The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Adventure Life! Announcing New Changes and More Content

Episode Date: July 7, 2019

Adventure Life! Announcing New Changes and More Content

Hi folks, Chris Voss here. Welcome to the Chris Voss Show podcast, another episode. This is going to be a one-on-one between you and me and the audience. We're going to share some interesting news. This is probably going to blow a few people's minds. And some interesting changes that, you know, won't change much of the show, but there'll be some new added content that'll be pretty freaking cool you'll be able to check out. So let me see if I can figure out a way to start at the beginning and move chronologically. Last month I've been doing

some different changes to downsize my life to get ready for this book that we want to take and write. Some of this has been in planning for about a year now and I've been kind of resisting it but it looks like after being 10 years of social media, I really need to write a book, start speaking again, and I'll go through some of the reasons why we finally come to that decision and the journey that's going to be pretty cool hopefully thereafter. We're kind of working through the whole process of this whole thing. So let's just get into it because that's probably the easiest way to do it.

Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to further show to your friends. We certainly appreciate you guys. We see all those great downloads and just are always so thankful. Anyway, back in 2013, one of my friends is Mike Elgin. I don't know if you know him on social media, but he was one of the social media early rock stars. He writes for a lot of different magazines. He's written a book. And you've probably seen him a lot on the Leo Laporte show, which I'm trying to remember the name of his radio show, but it might come to me. But if you know Leo Laporte, he's got the technology show, a variety of different channels that he's had for,

I don't know, 10, 20 years. I don't know how long he's been on the radio, but anyway, Mike's been on his show a lot. So if you've seen that show, you've probably seen Mike Elgin. Mike Elgin, he pretty much lives what you would call a nomad life. He writes for all these great magazines, writes books, and he travels the world with his wife and sometimes his kids and stuff, and he literally has no home. He literally has no home. He has no car, and in Europe and stuff, when he travels, of course, you can travel by train. There's all sorts of different ways you can do stuff, but he literally has carved out

a life for himself for, I don't know, it's been years and years and years and years. I haven't asked him. He's been on the podcast. If you want to search for his name, Mike Elgin, I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name. That's kind of weird. E-L-G-A-N. You can search for him on the podcast, The Chris Voss Show,

and see the hour we spent with him on his book. So anyway, back in 2013, I was inspired by him and what he was doing with his life because a lot of people don't realize that if you get rid of your house, you get rid of your car, uh, but you still maintain the same income that you had to take and, um, uh, maintain that stuff. Uh, that's a lot of freaking money. And in today's world with the blossoming of Airbnb and all these different sites, there's couchsurfer.com. I know that I've had friends that have done couch surfing, not as like a thing where they

didn't have a house, but like when they went to visit for events, shows, CS, you know, stuff like that, they would do the couch surfing thing. And, you know, sometimes they'd just do it whenever they wanted to vacation. It was a way to vacation very inexpensively. So a lot of these different sites have created a lot of the democratization of freedom where people can do and travel much more expensively than, you know, paying for expensive hotels and rates and fees and all the crap that they put you through. And sometimes you can kind of learn more about your community. They kind of were really an expansion of bed and breakfasts

because bed and breakfasts kind of had that sort of same experience where you could have community where you could go to bed and breakfast, meet the wonderful couple that kind of give you personalized service. And you can stay there just like a hotel, only it was much more homey. Kind of felt like you were visiting family, if you will. I suppose as long as it was a cool family you're visiting and they weren't, I don't know, you weren't visiting the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, folks. That wouldn't work out well, but then no one to hear from you after that.

So, but that's probably better because then they don't get bad reviews right can't leave bad reviews if you're on the meat hook at the turks of chainsaw massacre thing anyway uh sorry for going dark with a joke there but i just uh we had to go down that road um but uh uh in 2013 i i was really enamored by this idea of being able to travel and do stuff at the time I was living, uh, in California and I had my two dogs. My dogs were, uh, both around, I think about 12 and 11 or something like that. My one dog was starting to have really bad seizures. She was kind of at the end of her road.

She died, I think about a, uh, that year actually. Um, she passed, shadowed in. And then a couple years later, Abby passed away as well once we moved back to Nevada. And I really was enamored. I had, I think, about $10,000 worth of cameras and lenses from Canon. I had all my GoPros. We had all the GoPro product. And I was like, you know what?

I'm going to get a van, RV, and I'm going to travel all around the U.S. with my dogs, and we're going to shoot everything. And then AT&T, of course, has always been a great company that we've always reviewed their phones now for almost 10 years. And they give us service, so we have service to travel with and stuff like that. And I'm like, we'll just travel and shoot. And then I'll use my house as

a base. I'll rent out some rooms and, and, uh, you know, have a place I can always come back to as a base place to get my mail and, uh, you know, come collect rent. Oh, that's good stuff. And, and, you know, wander, do some wandering. Um, the biggest challenge was my dogs were too old. Uh, my one dog shadow, uh, right about the time she would not get in the car to go for a ride, uh, her hips or arthritis, just, just everything was not working for her. And, uh, she'd reached the end of her run. She was just a wonderful dog. Um, and it just became apparent to me, uh, in trying to do little jaunts and travels of photography that I could not take them with me.

And I started having to do my photography day trips without them because they're just too old. And so I had to shelf that idea at the time and kind of ride out the rest of their lives and see where they were going. Now my life has kind of changed a little bit. I've got two young huskies now, if you've seen them on social media. There's Freya, who's I think three now, going on four. And there's Rocky, who's one and a half, going on two. And they are just full of life.

They're active. They're busy. They're healthy. And traveling would be fun for them because they love adventure. If you know Huskies, they love adventure and trouble. And the world's just become better with this ability to travel. And I think a year ago is when I interviewed Mike Elgin on his book that he put out. I'm going to see if we can pull this up here as I talk to you,

and we'll give a plug out to the book. And I talked about doing it, and he travels all over the world. I've always loved the lifestyle of Anthony Bourdain, being able to go different places, meet different people, find out what ticks, break bread with them, share a meal. I've always loved eating. I mean, if you've seen me yeah i probably haven't went to many burgers um he uh mike elgin is an american journalist blogger blogger columnist

and podcaster he's columnist for uh publications including computer world cult of android cult of mac forbes datamation e-week and baseline and uh the book that he wrote, if you want to check it out, it is on Amazon, Gastronomad, I'm not sure either how you pronounce it, The Art of Living Everywhere and Eating Everything. And if you follow Mike Elgin's thing, he's on Twitter. He's also on Google Photos. He's got a thing that he shares there. You can see all the photos of his travel with him and his lovely wife and the meals that they either cook or that they share, the community that they are involved in. And we literally talk

in the podcast about, and I'm sure this is covered in the book as well if you want to order it, we literally talk in the podcast about how he plans this out, how he structures it so that he can save the most amount of money, pretty much plans his life out, like six months to a year into the future. And I've always been really impressed with this. Now, after being 10 years in social media, I've tried to write a book several times. When Abby got, my hus, got anal sac cancer. We spent about a year and a half with hospice care. I cut all my travel out.

I didn't want to travel, speak, do anything. I kind of went into kind of a hole to take care of her because I couldn't travel with the conditions she was in and the service that we needed to do to keep her alive. And then after that, I think it's going to be two years that she passed on the 20th of this month. So we've kind of still been in this healing mode for a year of losing her because she was a really great dog, and it was hard. So I'm not going to get much into that. I think a lot of people saw that journey that I lived out on Facebook and shared with my friends and had the great support of my community there. But I finally reached a point where I'm like, you know what?

I want to speak. I want to do more. I want to travel. This year, I've been doing more events, CES, NAB, Infocom, AWE. You've probably seen me going out more and more to different events traveling and stuff and and one of the downsides of traveling uh doing events is that i have to leave the dogs at home which i really hate and if i do travel for an extended period of time more than a day or two i i have to put them into um like a doggy daycare kennel service so that they can be doing and that

raises the cost of what we have to travel with. And I miss them dearly when I travel. I've always missed my dogs when I travel. They usually always cuddle up to me in bed at night. And if you've got huskies, they keep you warm. And they're just so wonderful dogs. And they help you sleep because, I mean, they just give you peace, if you will. I used to sit and watch Abby's face when I would sleep

because I used to have a really hard time going to sleep with stress and manic, you know, being ADD. And just watching the peace on her face would just help me put to sleep. I'd just kind of mirror the rapport or whatever it's called. I'd just kind of mirror her peacefulness, that look on her face, and I would feel peace and, and I would fall asleep. And, uh, so she, she really taught me a lot of things with that, with, with just, um, you know, I don't know, some sort of, I don't know what you call that, some sort of mirroring. Um, but just,

just, uh, just, just how to relax and enjoy life. I mean, if you've ever seen a dog, they're really professionals at being able to sleep, relax, go to a deep sleep really quickly. And they just put life in the proper perspective when it really comes down to it and the whole scope of their modus operandi. So let me see. I can't skip this through a little faster. I've been needing to write a book for years.

I wrote a book or I wrote a, and sent it to a lot of different places back when the iPad came out and all the publishers are freaking out and rejected it because they were freaking out about the, how the iPad was wrecking, uh, publishing. Uh, I tried again, uh, in 2013, went through a lot of deaths, uh, then Abby's thing. And then, um, coming through the last few years. So I finally reached a point where I feel like I want to write down kind of some of my experiences, lessons, all that sort of stuff from owning my own businesses, and I need to write a book.

Well, what do you do when you write a book? It's really hard to write a book if you're maintaining a big house and a big life and all this sort of stuff that I'm doing, and you spend most of your time chasing money. So what I basically decided to do, and this was kind of a plan, my last house, the two-year contract was coming up in May, and I said, you know what, we're going to dial this back, we're going to cut the overhead. And the one thing I've been watching is this, not only Mike Elgin's Nomad Life,

but I've been watching this RV Life, this van life, and I've been really enamored because we review a lot of products on the Chris Voss Show. We get a lot of cool products from people like GoSun where you can have solar cookers. We just got a recent really cool product from a company called Heston Q, which has induction burners where you can travel with stove burners and cook, and it's all IoT, et cetera, et cetera. And we have a lot of different solar products that have been sent to me over the years. So I already have a lot of these products for travel and doing stuff, and I've always

kind of had this dream that's been cooking since 2013. And I'm like, you know what? This might be a time for me to downsize my life. I've always been a minimalist. I just have myself and my two kids, which are my two huskies, so I don't have any human kids per se. I don't have a wife, and I've always been nomadic. I've always been an entrepreneur since 18,

so I've always been so involved in projects and doing stuff. I've tried dating. I've tried settling down. I've been engaged twice. I just could not do it because I've tried dating. I've tried settling down. I've been engaged twice. I just, I just could not do it. Um, cause I'm so independent. I'm pretty nomadic in my thing. I just don't get lonely. I don't need people, et cetera, et cetera. You know, I date, but you know, settling down with one person for more than four or five years at a time. I just can't imagine doing that. I, I of me, really, when it comes down to it.

And honestly, if you've followed me for the last 10 years, or since about 2000, what was it? 2004 is when I got rid of a big home in Utah, moved to Las Vegas to invest in real estate, realized the market was going to bust. And I haven't owned a home since. I've just rented homes. And I move literally every two to three years on average two

sometimes I've stayed at a place for three and I literally get sick of it like my last place I love my last place but I get sick of all the stores all the restaurants and you know seeing the same stuff and I'm like you know I really need to try and find some place to move so I can just have a new adventure um so I decided to uh cut my overhead uh to kind of downsize everything so I can just have a new adventure. So I decided to cut my overhead to kind of downsize everything so I can focus on this book, you know, basically go into the woods. I've had a lot of my friends that they just kind of go find some friend's cabin or something like that, someplace where they can cut their overhead, where they're not chasing money, they can go focus on a book.

So we're doing that right now. In the last month, we spent the downsize. I moved my house, everything into two giant storage units in both. There's one in Vegas, there's one in Utah. I moved up to stay with my family so I could write this book, cut my overhead, and take care of my family as well. And my dogs are much happier. They've got a giant yard they can run around compared to the small one that we had in Las Vegas. And, of course, there's quite the excruciating heat. I guess it will go kind of high here.

And I'm writing a book, so there's that. The other thing we're doing, you probably saw recently I went to an event called the Adventure Gear Expo, and we reviewed a lot of sprinters and different products, backpacks, different things that people are using to do the van life or RV life. If you get a chance, go on Instagram or Twitter. You can hit pound RV life or pound van life. And you will see these people that are living these amazing travel lives. And they literally take stuff like a Mercedes Sprinter van or an RV.

And usually they're gutted from commercial use, and they take and build these mini homes in them. I've even been amazed by mini homes. One of my things is being a single guy is I don't need a lot of space. I literally have figured out owning homes all these years that they're renting, owning whatever you want to call it um they i don't want to lie to my audience um that i i use like maybe 10 10 by 20 10 by 10 space i spend all my day working on the computer my whole life's on the line i can work anywhere

in the world if i have wi-fi uh and uh I don't need a giant home. Most of these homes are made for married guys with families, and of course you have one if you have a wife, because women nest, and that's where they build their nests. It's kind of a DNA, basic human sort of thing. So you've got to make her happy. Well, I don't have that in my life. I just have me.

In my last house, if you saw, I have a beautiful, expensive table that has like 10 seats to it. I think I've eaten there maybe 30 times in the 20 years I've owned that table because I always eat at my desk. And so just having this huge, expansive property and stuff that I have to maintain and the costs and stuff. It just is silly because I'm like, you know, all I need is my desk and, you know, some of the basics of life. Sometimes I cook. A lot of times I go out. So the concept of maybe downsizing my life to something that's more mobile, something that's more fun. On top of that, like I said earlier, I've been doing more events. So this whole journey is kind of solving a lot of different issues. So I've been doing more events

and I'll probably do more. And here's the thing, once I get this book done, I'm going to be speaking more because I'll be traveling and doing the book. Well, this will take more time away from my dogs and I hate that. And I also hate flight and, I will fly, I'm, you know, I won't, you know, I'm not someone who's like, I won't fly, but I hate the experience of flight travel, it's a nightmare, I hate the experience of acting, being someone's bitch, this is another reason I'm not married, and, you know, you must sit in your chair sir you must jump through our hoops and you we own you for however long and and don't get up and you know i i hate that whole thing and you're crammed like a lemming into a into a sardine can and you know it's not air conditioned well i get sick when i

travel usually i got sick recently at awe 2019 i came back with walking pneumonia because, you know, there's people on the flight with all sorts of, you know, disease and you're breathing the air. It's crazy, man. I hate it. I hate the TSA experience. That just makes it worse. I hate how just going to an event, you know, you've got to spend, you got to add two hours of the time of waking up, going, waiting for TSA. And then when you leave, it's another two hours. The whole thing is just expansive. I mean, when I fly to California, I can drive there quicker than what it takes to go through the whole experience. You know, delays.

I mean, when I went to AWE this year, I was like, well, you know, it's just a quick one and a half hour flight. We can probably pull this off and do it, blah, blah, blah. They put me back two to three hours on the, before we could even fly out because of the winds in San Francisco. I'm like, you know what? This gets any longer. I could have drove to San Francisco and hung out with my friends and had a good time and took my dogs with me rather than doing this stupid crap. So, you know, there's, I mean, there's trips back east that I might fly to and stuff, stuff that's long.

But a lot of the events that I do, we take the podcast, we record, boost, we talk to people on the podcast. The other thing I've loved is being nomadic. Anytime I've ever traveled, I hate that I'm racing the journey to the end. And really, the journey is about the journey if you've learned that in your experience in life and if you haven't you really need to because you're killing yourself um it's not about the destination it's about the journey what you learn what you experience because there's no perfect run there's no perfect ride, and it's about the journey and what you learn from it. It's a difference.

So I've always hated this experience of whenever I want to drive somewhere or travel, I'm always just racing to get to the destination, and I'll see these back roads and different old buildings and history and stuff like that. And part of the reason I love the podcast and having people on it is I love talking to people about what makes them tick, what got them there, what motivated them, what made that choice. Why do they do what they do? Why do you milk cows? Why is that your thing?

Why do you love that? What motivated you to do that? And to me, I don't think I like milking cows, but I'm really interested in why that guy thinks milking cows is better than what I like. And it's not about who's better. It's just I'm kind of like, well, how did his journey go? And I don't know, maybe milking cows is cool. Maybe if he tells me about how he likes milking cows, maybe I'll like milking cows. I

don't know. If you follow my whole life, my whole life has been this wonderful journey of, of different, uh, you know, being a photographer for 10 years and then quitting that. Cause it was like, I'm not really that good. I'm going to go do something else. Um, all my life, about every five to 10 years, I've changed into something else or delved into something else on a lot of different corporations. I get bored, man. I get bored. I want to try something different. I've shut down companies because I was bored. I just want to do something else. I, you know, I think I never really found anything I really loved other than being CEO and creating companies and being innovative. And I love communities, building communities and interacting with those communities

like my podcast. But I think about the only thing I'd ever love is to get a ransomware and raise like 50,000 Huskies and have a Husky rescue. Uh, that's probably about the only thing I'd, I think I'd love passionately, uh, and just being able not to give a shit. Um, I just, I just, I don't know. I love Huskies, but other than that, there's not much else that i really really love uh to do as a job so anyway um that being said uh the the process is is i'm like well you know what i can do what if i go build uh get me a sprinter van uh i think that's what we're focused on now because i've been researching rvs and all this sort of stuff and so get a Sprinter van, renovate it the way I want.

This is kind of the cool thing. You can customize it. You can make it like yours. It becomes kind of like a mini home. And some of the different technology and products they make for it is mind-blowing. Like I said, if you go to Instagram, hit pound RV life or pound van life, there's Facebook groups as well you can go on. You will have your mind blown at,

at what people make. I mean, they're making these mini homes. You can actually order a mini home from Amazon or from $18,000 up and make yourself a mini home. Uh, in Las Vegas, they have a RV park and they're converting from an EVR RV park to where they're making these mini homes that are on on uh fifth wheel trailers that you can move so i could go live in las vegas for a couple years in a little mini home having the space that i need just as a single guy uh and then i can go screw it i want to go live in austin for a while during south by southwest check out barbecue and stuff which i've wanted to do for a lot of years. And then I can just pull up steaks and go someplace else.

With Google Fi, now you can travel the world. You just pay the same you would pay for any other service and literally travel the world and do everything. That's what Mike Elgin uses, Mike Elgin. I really need to look up the pronunciation of his name. So that's the variation there. So anyway, uh,

so this kind of, this kind of solves a lot of different issues in my life with me doing all these events, kind of wanting to see the back roads, kind of wanting to interview people on the road with the podcast. So, excuse me. So I'm like,

you know what we can do? We can set up a podcast studio in the Sprinter van and a way to live in the Sprinter van and all the different products and stuff that go into it. I could take the dogs with me to events. We could do podcasts on the road when we see stuff or maybe interview people in kind of the backwoods of America, have some fun with that in the travel. And it's not about the destination. So I could probably have an event like maybe i don't know a week from now instead of just doing that whole race to the

airport hope you get your flight crazy you know day thing that i do uh sometimes i go in and out on one day what i could do is just take like a couple days slowly drive to wherever i want to go wherever this event is do the event event. Have a place to sleep. Cut the overhead on the cost for hotels and rental cars that I usually do. Cut the cost of putting the dogs into kennels. And then, of course, I have them with me. And then what I can do is during the day, if you're getting to five, when usually the shows are doing all their thing,

I couldn't leave in the van you just can't do that with dogs especially huskies because they'll pretty much shred everything in the van and of course there's heat and all sorts of stuff you can't do that with dogs um what i do is just put the dogs in a doggy daycare you know they have them everywhere now uh put the dogs in a doggy daycare and then they're there for the day. So, and then when I come home from the event at five or six o'clock at night, I can pick them up, put them in the van. And, and usually we do these for events for one to two days. So, uh, you're not gonna have them for a day and then we can slowly ride home and bring you guys amazing podcaster content as we go through the whole process of travel and just having fun. And like I say, I can work anywhere in the world.

For 10 years now, I've been in a place in my life where I can work anywhere in the world as long as I have Wi-Fi. And even then, I can work without Wi-Fi, create broadcasts, do reviews, just record them. And then when I do get around Wi-Fi, I just have to upload all that material to the Internet, YouTube, et cetera, et cetera, the podcast, podcast, etc., etc., work client stuff, etc., etc. I can do all that as long as I have Wi-Fi and sometimes when I'm not. So this will be pretty fun. And I think it will be great because I'm really excited to take my dogs with me.

And they're going to be excited to travel. And I'm going to be excited to see some things. The nice thing is, uh, there's so many of these people that are doing this now. In fact, a lot of senior citizens, this is what they do. Um, I wouldn't say the most, but, uh, you know, when I was driving the U-Haul back from Las Vegas to Utah, all I saw was just RVs and these old people driving them. And you know, some of them are really nice. I'd love to have one of those maybe eventually. Uh, but I do kind of want to see if I'm going to like this road life. I may try it for a couple of months and hate it. I mean, that's, if you know me, that's kind of how I am. I'll try stuff and I'll hate it and then I'll move on to something

else. So I want to try this life. But, uh, so what I've done is I've set up a place where I can write my book. So we're in the midst of doing that right now. And, uh, we're looking at vans. We're looking, we're trying to understand this lifestyle more, seeing, uh, different concepts of building and out, uh, planning how that whole thing's going to work and speaking engagements, et cetera, et cetera. Once the book is out, I might do some before the book is out, but I think I want to wait until this book is out and get this baby stuck in the can because I put it off for 10 years now.

In August, the podcast and the Chris Foss show will be 10 years old, August of 2019. So there's that. And so I want to put that together. We're going to put the Sprinter Band together. One of the problems I've always had about doing this is I get lots of review products sent to me and I need a mailing address where all that stuff can be sent to me. Well, fortunately, my family's lived in Utah for 50 billion years, I think 40 years or something like that. They're not going anywhere anytime soon. So I can use them as a base where I can have a place to stay. Uh, I can have my mail sent there. I can have a studio and, and, uh, and a little office taken set up, but then I can also travel and get away, do my jaunts, do my stuff and take the dogs with me and, uh, just have this wonderful life where I have a base to work from. And then I also have, uh, live on the road because I don't think I want to live in a van permanently.

I don't really know. That's what excites me. I'd like a break. Like I say, I get sick of things. So living in a van 24 hours a day might get a little weird and sick. But we have all these great products. We have companies like WeBoost who send us RV signal boosters. I'm trying to look around the room.

We have the Saddleback Leather Bags, of course, which are great for traveling. Dave Munson who created that company, Saddleback Leather Bags, he's traveled the world and he makes these bags and designed to travel the world. So a lot of my life right now, we've been downsizing. We've been just getting rid of stuff that I don't need, get rid of all this big stuff. You know, there's stuff I'm still keeping, my beautiful expensive beds and tables.

We'll just put those into storage and see if I want to stick with this life. A lot of expensive stuff I'm still keeping. But I'm trying to see. There's different solar packs that we have. I have tons of backpacks from some of the greatest companies in the world. And we've got more coming from the Adventure Gear Expo here in Salt Lake City, Utah.

We've got a really bunch of cool stuff coming. Electric blankets that turn into ponchos. And pretty much this whole sort of van life, RV life, adventure lifestyle. Let's see, what else do we have back here? I'm trying to turn around. I've got some really cool, what would you call those things? Refrigerant bags, travel bags. They're from Pelican, and Pelican is going to make some great stuff.

So we're going to be using some of their stuff. Trying to see what, I can't see it all behind me. Anyway, there's a ton of products that we have. We even got a SSD from Western Digital that's designed to be highly durable, take a lot of impact. It's a 500 gigabyte hard drive, and it's designed to be banged around on that good stuff. And the nice thing with SSDs, you can bang around a little bit. They survive much better than uh hard disk so i've got all this great travel stuff that i already have that i can use on the road and uh uh heston q is sending us a big giant another uh induction burner that you can portableize anywhere as long as you have the power for it

requires a bit of power but if you've seen these custom vans are doing, uh, you put all those sort of power units in your thing, you build it out with multiple batteries and these, these power converters, it's freaking crazy what people are doing. They're literally building homes inside of vans and the creativity and the innovation they're doing, uh, the personalization is, is just really cool. So anyway, uh, I'm going to quit fighting it. And I'm, the nice thing is I'm 52. So I'm still young enough where I can kind of deal with some of this crap. Uh, I changed the tire the other day on my car. So, um, you know, I'm not in my senior citizen age that might be a little harder, uh, traveling. I don't know. Um, I don't know, but I will just have to see how see how it goes so yeah that's where my life's going right now we're

working on a book uh where we've gone to the cabin in the woods if you will in salt lake city utah which uh you know whatever um and uh gonna write the book gonna tour gonna speak gonna keep doing more events uh that we have coming up and, uh, probably going back and forth to Vegas. Cause there's a lot of show in Las Vegas and I, I still love Vegas. Um, and I have a storage unit there, so I gotta, you know, go back and get some stuff. But, uh, uh, that's basically in 30 minutes where my whole life is going and, uh, kind of been planning this for a year and didn't really want to pull the trigger on it. Finally decided, you know, we've got to write a book and this is the time to do it. And off we go. So that's where we're at.

Crazy, huh? Sounds like crazy. The nice thing is it solves a lot of problems. It solves a lot of things. And it's kind of a thing that solves a lot of solutions for me. I don't have to leave my dogs behind. I can travel with them. I can take my time.

I can have fun. I don't have to put up with the TSA, which, you know, that's almost invaluable and priceless right there. Take off your shoes. We own you. I mean, the minute I walk into an airport, I'm owned by the TSA and the airlines. You know, if you cause any trouble, we'll call the FBI and you'll be taking off the plane and putting on no fly list. You'll never be able to fly again. So, uh, I think one time I got stuck at LaGuardia for two freaking hours with no air conditioning um and all over some stupid thing where they couldn't weigh the

plane right or the weight of the wear for the plane wasn't working right and they had to argue with everybody get them off the plane and you know i was already on a like was a five hour flight home and then it became an extra two hours and you're just like man it's it's a good thing they don't let you bring loaded guns in these flights because i'd shoot myself right now i you know i wouldn't hurt anybody else i'd shoot myself and maybe that's half the reason they don't let you bring guns on planes i'm just kidding just kidding um but no i mean seriously like you know you hear these horror stories people are trapped on planes for hours. And I'm just like, I would just find a rope and tie a noose and hang myself in my thing.

And of course, sadly, everyone probably trying to stop me. I don't know that they'd fight me for the news so they can hang themselves. I just, I just really hate flight travel. I'm a big guy. I'm tall and I don't sit in those chairs. Well, those chairs are all made for midgets. And now I'm seeing, you know, all the pictures and videos of how they're like, we're going to make people half stand in these even more squash chairs.

You know, and I'm cheap, man. I look at business class and I look at coach and I'm just like, I'm not doing that. You know, it's kind of like my, I don't know, I don't have any good jokes for the comparison to that. But anyway, so that's where my life's going. Uh, we're going to write this book, uh, get it down. We've got the, uh, outline for it down. And, uh, it's going to have a lot of lessons in my life being an entrepreneur since 18 different tricks, tips for entrepreneurs. What I've what i've learned everything from sales to law uh it's all going to be in there um and uh hopefully it'll be good hopefully people like it i guess if they don't then we'll screw me i'm still going to keep doing

events and and do this lifestyle and travel but i tell you, it really is nice not to have that nut to crack anymore. A lot of the RV people that I've been reading about, watching, seeing them on YouTube, if you get a chance, check this out. Really, the nice thing about doing this RV camper life is for roughly about the price of what it would cost you to rent a home or pay for a mortgage for, and utilities and everything for a year, you could pretty much buy and build out a van and live that lifestyle. And then if you go beyond that, you're in the profit zone. And guess what? It's yours. You own it. You're not paying rent to somebody. You're not paying this eternal mortgage

that if you miss a couple of payments, they kick you out I mean I always get kind of like giggle when people like we own our home no you don't unless you own it free and clear you don't really own your home it's yours as long as you make the monthly payment every month for the next bloody 30 years I've got some friends right now they're having trouble selling their home. They're trying to get out of the home and move to another area. And I think they're downsizing and, and they can't even sell the home. So, you know, that whole concept of the giant home and everything and all the crap is just nightmarish. In fact, when I did my move,

I was just like, I have so much crap and I just threw away so much stuff. And I've always loved the minimalist lifestyle, but I just found out that I don't do it very well because I have so much crap. It doesn't help that companies are always sending us stuff to review. So I always have tons of cool toys. Um, and that was what was overwhelming when I moved. I'm like, wow, I kept way more of the stuff and didn't give it away that I should have given away of all the review products on the chrisfossshow.com. So that's the journey. So we'll use this as a bookmark for the beginning of that journey.

It technically began about a month ago. We downsized it. I've been too busy moving and living out of a box and trying to find all my stuff in a box. I'm still at that phase right now where I'm like, where, what boxes is in? And, uh, uh, you know,

we're just missing stupid stuff. Like where are the power cords for my lights? Oh, they're the storage unit in Las Vegas, eight hours away. That's great. Um, so I'm going through that fun experience right now,

but I wanted to connect with my audience and tell you what's coming up. So what we're going to try and do is inside of the van i've got a lot of really cool products as well we just got some new mics from mxl uh we've got some great lights that aren't quite as big and crazy from litro litro pro uh we're setting those up for studio lights uh i've got sentrence which has been a great mobile um event recorder i've got all this, which has been a great mobile event recorder. I've got all this really cool stuff that we can use on the road to do podcasting. And I'd love to travel to small towns, and maybe if I can grab some friendly people, talk to them.

Like, hey man, why do you live in this little town that's got, I don't know, 500 people in it, man? You guys are off the freeway, of course. And you've got these really cool buildings. Let's share some of the pictures, experiences, maybe what it's like to live in this town or why you stay here, man. That might be cool to talk to them about. I've always been curious about why people do things. So this might be fun.

And the nice thing is, you know, one of the other things i have at 52 is i like to take naps i'm at that age where naps are really important uh and so just being able to you know i've always anytime i'm racing to a destination i'm like oh man i just need to stay awake and get there and being able to just pull off the side of the road, take a nap, relax somewhere, see some sort of back haven area, some little town or whatever. Maybe have a nice little coffee shop. The whole experience that I really love from Anthony Bourdain that he would do, meeting people from all walks of life, anywhere, in a non-judgmental way. And being able to experience the food and what's going on in their life and what makes them tick. To me, that's always interested me.

So what we can do is we can put that on the podcast and either broadcast it from the truck or, well, technically we'd be uploading from the truck, so that's a broadcast. But we could do all that on the road. To me, that seems like a lot of fun. And the nice thing is for my audience who's listening to the podcast, you can enjoy it too. So we can share that with you, and you guys can have all sorts of great content from that as well on top of the events that we go to.

So anyway, that's the big picture of what we're doing on the Chris Voss Show podcast and the Chris Voss Life, if you will. Anyway, be sure to check out, go to go to pound RV life, a pound van life. You can even search nomad life. That's where you completely have nothing. Uh, Mike Elgin lives that way. No car, no home. Uh, I think I was paying close to $1,900 a month to service my house. And I don't, I've got an older car cause I'm cheap and I'm minimalist. But most people have at least one car if they're single.

They're probably paying $700 a month for that with payments and everything. That's like $2,500 a month. If you get rid of $2,500 a month and figure out a way to live much more inexpensively, that stacks up over 12 months. That's almost $30,000. That's $30,000. If you could save that for three years, you could buy a home. Uh, but of course you have to spend on some sort of living. Uh, Mike Elgin, you know, uses Airbnb. Uh, he's got friends all over the world and he goes to places and makes friends and communities and stuff. And sometimes they put them up. Uh, sometimes they have a spare

little villa. They'll put them up. It's pretty funny how he goes through life. But he has a really great time. And the nice thing, he doesn't have this hassle of trying to make a nut every month to pay for all the stuff. And he's like, Chris, if you put enough planning into it, you'll be surprised how much you save. So anyway, that's the journey we're on. We've done a major life change in June, I think, if I stick with it. I don't know. We're going to try renting some vans and checking it out and see if I really like staying in a van

sometimes. For all I know, I may hate it and just go, this is stupid. Give me a house back. I don't know. We'll see what happens. So we're going to test it, play with it, learn about it. There's a lot of education about living this lifestyle that you got to do. You just can't jump in and buy an RV and go, Oh, I think everything will be fine. I mean, wow. It's, it's crazy. All the stuff that goes into it. But the nice thing is I can get a lot of products. Like I went to the adventure show and said, Hey, you know, we're starting this van life. Uh, we want to review some of your products. You may see us reviewing some of the facilities, some of these companies, we want to go out and do that. And, yeah, so we'll be reviewing all those products.

It'll be great for you guys as an audience. You'll have more material. We'll have more great reviews on the Chris Voss Show. And, yeah, it's pretty amazing. To give you an idea of how big the Sprinter life is, this RV life is, there are now over 500 customizers, companies that customize these vans for RV, uh, and, uh, van life people, this nomadic lifestyle, they actually customize these. This has become a new industry over, I don't know how long. Uh, and so there's tons of these customizers you can go to and pay them to customize your van. We met a lot of it at the adventure gear expo um and they you know they

can build on a van either customize the way you want or they have pre-made versions they use you know it's they blueprint these bloody vans with all the cabinets and crazy stuff they build there's you know the the real the real interesting thing about this rv life is when they build these vans you know everything's about maintaining space because you don't have a lot of space to work from so you have to do all sorts of new things like pull out drawers pull out stoves pull out sinks i saw a lot of wild stuff um where you can literally take a small you know one of those old hatchback trailers and turn it into a 20 by 20 space with a kind of a tent cover and pull out drawers, pull out, uh, coolers, pull out TVs. Um, I just posted something on Instagram today where somebody

has a giant TV mount that mounts to the front of their RV so that they can set up a campfire and watch Netflix like a Netflix and chill out in the wild but they literally have like a mount where they can take their TV this big screen TV and it mounts right to the front of their truck and they can sit and watch TV this is crazy man and so they just they're just sitting in lawn chairs at the campfire and they have all the comforts of home if you will and that's the way to live man it's pretty crazy you can see the world see life you can go to

different places try different things on and being a single person all my life and adventures I've wanted to do this just fits right into me so there you go I'm getting older so I don't think, so I don't think I'm, I don't think I'm gonna be settling down anytime soon, really other than that. Um, so thanks for tuning in. Uh, be sure to subscribe to the show, refer the show to your friends,

tell them to subscribe. I certainly appreciate it. Tell them we have some really interesting content coming because I'm going to be doing more event shows. I'm going to be interviewing more CEOs and more people with interesting life experiences on the show. And you'll hear more about our ventures on the road and they'll probably be good times. And of course it'd be bad, but it's always about that journey. And we'll share what that's like for you. And you can live, you can live through me. If you're one of those guys who has got a big house, he's got a wife and you got five kids and you can't go on the you're one of those guys who's got a big house, who's got a wife, and you've got five kids, and you can't go on the road. But I've got to tell you, I've seen van life people.

I mean, the kids are fairly young, but they're living on a van sometimes with three to four kids, which kind of blows my mind. They even have these giant school buses they renovate, and they're not like the nasty hippie buses that maybe you've seen or I grew up seeing in the 70s um they're like mini homes they take like school buses and they turn them into mini homes and they're really freaking nice uh and uh uh so it's it's it's gonna be kind of interesting journey and uh and then i'm just i'm just real excited to be able to have my dogs with

me when i travel i really really like having my dogs with me. My dogs are my whole world. They're my kids. They're my life. They're my family. And if I can take them with me and do little Johnson events, that'd be cool. Anyway, enough about all that. We're going to upload this to the Podcast Network.

And be sure to subscribe. There are seven podcasts now. You can go to chrisfosspodcastnetwork.com and see all seven podcasts from Bitcoin, cryptocurrency to gaming, everything else, all that sort of good stuff. You can check it out. And of course, watch the chrisfossshow.com for all the cool reviews of all these new sort of nomadic roving lifestyle products. And you're going to see some really cool backpacks. You're going to see some really cool technology that's going to blow your mind.

The GoSun cooker is pretty cool. It solar cooks your food. And they've got some other products that are out as well. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys. Love you. And we'll see you next time.