like, go to school, keep your head down, don't cause too much of a ruckus,

because you don't want people to find out, you know? And then you would come home, do your homework, make your dinner, like us as kids. And on the weekends, I literally didn't understand the concept of a weekend until I went to college in New York. Because on the weekends, my mom would take us to clean offices and houses. And I loved it because I would make money. She would pay us. So I was like, dang, you know, if I save 30 bucks from this office cleaning next week, I'll have $60 and then I'll have $90. And so I learned from like eight years old onward how to save money.

I think that was the beginning of my financial acumen was like scrubbing those toilets. So five days a week you went to school and then two days a week you were working with your mom and then back to the five days a week of school. Yeah. Well, actually, I think we had one day off on the weekend. But truly, like you know how normal families will go to the mall. on the weekends or to the parks. Like, I didn't have that kind of childhood. Now, as fellow creators, Jack and I are wondering, Joe, how do you go from an undocumented

childhood to a YouTube star? Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. So I feel like what, so I'm a big time Yeti, by the way. Like, I've listened to the show since 2018. So getting this email was a big deal for me. I'm like, oh my God, Nick and Jack, I swear we're friends. And now we actually are in contact and I'm here.

Well, thank you so much for listening for so many years. You guys are just so good at what you do. And I'm sure that fellow listeners can relate to this, like the quality that you put into every episode, that work, that great. It's because you want to build something bigger. And I have that same tenacity, that same desire. And it's not easy to do that. So from 18, when I finally did get my, you know, papers to start traveling, it was big. I was like, I need to think big.

I want to go to school in Manhattan. I picked my school because there were. flags in the lobby. So even my college selection process was like, is this place international? So I went to a school in Laura Manhattan. I studied international business. And I thought that I would be like this international boss lady CEO working my way up through the media companies. In 2012, I started this YouTube channel with a college buddy to pitch TV executives on a young travel show. And that's how the YouTube journey started. It was never my dream to be a YouTuber. because I didn't grow up with this idea that I could even share things.

Because remember, it was a kind of childhood in hiding. So it was crazy. It's crazy. So, Joe, your journey from undocumented to influencer is inspiring. And we are honored that our show had some role in your story to become where you are. So thank you for sharing that. And truly, Nick and I are honored. That was awesome.

The first time I encountered you wasn't through our show because we can't see our listeners. I saw you on Netflix. It wasn't through YouTube. I saw you on Netflix, and I didn't know who you were. But my wife and I were watching your show, the world's most amazing vacation rentals on Netflix. You visited this, like, lighthouse in Alaska that's bookable. And eventually, you visited this mill house in Vermont on the river. And of course, I watched that episode because, you know, I love Vermont.

And it's an incredible show on Netflix. That was a crazy journey. What did your mom think about her daughter, whom she tried to create. create a little Brazil for in your apartment or your house in Connecticut, being on a Netflix show that let you travel across the world? You know, guys, I want to take it back to the audition for that show because I started this YouTube journey in 2012, and I grew that YouTube channel to over 1.2 million subscribers, and it was such a wild journey because it was like, I literally went from sleeping on benches in Barcelona. There's a video on YouTube that you could find,

sleeping on a bench in Barcelona, where I'm hugging my business partner's legs, and then my backpack filled with cameras is on the other side, and then like shady characters are waking me up in the middle of the night, asking me if I want, you know, weird things. I went from that to growing this YouTube channel and getting really a great lifestyle and flying first class sometimes to film these web series. So I went through the entire spectrum of like, you're broke and you just want to travel and you're working in exchange for hostile stays with 23 people in the room with you to as the creme de la creme of travel. But at the same time, as I went through this journey with this old channel and this old brand, I was outgrowing that kind of travel.

I was outgrowing the mission. And so I was a little bit conflicted because I loved travel, but I was also getting interested in other things. I wanted to grow into the next stage of my career. At the same time, I got this audition for Netflix show. And this is where it gets crazy because I'm sure, have you guys had auditions in the past where you walk into a room and it's like a little scary? We had a live TV audition once, Jack, remember? where they were like, would you guys do live TV? And we're like, yeah, we would do live to me?

They're like, great, you're on air in two minutes. And we're like, okay, we'll do it. I remember, Nick. It was on the New York Stock Exchange floor, actually. Oh, that was insane. So that's our closest, Joe. But you also have each other. So you have the chemistry, right?

So imagine now you didn't have a nick to your jack and you didn't have a jack to your nick. And this is what happens. It's a sad thought. But the show process, when you get called to audition for a show, especially a show the way that we filmed, they're looking for chemistry. So they audition.

You audition several times by yourself on a Zoom call with the casting directors. And then the very last casting stage is a chemistry test where you're filming, basically like what you said, like, okay, and you're on now, but you're with a stranger you've never met in your life. Weird.

And there's a camera crew following around Tom Jones' house. You don't know what the heck you're doing, and they give you three facts. And what they say is you need to speak to your co-host and have as much chemistry until we yell, cut. And this is how you get cast. So I have a hoarding room of like 20 of the most beautiful, attractive, charismatic people you've ever met. And then they pull two of you at a time to do this process.

So this was the casting process. And this is also after they had vetted thousands of people around the world to potentially get called into this wild casting. So that was the process all day long. And when I got to that house and I was like doing this chemistry test, I swear to you guys, I was like, I don't know if I'll get this, but this is for the ancestors. Like, this is for the ancestors. I just felt this, like, crazy relief of this is bigger than just me. When you look at travel media, there historically has been only, for the most part, white male hosts.

And I'm a woman of color. There's only been one other woman of color on a travel show as a travel channel show. So I was literally the second. So I'm the only afroletic. Tina. So eventually, I get the show. And I'm like, what in the world? And then this is around January of 2020. We start shooting the show. And it was wild from that point on. I mean, we should also just be clear, because Jack and I love watching this show. And we were watching it during COVID, you know, this incredible travel experience show. It was the coolest job in the world,

right, Jack? Because you were flying on like a private plane to the ultimate like Airbns across the world. I remember we rewatch the one about Japan before my wife and I went to Japan, and you were like at some ski house with like a Michelin Starge chef in Hokkaido. And like you were then skiing all day and they had a polar bear in the house. I saw her vacation in the bottom of the Grand Canyon in a van, like a camper van. So it really, it really did stretch like from frugal affordable to cream of the crop, as he said. And Joe was getting paid by Netflix the whole time. Not to do It was wild, guys. It was wild. Listen, the caveat that you might not notice on the show is that there was COVID in this time, right? So, like, the first chunk of the show was filmed pre-COVID,

and then there was COVID. And so what was actually amazing about this COVID pivot that we all had to do, not just TV shows, was that we rerouted to a lot of the U.S. destinations. And so we were on a tour bus for a lot of that time. And so we went to places like Vermont and the Grand Canyon and Colorado, like all over the states in a way that I was super stoked to have done because I really believe travel does not need to be going to the sexiest place abroad. It's a state of mind. It's in your backyard. Like even your own town can be the sexiest destination if you have that travel mindset. Vacation is a mentality.

It is. Yeah, it's definitely a mentality. And there are some tips to this, which maybe I'll give in the middle of the episode or maybe at the end of like, how do you carry that travel mindset? Jack, I think I hear the pilot calling to buckle up, put your seats upright, and your tray tables in their correct position. Should we kick off the hotline pod with some questions now? We let the Yeties and besties know you're coming, Joe, and they submitted some wonderful questions. And this is a hotline episode. So we're going to answer their questions right now.

Let's bring in Rachel, who's our wonderful producer and our creative director. Rachel, how you doing? Hey guys, doing fantastic over here in Flagstaff, Arizona. Okay, since we're all in four different time zones right now, Rachel, let's hit those lit-up phone lines. And here, what have we got the questions about travel and money for our travel pod with Joe Franco? This question is coming from Colin Johnson. Hello, Yeties and besties. This is Colin from Fort Worth, Texas.

And my travel question is, what's your formula for setting a travel budget while factoring in our income and savings? Thanks, y'all. I've done a lot of travel, and every travel has a different kind of vibe. So I think the first question is, like, know what you like to splurge on and pick your top category. Is it accommodation? Because if you need to have that nice, all-inclusive breakfast with a seafront view, that's where your money should be going. And then you should budget a bigger buffer for accommodation.

Or are you willing to stay at, like, the cheapy hotel, because you're going to be walking around the city all day. That's a different kind of travel budget, because then you're going to be allocating more of your budget. to the activities or the restaurants or if you're a foodie, right? So there are different variables. I think the number one thing with everything in life is know thyself. Like be self-aware of what you're looking for on the trip. From experience, I find, like, as I've gotten older, I'm 32 now, I went from not caring about where I stayed and really just cramming in those 30-bed dorms

with, like, Rusty who snored all night. I didn't care because I just wanted to be in Nice walking around. and now I'm at an age where I'm like, if it has, you know, a thread count under a certain number is not for me anymore. Exactly. So I've become more of an accommodations snob. And I think the show obviously did that for me too

because I realized so much of my experience is from the accommodation. Like if the property is good, if it's in a great location, if the host is awesome, or if the hotel gives you suggestions, it just changes the trip. What do you guys think? Well, Molly and I have decided that as travelers, is somewhere we're we're foetel focused and by foetel I mean we build our entire budget around food and hotel and that's not for everybody I totally understand that but you know as a foet focus

we spend about when I look back on the numbers jack because I went back through our credit card statements from our last trip um we went to japan and honestly was 50% hotel which is high and like 40% food and then I guess the remaining 10% was what was left and honestly there are ways you can kind of work around this. Like, when we went to Sicily, Jack, remember, we stayed at the White Lotus Hotel before they filmed White Lotus there. So now it's like unaffordable. It's crazy. But at the time, we was still expensive. And I remember we went in and we were like, you know what? Maybe tonight because we double splurged on the hotel in our budget. We wouldn't, we didn't just go out to a meal at a restaurant because I would have also been really

expensive. We did some fun things to compensate for it. Like I literally just went to a local market in Taramina and got some tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella and we turned the hotel into the restaurant. Like we ate in our room with a view, but just having the fun foods that we got from the market in Sicily that day. So that was a way we could work with the budget of like going big on the hotel and having to cut back on some other things.

Well, if we're going to talk about flying, all I have for you is if you're in debt, drive. If you're financially feeling fine, fly. That's all I got. That's great. That feels like it should be on a travel pillow check. When I do fly, I know I'm either going to be working on my computer if it's the daytime or failing to try to fall asleep if it's the nighttime.

I cannot sleep on a red-eye flat. There's no way I'm going to. So I've given up. Even with the granny sweater. Even with the granny sweater. I have tips for this, okay? And maybe it'll come up later, but double-decker pillow. Yes, sleep tips.

You want a double-decker pillow that clips in the front for those loose neck moments, you know? So you need the clip in the front. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. The clip, and mine has a little magnet, but make sure it's strong. Because if the neck pillow does not clip tightly and it is not double-decker, this is very specific, you basically need a neck brace. I was going to say, yeah, you're talking like full injured, like torso situation. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

So full-blown, like unsexy neck brace, a granny sweater, glasses, and then maybe some like motion sickness medication. And then you're not, you're out. We'll provide a link to Joe's recommended neck pillow in our newsletter that goes out on Saturday. Also, Jack, I just realized what I'm getting you as a birthday gift. A pez dispenser with melatonin. That's what I'm getting you. Fits in the granny sweater.

All right. What's our next question? Thank you, Kelsey and Colin, for the first two questions. This next question is coming from Denver, Colorado. Hey, T-Boy team. This is Meg from Denver, Colorado. I love to travel, but scheduling and planning is definitely not my strong suit. I struggle with figuring out daily plans and timing.

Do you have any tips, tricks, or suggestions on how to get better at planning for a stress-free, fun trip? Thanks. Planning if you're not a planner for a trip, which usually requires planning. What do you think, Joe? I mean, you always want to have a good friend who loves to plan. I think that's the first hack. Like, if you don't like to drive, my friend says, I don't bring my license. I just bring my friend who loves to drive.

So that could be your first tip. And I feel like in every great couple or every great dynamic, there's usually one extreme planner and one like, I'm going to go with the flow. And therefore, you find the middle ground. I have a feeling that's a dynamic that happens here with you guys, is it? I'm the planner. It's so true. I'm the planner. I know it kind of stresses my wife out if I plan too much on her.

So I sort of have a rip off the band-aid strategy. Nick and I both practice the art of planuary, which is when you plan the entire year's worth of trips in the month of January. So maybe you hate planning. You have to plan, as Nick mentioned, or else you're not going to go on a trip. Get it all done right at the beginning of the year. Put out your 12-month calendar. A bunch of them are going to be empty. That's fine. No travel. But the ones that have travel dates that you've booked already in January, you'll look forward to them the rest of the year and you'll feel settled. You'll feel strong. You'll feel prepared. But, like you and me for business trips. I love planning business trips for you. I love it.

I am Jack's assistant planning business trips. It's true. What was the email I said you last night? Mick sent me three hotel options last night. He guided me towards his recommended outcome, but he let me feel like I was in control. I gave Jack a false sense of control. And that's it. And that's it.

And that is a dynamic that will work very well in any kind of travel situation. That's how you plan. That's how you plan. But also, so you guys do planuary. I do plan November. I do all of my planning. for the whole year in November because when I, in November, I feel like there are many things that happen. For starters, I look at how did the year that I've just lived, how did that feel? Was it too

much travel? Was it not enough travel? Did I do a lot of business travel? Not enough fun travel. Was it too expensive, et cetera? And I also know that you start getting invitations to big events, like weddings, you have birthdays. So I love planning the full year. It's a loose working Google doc, so you can always change the plan. I'm a big advocate for make a plan and then plan to change the plan. And then I can plot out based on what's going on at work. Like, if we know the busiest time of work is March, that's probably not the time to go backpacking Vietnam,

but you need to plot the points. And then for the actual specifics of the trip, my boyfriend also does not like planning travel, which is so weird because he loves planning everything else. He gets more stressed about planning a vacation than like planning a whole content workflow. So when, and of course, I'm the opposite. Like, my late night scrolling is scrolling vacation rentals.

Like, that's what I do for fun. And looking at lists of things to do. So the way that I've started working with him, he's like, I don't want to be stressed, but I do want to have suggestions. So basically, I, the planner and our duo, will plot map points, like all over the map, wherever we're going. I'm looking up lists, best coffee shops, best things to do, cool parks, nature walks. And I'm just highlighting everything, making a list. and then we only actually decide what we're doing the day of. Because if it's a vacation to chill and you're overbooked, you're going to be stressed.

So we're like, hey, are we tired? Do we just want to be lazy by the pool? Or do we want to take this tour that I've already scouted? I'm so prone to overbooking, and that stresses my wife out too. But, Nick, what are your ideas? Well, the first idea I thought of was if you're not a planner, there's a great way you can become a planner. And it's to have a theme for the trip. And by a theme for the trip, I mean, have a passion point that you make the focus

of the trip in a subtle way. So, for example, Nick recently came to Vermont to visit me, which was wonderful. It was a working trip. We saw the pod sun. But Nick told me before he arrived that the theme of the trip was ice cream. He made that very clear. So we had a specific, unique ice cream experience built into each day. Totally.

Or like I've heard, you know, when I was younger, Jack, when I was a little kid, it was Keyline Pie. We went to Key West, and I said, I need to have Keyline Pie every day. And I've still got the list of all my favorite key lime destinations. even one of them, I looked at the other day, it was a chocolate covered key lime pie on a stick that was there when I was a kid. I had that on my list,

and that made the trip suddenly something we could plan something around. Or when we were in Japan, we planned around pizza. Japan apparently had amazing pizza. Well, we found a spot in Tokyo with amazing pizza and a spot in Kyoto with amazing pizza. And that theme turned maybe some non-plans into plans. I love that, next. Okay, I'm going to throw out something.

It may be related to this question, but it's kind of funny. I'm curious for your thoughts on this, Joe, actually, from a financial perspective. Jack and I were talking the other day about what we think is a financial blind spot for our generation, a financial blind spot on travel for millennials, and it's travel agents. And here's why. We grew up in an age where the internet made information available so you could plan anything

about your trip. You could see the bed sheets on that hotel to make sure the thread count was correct, Joe, and you could see exactly what you would do for dinner because you'd access to all the information on the internet. So we moved away from travel agents. It seemed expensive, something our parents would do. We assumed they were an obsolete profession, if we're being honest. However, the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward travel agents.

And Jack and I have found value in one, a travel agent curating things for you in a world of mass information, but also with the business model. People don't realize that you can use a travel agent to book your hotels, and you don't end up paying for the travel agent. They get paid by the hotel. So that's actually an affordable way to use a travel agent. It's so funny you bring this up because my first and only, corporate job out of college. So I graduated with a business degree, international management.

My first job out of college is to be an administrative assistant at a travel management company. And this travel management company books corporate travel and private travel for, like, giant clients. So let's say you're a Google, you're going to hire travel management company to book all of the corporate travel. Okay, so I was the admin assistant giving people the flight codes to go on their business trips, to make sure that Mr. Smith was in the window seat because he's a window seat person. in his, like, I was doing that. And ironically, when I got my Netflix show flights, guess what company was booking all of our flights?

The freaking company that I worked for. Isn't that insane? And I was like, wow, four years ago, I would have been the one managing these accounts. So what I learned in that time, it was back in 2014, 2015, that these travel agencies, they do have a giant incentive

to sell different hotels because every Monday or Wednesday, the hotel years, they come into the office and they give us brownies and bagels and they talk about what's going on at their hotel. And then they send the travel agents on familiarization trips. They're called fam trips. So the hotels will pay for a travel agent to go sleep in the beds. Go try the restaurants.

So, of course, as a travel agent, you live in the lap of luxury, but the vision there is that you come back to the office and you share in presentations to the entire company of travel agents that maybe didn't go to Italy to stay at the Balagio. whatever, you know? So when it comes to travel agents, I do think that there's value there if you are booking with a travel agent that you know has the intel because some people might just be scamming and like getting a commission and that's what we need to avoid. So when Nick went to Japan and told me he had a travel agent and I asked him how much it cost because I was interested and he said he didn't pay for it. They paid for themselves and like hotel discounts or whatever. I didn't believe him. But in this,

meantime, I believe you now because I'm using one for this France trip. And I will say it was really hard to find one though. Yes, it is hard. And we've worked with bad ones. It really helps to get a referral from somebody. So ask around, find a friend who has a travel agent they trust and try to get that referral. Because if you're just Googling, maybe you'll stumble into the scammy stuff that Joe is referring to. The other kind of travel that I think no one's talking as much about, and it's a business model that I started doing in 2022 is retreats. And I went as an attendee. I went to a retreat in New Zealand. Like I flew for three days, seven different flights, got to New Zealand for this yoga retreat. And I saw like, wow, how interesting is this that you could pay for like this packaged group

experience. So I started curating my own retreats. And I'm basically like a quote unquote travel agent because I go and scout the properties. I sleep in the beds. I check the water pressure. I make sure there's hot water. Like I do all of that. I plan the events. It's something that I love doing because I know if somebody's traveling for the first time using their two weeks of vacation, it would be a shame to sleep in a crappy bed with no hot water. Good point. It's an alternative. So I know there's probably a lot of non-planers out there and we've talked a lot about planning. So let's move on to the execution phase. Joe, I know from your YouTube channel that you have a lot of travel hacks and how to save money by booking in certain ways. Can you share some of your best

travel hacks? Are we talking financial trick shots here? Yes. Thank you for correcting me. That was a test you passed. We're talking financial trick shots. What we're asking, Joe, is, is it true that the best time to book a flight is 5.03 p.m. on Tuesdays. Is that accurate? Actually, yes. They say, they say, and this is something that, you know, it's one of those things that you could test it and see for yourself because so many different factors are involved when it comes to getting your flight price. I do have a crazy financial trick shot. They say that airlines usually drop the sales for the week on a Monday night. Now the question is Monday night where? Right. Like I'm playing time zone math. I'm like, is it Monday night Australia or is it Monday night East Coast or is it

West Coast? Like who's Monday night? So that's one of the like variants that or variables that you have to factor in. But let's say that it's true. then Tuesday and Wednesday would be the quote-unquote best time to look for a flight, to look for the prices. And then there's also the concept of like what days are better and cheaper for you to actually fly. And I found that flying on a Wednesday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is so much better than a Thursday, Friday, Saturday because obviously if you're traveling for the weekend, people are leaving on Thursday.

So if you want a less hectic airport experience, I would try to fly earlier in the week. Now, the financial trick shot that I have for actually booking a flight, this is insane. And I, so I live in Belgium right now, and I'm living actually in two continents. I'm living half in Connecticut. I have a house in Connecticut where my family is. And I just got my resident card here in Belgium because I moved in with my boyfriend. It's been a lot of paperwork. But when we started our relationship, which we could talk about long-distance relationships, because that's a whole other money conversation, we realized really quickly that it was a lot cheaper for my boyfriend to fly from Brussels to New York round trip than it was for me to fly

from New York to Brussels round trip. So we're taking the same flight path but in different directions. And he was booking from Europe and I was booking from the U.S. So then to test this for this episode, I actually did, I crunch some numbers. Okay. You crunch some travel math. The travel math. I crunch some travel math because I'm like, you know, I've noticed that coming from, like if I'm leaving Belgium going to the U.S., it's cheaper. So I pulled a hack that I've always done, which is downloading a VPN. I pay for a VPN. You know, I get a premium like maybe 200 bucks a year, but it ends up saving me a lot of money.

VPN, virtual, private network. You get to basically tether your computer around the world as if you're in Connecticut, you could pretend you're in Dubai or in France. So like Delta can't track where you are when they give you the pricing for the price. No, she tells Delta that she's in Europe, even though she's in Connecticut. Correct. And so here I am today. I'm in Europe. This is getting confusing. Maybe we bring out a whiteboard. But basically, I'm in Europe today. Okay? So I have a VPN and I said, I want to go from New York City to Brussels and I set my VPN to the U.S. So the computer thinks I'm in the U.S. I'm going from New York City to Brussels round trip October 1st to the 15th. I get a direct flight from Delta $651. The same exact flight, same exact dates. The VPN I put to Belgium. I get a direct flight from Air France, and it's 573 euros, which is actually $621 U.S. dollars. So I'm saving $30 simply by booking from Belgium.

No way. And you isolated one variable, which is just where they think you are. Correct. And then, of course, you should have some knowledge of the language because the minute you set your VPN to Belgium, I'm in Antwerp, it's going to be in Dutch. It's going to be. Flemish, old boy. My plumish is rusty. Exactly.

So is it that the airlines just think Americans have a higher willingness to pay than Europeans? Well, the plot thickens because then I did the opposite, reverse trip. Because remember, my boyfriend used to come to New York. And here's the irony. I would come to Brussels more than he would go to New York, which meant we spent a lot more money. So I did the same exact dates, Brussels to New York round trip. VPN set to USA, $465 U.S. dollars. So New York to Brussels was $651.

Brussels to New York is $465. So like, let's say if New York to Brussels and back was an A, B flight, A was New York to Brussels, B was Brussels back to New York. If you buy B, A, it's $200 different or like 30% lower cost? $200 cheaper. $200 cheaper simply because you're flying from Europe. So what I started doing, and this is crazy and you need a spreadsheet for. this. I would buy flights. When I was living in the U.S., I would buy a round-trip flight from Brussels to New York back to Brussels, but I would basically change my return whenever I needed it.

Does that make sense? Yeah. So you did the return flight for like 12 months from now. Yeah. And then you changed it to when you actually needed to use it. Correct. Yes. But you need to remember because you got a flight booked in 12 months. I don't even think the points guy knows about this, Joe. Last week, I literally woke up with an alert like, are you ready to check into your flight? I'm like, what the hell? Like, what flight? So luckily I changed it and everything was saved because I usually get flexible tickets.

Joe, this is like what hedge funds do, except they're trying to buy and sell securities by finding some trick. You're doing it. Hey, P. Morgan Joe over here. And this, okay, so here's the caveat with this. That trick shot is for people who are going to Europe often. Yeah, okay. One thing I will say, one ways are the biggest money sucks in history. One ways will be insane.

So I really avoid as much as possible buying a one way. And one way are a lost llama, not a profit puppy. They're a profit puppy for the airline. A lost llama for us consumers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, maybe you want to get a multi-city trip. Multi-city trips are something that I've done too, where you're taking like four different flights in the year and you buy it all at once.

So there are different ways to hack how you book your flights. This next question is coming from Minneapolis, Minnesota. All right. Next question, Rachel, what do we got? Hi, Nick and Jack. This is Christine calling from Minneapolis. My partner and I are looking at some destinations later on this year or early 2025. And we would love to know if there are any hidden gems that we should keep in mind, either domestically or internationally, that also don't break the bank. Thank you so much. Love, T-Boy.

Destination dopes. Christine is looking for destination dubs, which is basically a travel destination that's just like a really expensive, famous one that everyone knows about, that costs a lot of money to go to, but gives you basically a similar experience for a lower price. Oh, it feels like you have got a list, Joe. It feels like you may have a list over there. I'm like, hold me back and let me lose. Like, I have so many, this needs to be a two-day special. Go full travel agent on this for Christine, Joe. I have various different ways of picking travel destinations. And like I said with the other tip of self-awareness, what do you love? Because some people love to dance.

Some people love pizza. Some people love coffee shops. And all of these things will create a different experience. So what lights you up in your day-to-day life? What makes you feel like you're making memories? When I think of travel, I do not think of checklist traveling. So there are checklist travelers that do things to just check off a list. And this is why when you guys ask,

how many countries have you visited? I'm like, definitely more than 50, but I don't keep count. Because I keep going back to the same places because I love finding new ways of seeing the same place. So that's the backstory to what I'm about to say. The other thing is like a phenomena kind of a travel. So on the Netflix show, I was so fortunate that I got to see these incredible sites that only happen around that time of year. And these could be natural experiences, like the aspen trees being bright yellow in Colorado for like those three to four days when I was there, or bioluminescence happening in the Caribbean. Or it's something like Lungan Day Festival happening in Bali, where the entire community comes together and you just see this epic experience, you know, like the light lantern festival in Thailand.

So there are phenomena that happen at specific times of year. And those must be expensive to go to because everyone wants to go there at that time. So yes and no. A lot of times I've actually just pulled up by accident because I went during, like I went to Thailand during monsoon season, which like I don't know if I would advise. It was actually lovely. But I was on a budget at the time. So there's also that. If you go during like the not ideal weather season, you'll get a cheaper trip.

I just happened to be in Chiang Mai when there was this incredible lantern festival. I didn't even know this was happening. So I got cheaper deals on the flights and accommodation because it was monsoon season and like it rained every day, but it wasn't anything that disrupted the trip. Bring a raincoat. I got lucky. And I saw these incredible lanterns. So there are so many different things that happen from cherry blossoms, which are, you know, it's expensive. But then you have like the sardine run in South African coast and you have northern lights in the northern circle.

A lot of these things happen for many months. Okay. So you don't need to go in the moment everybody's going. Yeah. That makes sense. That's a seasonal approach to destination dupes. Choose the non-peak moment to go to that destination, and it feels like a dupe. Like my dad says, there's no such thing as bad weather.

There's just underdressed. So if you want to visit Times Square, you could go in early February, and the prices will be low because it's freezing. Now we know where you get these granny sweaters from Jack. It's from Big Ted, your papa. You know, I was wondering, Jack, because you and I put together a list of destination dupes earlier in the year to kick off the summer. So Joe, I was thinking about this,

and I actually had three in particular. So love how you brought a strategy to this. That is way smarter than what I'm about to say. But three destination dupes I thought of over the last few weeks that could be relevant to our audience. One, Tuscany is extremely expensive. We talked about the rise of prices in Europe right now. An alternative within Italy, that I think is a destination dupe,

is Puglia, where my family is from. Bellissima, Vichino Barri. It is just a lovely area that's a little. little rough around the edges than Tuscany, but it's still much cheaper. Find the climate. So a lot of people go for climate and there are microclimates. Like if you love wine country, just search the microclimate that wine countries are in, which is this Mediterranean microclimate.

And that is not just in, you know, where you think it is. It's not just in Napa. It's in different parts of the world. Well, I was going to say another destination dupe for the Mediterranean, Joe, is Oman, the country in the Middle East, which you can fly to Dubai every, The airline flies to Dubai pretty much. And then you just take a taxi two hours north. You're in a new country.

You're in a different country called Oman, which has got pristine waters on the Arabian sea that look like the Mediterranean, but it is a fraction of the price, barely visited, feels like the Mediterranean based on the climate, but you're actually in the Middle East, and it's way cheaper. Okay. So that's one. And then a final one for Europe, just because so many Yeti's we've heard are going to Europe right now. Jack's apparently, you're going to wear again, Jack?

Jack may be going to France. But the other European destination dupe is LaDam. Buenos Aires is a wonderful alternative to Spain where you're staying up late, just like in Spain. And on the flip side, though, you're getting $4.4 filet mignons in Buenos Aires in Argentina. So Buenos Aires is a wonderful way to do a destination dupe of Spain. I'll keep mine really short and sweet.

Mexico City was an incredible city that was really inexpensive. For context, I went to the airport from like downtown, Mexico City via an Uber, and I paid $7, including tip. It was wildly low-priced. And then, you know what I'm going to say, Nick. Vermont is a dupe for Austria. Vermont's amazing. The Green Mountains is a dupe for the European Ops.

Thank you, Joe. It's like, it blew me out of the water. We just went full on in Vermont with the ice cream. I just want to point out that there were like 30 different Ben and Jerry's flavors on the theme of that trip. I love it. That's why you go. The other tip that I found as I traveled to major cities, first-time travelers were always try to go to, like, Barcelona or Paris, or just like the main city that you think of. But I like to go to the secondary city.

So like in Greece, there's Athens, but there's also Thessaloniki. And Thessaloniki is so lovely. And it's not as saturated with, like, tourism and the gimmicks and the fidget spinners. So I have like a second city kind of a vibe that I like to see the secondary place. Yeah. Wonderful call. The destination dupes list. We should throw that in the newsletter, actually, Jack.

We have so many examples there. We got to toss that in the newsletter for this week. Rachel, what's our next question? This next question is from Jackie. Nick and Jack, it's Jackie from Orange County, California. I have a question about traveling. What tips do you have for solo female travelers? Joe, this one's all you.

I love that question. I think that women traveling, it's nerve-wracking. If you haven't done it before, if you are used to traveling with your friends or with your partners or whatever, there's nothing more empowering, though, than taking a solo trip, man or woman. But especially for women. Have you guys taken solo trips before in your lives just to, like, wander around? I think one of the most wildest moments my life was going to Petra alone at 5 in the morning in Jordan. And it was like a life-changing moment. As much as I miss doing it with Molly or doing sign phone with Jack.

During a business trip, I took a weekend excursion to Strasbourg, which is my only French experience. I stayed in a hostel for one night with a bunch of other people. Really fun, quick trip. So I do solo trips almost like a relationship hygiene for my relationship with myself. Like I do this on a quarterly basis if I can, even if it's a one to two day kind of a trip, or I take myself out to dinner. So for solo female travelers, I would say start day.

your toes in the water, take yourself out to dinner, see how it feels. I always say food tastes better when you eat alone because you're not too busy, like chatting your head off, and you're just like, wow, damn, I'm like, I'm alone in this restaurant and I'm owning this table for two, and it's just me, like just me, table for one. So it builds up your confidence. So it's not just, I want to travel. It's a confidence builder. It's a relationship builder with yourself for women out there listening who have always been taking care of everything and everybody's lives around them, they're nurturing people, they're taking care of kids, whatever. There's nothing like being alone and ask yourself, what do I want to do? What do I actually want to do?

Where do I want to go? What do I want to see? So there's so much empowerment. There are obviously safety things, safety tips. So even if you go out by yourself in your city, like I've been in jazz cafes, jazz bars in L.A. I love jazz. I love searching for live music. That's actually one of the things I always do on trips, especially alone. And sometimes sketchy characters come and sit next to you. And so one of the tips that I have is scan the room and either when you walk in, make friends with one of the staff, like somebody at the establishment, whether it's the bartender, or in this specific instance, I was getting basically like this man would not leave me alone. And I gave this woman sitting on the sidelines and a look. and the woman literally called me over as if we knew each other.

Wow. And so it was almost this moment of realizing there are allies in every room. There are allies in every situation. And if you're alone, find your allies. Make sure that you know your allies. And in London, in a lot of restaurants, there's a system that I started seeing that I thought was incredible. I forgot the name of the person, but you go to the restroom

and when you close the toilet door or the door to the loo, there's a poster and it says if you're on a date and you want somebody to help you from the staff, say, ask for Felicia or something like that or like ask for Abby at the bar. And the bar team. Like a secret code. Yeah. So the women who are in that establishment, if they go to the bathroom because they're like, oh, my God, this Tinder date is scary. Yeah.

Then they can go to the bar and ask for whoever. I got to get the person's name. So there are things that are popping up in different places to help women traveling. And then, of course, keep your awareness at all times. don't be walking around with two headphones in, maybe not even one, know where you're going, share your location with friends, check in with people when you get to point A to point B. The other tip that I think is really helpful is if you're really nervous, book a group trip, find an experience in a group because you start the trip alone, but you never end the trip alone.

And that's something that I don't think people factor in when they take a solo trip. I don't understand. Joe, can you explain the group trip again? Yeah, so for instance, like when I was traveling all the way to New Zealand alone, it was post-breakup. I was actually supposed to go with my ex. And I was like, oh, that's not going to fly. So I'm still going. But time to reroute this trip. And I booked this three-day yoga retreat.

And I get to this, I like book an additional flight. I go down to Wellington, New Zealand, and I start this experience with strangers. I'm by myself. So I'm having a spiritual journey like Naked Petra at, you know, 5 a.m. But just in New Zealand and Wellington doing downward-facing dog. And I meet these. friends that then we road trip up the entire country, I couldn't have planned for that. So that's what I mean. It's either a book, book a group trip or book group experiences, even if it's like a cooking class

to make pasta and then you make friends there. This next question is from Gillian Go. What do you recommend? An airline card, simply chasing miles, or does a straightforward cashback card do the trick? Jillian's kind of asking about loyalty here in travel a little bit, it seems like, right? I mean, I'm all for the Amex Platinum card. This is not a sponsored ad. It's $700. That's a big annual fee.

And when I was young, that would have been way too much. But now, I can tell you that it pays for itself with just a few perks. I think I get $200 of Uber Eats credits, which I use. I get $200 of streaming credits.

I get $200 of airline fee reimbursements for like upgraded seats or checked bags. And you get Delta Lounge access. So if you try, travel delta a lot. It pays for itself pretty quickly, plus five times points on travel bookings. I mean, when you do the rough back of the envelope travel math on this thing, if you're traveling more than once a quarter, then commitment to a travel credit card or a travel airline makes sense and pays for itself in the long term. But you guys, you didn't even mention on the Amex Platinum,

which I also have not sponsored, but I do love my A MX Platinum, that you get a $200 travel credit annually that gets dispersed throughout the year. So I book most of my flights on my MX Platinum and I'm just like, cha-ching, so $200 is already covered if you travel with this card. And you get priority pass. I'm pretty sure. No, priority passes with Chase Sapphire Reserve. I was going to say the Chase Sapphire folks are going to rip into us pretty soon. We've got to throw on the phone right now. Listen, I'm a Chase Sapphire girl too. Like I started with the basic one, which I think is the preferred. And then I got onto the. reserve and I do this for personal and for business. So I have the Chase Sapphire Inc.

And the miles that I've been racking up, and here's my hack, my financial trick shot, if I have a giant thing to furnish or like something big to purchase, that's when I look for the cards that makes sense. So I think I got my Amex platinum when I had to furnish an apartment. So I could hit those bonus points. Right. Because they have like an introductory like 100,000 price if you spend $5,000 in the first month. Yeah, exactly. And so if you have a big purchase coming up, this is the time to start browsing the credit cards and seeing what you can get in addition to what you already get. And did you guys, have you guys ever noticed that they keep the benefits like super hidden? Yeah, I have. They almost don't want you to see it. On that

on Sapphire and Amics, they also don't make clear when you book a hotel with one of these expensive credit cards, this is how it pays for itself. You typically get some kind of a credit, like at the spa or at the restaurant at the hotel of like $100 or so. So I've found that like the other hidden value that you're describing, Joe, is that when you actually end up booking with these credit cards, the hotels end up giving you a credit of some kind. So frankly, on just one or two vacations a year, that upfront cost of an expensive credit card can pay for itself in the hotel perks. And car rental insurance. And car rental insurance. Oh, I want to destroy a Fiat. Oh, it was not pretty when I didn't have a fancy credit card.

You're a solo dinner date as a dipping your toes in the water for solo travel. And that it tastes better. I love that idea. like my biggest table. You guys, are you going to try it? Yeah. Can you please let me know and like send me a picture and just say, hey, got dinner for one? Nick already does this. I think like once a month, Nick, you dine solo and you sit at the bar, don't you? Yeah, I sit at post up at the bar and just like slurp up at Carbonara. I don't do this though. And something about the way Joe framed it really appeals to me. And you could journal too. Like, come on. Let's get the journaling done at the bar. Great call. Great call. It's a really immersive meal. I want to talk about points too, because miles and

points are two different things and many people get those confused. Can you explain points? Let's make the distinction and let's whip out the whiteboard on this one. What do you got you? You got points, which are usually accrued with credit cards, you know, all of the things that you're getting on the credit cards. But then you have miles and miles are through loyalty programs. And so if you're truly on a budget and you can't afford that annual fee, you should still rack up the loyalty program miles, which are also redeemable for flights.

So points usually are more valuable than miles. but then you can financially trick-shot your way to actually transferring your credit card points to mileage programs and redeeming it. Because miles, miles on loyalty programs in several of the biggest loyalty programs, they don't expire. So I was also in the school of thought, like when I was broke in 20 to 27, I was like, I'm not going to use these loyalty programs. But really, I did myself an injustice because later on I could have accumulated, you know, the bigger bank. And the other thing that I didn't realize is that these miles, like let's say you're a part of sky mileage, the loyalty program, even if you're not the one booking your flight,

you can still give them your loyalty number and you get the miles. So when I was flying Netflix, when my travel agency, the old travel agency was booking my flights, I gave them all of my frequent flyer codes, and I had like triple deluxe ultra platinum on every airline after the show because they were flying us around the world in these crazy long haul flights. And so after the show, I was so excited because I got free check bags for like me and a party of 45 people. And it was a sad day when I lost the status.

But I saw the benefits of using mileage loyalty programs. Milestone expire. I have frequent flyer accounts for my one-year-old son Brooks and my three-year-old son Wilder. Yeah, we started them young because that was one of our big regrets not starting earlier. Oh, my, I didn't even know you could do that. That's like travel goals. By the time they're 18, they'll be like, thanks, pops. For Jacks and my kids, and then they're frequent flyer nires.

This next question is from a legendary Yeti, Jack Sy in NYC. He created the term financial trick shot. So we're using it again. What is your airport financial trick shot? Mine is that you'll be disappointed by whatever food you buy in the airport. So bring food from home. I bring it in my carry-on bag. Every time I have a morning flight, I pack in one of those big plastic to-go containers that you, like, usually recycle.

I wash them in the dishwasher because I know. know I'm going to need that for an overnight oats for morning flight. So that's mine. Bring the Overn. What's that in your pocket? Jack's like, not a sweet green salad. Definitely not a sweet green salad.

Food always gets like extra, like you put your bag through the machine. They're going to check what's in there. And I'm like, it's overnight oats. It's overnight oats. Step away from the overnight. Yeah, but you can do it as long as it's solid. You're good. And that's the thing a lot of people don't know.

You can actually go in with your box of pizza. I heard a story randomly that people kept flying with rotissory chickens in a specific city. I forget where it was, but like the whole plane smelled like rotisserie chickens. And people would buy these to bring to their family abroad because there was a special kind of chicken lady that would sell chicken at the airport for you to take through the TSA. So, yeah, people can bring food. I don't think people, like many people don't realize that. Because you can't bring liquid, but you can bring food. Joe, airport financial tricks out. What do you got?

So food at the airport is usually bad unless you have access to lounges. I've actually been very surprised. When you have access to lounges, you're eating that buffet. You're getting full bottles of water. You are living your best life and you're not paying for anything. And if you have lounge access, you can bring two guests with you. So my boyfriend loves living that lounge life, even though he's Belgian. This is something that in the U.S., we have a lot of these perks that my European friends laugh because in Europe, if you get a credit card. They're like, they gave me $5 off for toothpaste. But in the U.S., we have this crazy financial industry where you get a credit card and you get all of these perks. So lounge access

is definitely a financial trick shop. I check the night before on Priority Pass, like what terminals have lounges and so I can already mentally prepare. If I'm going where there is a lounge, I just show up like a madame and like glide in and get my water bottle and fly into the, like I go into the airplane with lounge food. So you could also do that. People are like hoarding all of the M&Ms to go to flight. Because at that point, you've already passed security, you know? So that's one way.

And then the other thing is I bring a bag in a bag, like in my carry-on bag. I always have a tote bag. Because you know some of those flights have crazy restrictions, especially like the Spirit Airlines, the Ryanairns. So I will cram everything in a bag. And then in the plane itself, like once I've passed the... high stakes moment where they like measure your carry on. Then I just like expand and that's a trick shot. I love that. I love that expansion. Nick, what's yours? All right. So I've got a financial trick shot that's on

travel, not just airports. And I wish I'd said it earlier, so I'm going to say it now. Travel financial trick shot is the lifestyle souvenir. And the idea of a lifestyle souvenir is that we all think of souvenirs as trinkets, things you buy, you splurge on, you bring back the little refrigerator magnet. Yeah, exactly. thing, and you spend all this money on souvenirs from trips. But a lifestyle souvenir is something you bring back from a trip that's an idea, that you saw or experienced somewhere, that now you're going to put back in your life when you return from a trip so that that trip stays with you forever. For example, I was not a tea person when we went to Morocco. But after seeing the

way that they cared about the tea, crafted the tea, poured the tea from like three feet high, I realized I can incorporate tea in my life as like a really kind of nice special moment. And so I didn't buy any tea in Morocco to bring back, but now I have a tea routine in home. Well, this is getting poetic, Nick. Now you're talking about the poetry, what it means to travel in the culture. And this is why I love language learning, too. Every place I go, I usually learn a little bit of the language. This is the ultimate financial trick shot.

Nothing says discount or free drink, like pulling up and speaking a little bit of the language. And I don't do this to get free drinks, but when I show up and I'm like, Ciao, how me stata, all right? They're like, ah, we have a table, but for me. And then suddenly, from having no reservations available, I get the best seat in the house. And so language learning will unlock it and will give you different ways of thinking about life through the expression. So it's not just the culture that you experience, but it's like the way of thinking based on how idioms frame things. Joe, what if you speak terrible French and you go to France asking for French, should I use my terrible French?

No, honestly, with French, even if you're fluent, I'm fluent and it's still not a good, you know. You know, it's still not easy to win over the French. I would just stick to English. Don't even. Just be like, it's parti. Our theme for the trip, Jack, it's not possible. It's tough. Some cultures are a little bit more loving than others.

And that's why if you're learning a language, which I know this is not about language learning, but it goes in hand. Try to learn a language. If you are into people, learn a language from a warm country, warm places. So if you're learning Greek, the Greeks will throw all of their food

on the table and invite you to Easter just because you said, if Haristopolit. And this is something that I'm not getting here learning Dutch in Belgian culture. It's a cold culture. Oh, Jack, taking your shoes off when you get to my house?

Lifestyle souvenir from Japan. No more shoes in our house since Tokyo. Less dirt. Less grime. This question comes from legendary Eddie Sherry Morris. Hi, Nick and Jack. This is Sherry from Maryland. I am wondering how to find

awesome, cool restaurants and cafes when traveling abroad. Thanks. Nick, I'm giving the floor to you because you find the best restaurants for whatever city we travel to. You know, it's so funny, Jack, we have a few keys that Molly and I use for this.

We set up our trips so that every other night we have a reservation, and every other night it's something we choose from that trip. And the way we choose the restaurant to go to on the spontaneous nights is we find a cool retail shopping shop during the day.

Now, for example, let's go back to Milan. My and I found this cool shop in a neighborhood that was selling home goods and flowers. We're like a florist selling home goods that sounds like a cool store. And here's the idea. If you find a cool store during the day in a neighborhood,

the person who owns that store is going to know where to go at night. And so if you find the during the day spot, then you get a great referral from that creative person on where to go that night. And we found that works. I love that. Find the cool spot during the day to lead your night.

Nick, what do you say when you walk up to the owner? First thing is you compliment how cool their place is. You've traveled all these miles to go to this, you know, incredible flower shop in Florence. Como stuy, tout o'bene? What a beautiful shop. And then when you establish a relationship, maybe you buy something and it may be worth it to buy something for this result. But then when they're so happy that they've introduced in solar design, then you say, hey, where should we be going tonight for dinner? and they are going to give you their favorite spot down the street.

What I love about this tip, Nick, is that you're vetting the recommendation because if you ask a random person on the street, you have a 50-50 chance of getting sent to the most touristy spot. Right. Because a lot of people aren't travelers in their own places. You know, they're not doing the quirky things. Not everybody is. So by going to that creative place or by finding that creative person, you can ask them.

That's actually one of my tips. I'll find these creatives by going to the coffee shop during the day and be like, where would you go? at night to see live music. And that's such a great hack. Great tip. What kind of content do people be consuming to find a local restaurant? So like I love watching the old Anthony Bourdain episodes

for inspiration on a city. A lot of those places may not be open anymore, but at least I know what neighborhood I want to go to then. And then I kind of start exploring that neighborhood with, frankly, I use Google Maps a lot. I think Google Maps is a wonderful discovery tool these days because it has so many shops on it that you can now see and kind of vet early on

and be like, oh, that, is a home goods store that also sells flowers. Okay, so here's the journey that you're going through, Nick. You're watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain when he visits Provence, and then you notice the restaurant he went to, because he mentions it as he walks in, and then you Google that restaurant, you find the neighborhood, you go to Google Maps, and you look at what's around there, and you just click on the items and then check out their website and their Instagram pages.

Exactly. And I may never end up at that initial restaurant, but it's all about finding the right location, because restaurant shops, there's turnover there. But the vibe and the culture of the moray when you go to Paris, Jack, that hasn't changed in a hundred years. So that's an interesting tip, Nick, when you are consuming the content, are you, because this is what I do, similar to you, I'll start researching probably like a month or two weeks before I go. Are you actually saving things in a map in the want to go tab and like categorizing things so that when you land, you just have like this beautiful map? Molly creates these Google Maps that honestly I think she could sell. Time out. Time out.

You can time out. You can time out. You can tag on the Google Map and share. What are we talking about? What is this cab on Google Maps? You got to share this feature with them, Joe. This is crazy. And you know that I need to talk to Molly about this because there's maps.

There's like this way to create a map that's shareable and you could categorize this. I used to do this in my first wave of entrepreneurship. I would create like the best of Paris, the best of New York. And I would say like coolest coffee shops where you could use a laptop. On a map. Best places that actually have couches. And it's like a whole map. that's categorized, but I do this still for my own life. And I'll say, like, want to go,

different restaurants, different bars. So Molly is doing this. And Jack, you need to get, I need to share this with you. We need to share this with Jack. Yeah. So I'm clicking on Google Maps right now. And I just clicked on Sisters of Anarchy Ice Cream, which is an awesome ice cream spot near Burlington. And I think I need to click Save. Okay, now there's a want to go option. Yeah. And now, Jack, you could create a whole map. And you could save. trips. You could create a whole map for your future trips in different cities. And then as long as you're using the same Google Maps account, don't make the mistake I did. I have like 45 different Gmail accounts. I would save the maps in different accounts. So just be sure you're saving it on the

same Gmail account. Now, Jack, when I'm in Rome in a few days, I'm going to do a map for you. And when you're in Paris, you need to create a map for me. And then Joe is going to do one of Antwerp, and we're all going to meet up there and do another podcast. And then someday when I go to Rome, I'll use your map, neck. And I'll use your Paris map. Love this. Sold. So cool.

Yeah. So, Joe, I love that you always bring a disposable camera on your trips. Or film camera because it's a little bit more sustainable. But if it's too heavy, then you pop that Kodak in the bag. And I know you also bring a journal on every trip. Yes. Those are both forms of keeping memories. How do you make sure that your trip doesn't die on the first?

final day of the trip. So I love journaling for so many reasons, and it's funny because the first chapter in my entrepreneurship with the travel YouTube channel, I was, I didn't know this now in hindsight. I can easily see what was happening. I love documenting. And part of the reason I love documenting is because when I first took that $5 megabus to Baltimore and made it look like it was Cancun, even though it was in the winter and I forgot my hair product and I was just a hairball, I didn't think I would do that again. And so I saved all the tickets. And I was. I saved all the tickets. I put it in my journal. When I got to go to Montreal that was basically an Arctic tundra for spring break my freshman year, which was my first trip out of the country after being undocumented for so long,

I thought it was Paris, you know, and it was, my feet were frozen. I didn't care. I was drinking beer. I was 18, having the best time ever. I saved all of the tickets. I put it all in my journal. When I look back, I can see that journaling was a companion on all of these trips because I wanted to relive these memories because I didn't think I would ever get to do them in the first place. obviously now looking back, I'm like, wow, I have hundreds and hundreds of pages of these amazing memories. And it added to the trip for the reasons I've mentioned before, like when you're in the moment and you're journaling about the coffee shop that you're sitting in or about the day that you just had. And then somebody taps you on the shoulder and they're like, wait, what are you doing? Are you writing a book? Are you journaling?

I'm like, yeah, now you're going to be a part of it. So there's this beautiful living element to travel journaling and documenting in general. Same thing happens when I vlog. If you guys want to try and experiment, I think you would both love this. It's nerve-wracking, but it's also so interesting. Plan a solo trip, even if it's in your town. Go out in the streets of Vermont, Jack, San Francisco, Nick, I'm sure that you can find cool things to do with a vlog camera.

Don't have much of an agenda. Maybe pick two spots you're going to hit. And it becomes this living experience that you couldn't have planned. Like the amount of times I've said the camera gods were on my side and my experience in the place changed, just because I was documenting, it's too many to count. So, yeah, I'm a big documenter, not only for the fact that I thought I couldn't travel,

but for my future self, when I always think of the 80-year-old Joe, that'll be super stoked that I've kept track of all of these memories. Yeah, Joe, given all of your travels and how much you've done, you must look back and sometimes think, oh, I wish I'd done things a little differently. So, like, what do you wish you knew five years ago? That's a game changer now.

Okay, so many tangible things. get those takeaways. I think loyalty pays off, even if you're loyal to many things at once. That's like the fun little asterisk that being a part of those mileage programs and keeping track of those logins and I think organization is key.

Planning to make a plan and then change the plan. Also key. Having access to lounges is a game changer. I feel like I'm rich, even if I'm taking the seven-euro Ryanair flight at 5 a.m. Because I've stocked up on that free lounge food at Shauna Roit Airport.

So the lounge access is a hack that I think I definitely wish I knew sooner. And then there's the intangible stuff. Like, you don't need to get on a plane to travel. You really don't. If you wake up one day and it's a Saturday and you have the day off and you're like, I want to be a traveler today. You can find these quirky places in your own town or neighboring towns. I got a house in Connecticut during COVID.

And this was like my nightmare. I was like, I'll never live in Connecticut again and cut to pandemic hits. I buy a house in Connecticut. And I remember feeling so like a caged bird. And one day I'm like, enough is enough. I'm going to have a travel day. Even if it's in this tiny little town, I wake up and I do everything that I usually do when I travel. Found a new coffee shop sat there.

I had a great time. Went to a French bakery, spoke French to the, you know, boulanger, the manager, the patisserie, like maker. And I was just like, wait, what? I'm in Connecticut. How is this happening? And then I take myself out to dinner and I take photos. And I, it's like an eye and mindset shift. Like you're more observant when you're traveling.

And that does not only happen when you've gone through TSA pre-check. It happens if you want it to happen. So that's, I think, what I wish I knew? What about you guys? My biggest regret from five years ago is not journaling while I'm traveling. I think of all these amazing trips. And I have details through the photos that I took, but I don't have them through the words I would have written. And Jack and I love writing so much that, you know, honestly, like even Jack, our business trips,

I regret I don't have little notes about like what just happened that day, even if it was just a paragraph. Gosh. You two are so eloquent and beautiful, but I'm going to go lowbrow. Check the bank holiday calendar because European countries have all these bank holidays. What? Yes, yes, yes. No, don't fly on someday. Europe takes like a month off for Easter.

Oh, my God. Right now I'm trying to process paperwork is going to take me until December. It's insane. And then they have more holidays. Europe does take a month off for Easter. You know, they're not even going to do the Paris Olympics because they're taking the time off in August. Or they're on strike. This is also a thing.

Joe Franco, what's the takeaway on travel? Oh, just go. Do it. No matter if you're in a bus, in a train, in a car, in a plane, go out, or you're just walking. Here in Dutch, in Flemish, they say the Bainawar, like the legmobile. Like even if you're just in your legmobile, you're walking around, go explore things, start small, dip your toes in. if you're feeling a little nervous, travel alone, travel with family, travel with friends, make friends abroad.

I feel like the best thing that we could do in this lifetime, because we only get one lifetime, I don't know what y'all believe in, but if you only get one lifetime, I'm trying to hack this one lifetime as many different lifetimes as possible. And I do that through traveling, through experiencing what life could look like having grown up in Belgium or in Thailand or in New Zealand. And this is just, it's funny because financially speaking, when you live a global life, your opportunities exponentially grow. So it's not just that you're growing as a person, but your income also grows with it. And it's not even direct.

This is like something that happens as a byproduct of this beautiful, interesting life. Jack, it sounds like you got to go grab your grandma sweater. And we got to go fly and get some Spanakopina man. It's time. This is done. The most lively, energetic, contagiously optimistic conversation with you. Thank you so much for coming on our show.

So much, Joe. Jack, have a blast in France. I'll be waving to you from Italy, and I'll be putting together that map for when you're ready. And Joe, we cannot wait to see in Belgium. Guys, you're always welcome here. We'll meet somewhere in a lounge. Like we said, it's going to be a lounge,

some free baguettes or whatever. Give me the lounge, water. It's going to be great. Yides, I hope you're having some great time off. Nick and I will be back in a couple of weeks with the regular show. Can't wait. Have a great trip, you guys. Bye.

Bye. Ciao. Here we go. All right. We'll do it together. Ready? Three. Three. Two.

Live from this is T-Boy. Live from the zoo. It's T-Boy. Hotline. Oh, God. Guys, we need to do that again.