Latest / Go Big with Gib Podcast / Rich and Homeless: Derek Peterson’s Life Overhaul

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Rich and Homeless: Derek Peterson’s Life Overhaul · Go Big with Gib Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Go Big With Gibb podcast, where we talk to professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs about their big wins.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome to this episode of Go Big With Gibb.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Today, I've got a very good friend of mine here with us, derek Peterson.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Derek, how are you this morning, gibb?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: because I'm talking to you.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: It's like the highlight of my week.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: So very excited to be on the show.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Long overdue man.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I'm pumped.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm stoked to have you on.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: You know you are the only guest in the entire time that I've been doing the podcast.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: You are the only guest that has actually come on the podcast two times.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: This is your second time on the podcast.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I know we talked a lot of real estate the first time and today I want to talk more about lifestyle and all the cool stuff that you're doing.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, it's an honor to have you on and you're the only guest that has ever been on the podcast two times.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I feel honored and privileged to be on this for a second time.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to dive in today.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I can't wait for the third time whenever that might be.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, bud, absolutely so, derek, you're doing some really cool stuff in your life right now.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Just go ahead and tell us a little bit about that, yeah so probably the biggest life change that a lot of people have a lot of interest in, as, of late, someone we've been working on tirelessly for probably about a half a decade to make this happen is my wife and I just recently sold all of our possessions.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: We sold our home, we sold our cars, we sold everything except for personal mementos that had meaning to them, but all material possessions and we had a lot of them, gib, we had a 6,000 square foot house, cars, like all the typical American stuff that you strive to get.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: We got rid of it all.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: It took a loss on a lot of it, with the exception of the house.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: We did well on that and we are living and we've reduced our life down to a carry-on and a backpack and we're living for the next three years full-time, nomadically on the road, running our business, running our life.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I come to you now from Lisbon, portugal, actually, so I'm sitting in my Airbnb at Lisbon having this conversation across the Atlantic with you in the Carolinas.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: So that's been a significant life change for us in balancing this new lifestyle, going from a life of predictability and certainty and overworking to a life of balance and uncertainty.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Right, because it's such a different lifestyle, which I know we're going to get into, but that's been.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: The biggest change for us is we're full-time digital nomads.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: We're homeless.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Wow, okay, so let's talk about that, derek.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So first of all, how long have you been on your journey?
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: How long have you been abroad, because I know we're recording this episode in September of 2024.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: How long has it been that you all have been living on the road?
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: We've been living on the road now, gib, for six weeks, so a full six weeks and a fast-paced six weeks.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: We came out of the gun a little quicker than maybe we would have done.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: In that we've been to let's see the Azores first for a week, then Madeira for two weeks, then we went to Porto, portugal.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: All this is in Portugal.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Then we went to Nazaré, which is a big surf spot I know I sent you a message from there and we now just landed in Lisbon, and from here we go to the Algarve in several weeks and then to Pakistan.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Actually.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: So we've got.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: It's been a quick, paced start, which we knew.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: It can be a little tiring sometimes, but we're handling it pretty well.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: We're finding it.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I'd say we're finding our groove.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: You know we're finding our groove.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: But yes, six weeks, man, six, six weeks.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: It's gone by like this, like in a flash.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: It's wild how fast six weeks.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: It's seen.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: It's gone by like this, like in a flash it's it's it's wild how fast six weeks goes yeah, no, that's, that's unbelievable.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: So, um, let's go backwards um a little bit.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Tell me how was it that you came about this plan, or came to the decision that you were going to make this huge, um, life altering I'm, this huge change to your entire life.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: This is a massive, massive change I think most people will be very scared of.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: You sold all your worldly possessions.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: You're now on the road.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: You and Amy are having these experiences with each other, and I think you've talked about it, as I don't know if you went with the branding rich and homeless, did you end up going with that?
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: We did.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I love that.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about where the concept was created and how it came about.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: So when Amy and I met she says back 2017, we quickly realized early in our relationship that we enjoyed traveling.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: We quickly realized early in our relationship that we enjoyed traveling and it actually started.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: I was sitting on a beach with her at Myrtle Beach where maybe we'd been dating like a month, six weeks, something like that, and I owned a medical distribution business at the time and I was flicking through my phone and I was like, hey, I need to get into Instagram, I need to start working on my social media game a little bit more.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Right, I was doing all this other marketing for my business and I noticed that a lot of pictures on Instagram were people traveling and I was like, oh, that's cool.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: But then I noticed they were promoting at the same time and then the light bulb went off.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: I realized what an influencer was.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, these people are actually leveraging their audience to get some form of a free experience or collaboration with these hotels, tourism boards, countries, whatever.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: And they're traveling, I assume, for free or at a discount.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: And I had a struggling medical distribution business at the time and I was like, man, I want to travel more.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: I've got this new girl.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: I was like I want to whisk her around the world and I was like, hey, let's do this, let's go do this.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: And she's like you're nuts.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: I was like, no, we're going to do it, right.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: So we opened up this Instagram account and I had a different name at the time.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: It was called like live an extraordinary life or something like that.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: It was really too long, but you know, it was our first attempted sort of branding in the travel space.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Now we have a travel company, but you know, that was the inception of it and we started doing it.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: We started traveling.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: If you go to Amy and Derek travel in Instagram now you'll see that page Right, so you can even scroll back and look at some of the cheesy photos we took for collaborations with other companies.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: But we had a really good time and we realized that Amy and I connect the most while we're traveling.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: So that sort of sparked this whole idea of doing more and more of it.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: So when I decided to tie the knot and get married in 2019, I had this crazy idea.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: I'm like I want to take you literally around the world.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: I want to go do an around the world honeymoon for two months.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Let's circumvent the globe, right, that would be cool.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: And what we had to go through in order to get to that point, gib, was a challenge, right.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: I literally I walked away from my medical distribution business.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: I said I'm going to start a marketing firm and I'm going to start a travel agency and I'm going to make those my two businesses because I one day want to be a full-time traveler.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Let's go see if we like this.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: So we rearranged our lives.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Amy was a dental hygienist, she pulled into the travel industry and we did the around the world honeymoon.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Then COVID hit, hunkered down, and we said, hey, we hunkered down.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: We didn't know how long COVID was going to last a year and a half, whatever.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: And when travel started to open back up, we were the first people out there having a good time traveling.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: We started to find ourselves traveling give about one third of the year.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: We were on the road and we went to Egypt and Turkey and, like all these cool exotic places, jordan, with our kids and by ourselves.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: And I was like you know what One day I could see doing this full-time.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: And I watched these YouTube videos of these travel influencers, kind of like where we started and I saw them doing it.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: I was like, man, it would be really cool to run your businesses from another country, and the businesses we're in are raising capital, marketing and the third one being the travel industry.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: All three, by design, were created to be able to get to a point where we could do this full-time.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: So the beginning of 2020, we'll just say a year ago we made the decision right.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: We were halfway through finishing our basement give.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: We're pouring all this money into it and I was like we just had this moment.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: We're like what the hell are we doing?
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Why are we building more space when all the kids have left are going to be leaving in just a matter of months?
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: How do we like?
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Why do we need all this stuff?
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: We feel most alive when we travel and it was just a decision.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: It was just a moment we had where we realized we connect more when we travel and I felt myself give falling into complacency, the typical working American hustle 12 hours a day, then going home, netflix and chill, sitting next to your wife and not having a conversation While we traveled.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: It was in those other moments where I was like this isn't living, there's another way, and I started watching how the Europeans do it and I was like I feel like I can design my life differently.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: I can extract myself from my businesses and create more systems and processes to do this.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: So in order to do that, we had to go in to get out.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: So I had to dive into the business, which you can dive into um to be able to create systems and processes so that I could live a lifestyle where now I no longer work 12 hours a day, I work four, and I get more done and I'm able to go enjoy myself and have a good time.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: But arriving at that decision was through that story.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: That journey I just took you on was just a series of decisions and realizations, but really more of an awakening to the American hustle, which I love.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: It's in me, but I've just twisted it a bit and I'm doing something different with it while we're over here which we can dive into.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: But I had to.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: I had to go after something really, really hard.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: I like really hard, challenging things.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: So I said let's go for this.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: And I just had a conversation with Amy this morning over breakfast.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: I'm like what's next?
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: We did it Like what are we going to do now, right?
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: So she's like oh my, you MF her Like can we just slow down for a second?
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: So uh, so yeah, man, that was, that was how we arrived at the decision it was, it was.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: It was a process over years a half a decade to get here, but a year of gut-wrenching work to make it happen so, um so talk to me a little bit about, um, your like athleticism in the past.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Like I just I, derek, I've known you for a long time.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: I know you're a very intense dude.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I think some people just really thrive on living with a lot of intensity.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I think you're one of those people.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I know you've run ultras.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: You're an ultra athlete, uh, runner, what do you call what you used to do?
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: You used to do like triathlons and stuff like that.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: So if I could lift my leg up, you could see my calf has an Ironman tattoo on the bottom there.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Um and uh, if I showed too much skin to your editor, sorry.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Uh, I uh.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: So an Ironman triathlete.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: So for a decade, um, I got heavily into the sport of Ironman triathlon.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: For those who don't know what that is, it's a race, it's a triathlon.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: It's a 2.4-mile swim followed by 112 miles on a bike, and then you run a 26.2-mile marathon, which is one of the hardest endurance races.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Now they have ones that are crazier.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: There was one that I was actually just talking to Amy about when I said the next thing I want to do.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: I can actually share that by me professing it.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: I guess I'll have to do it, but I just talked to her about it this morning.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: But I did that for a half a decade or a decade.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: So I did six full Ironmans, a bunch of marathons.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: I did do a 50-mile ultra marathon race.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: So anything over a marathon is called an ultra marathon.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: So if you write 26.3, it's technically an ultra marathon.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: So, but I've done a 50 mile race in Bryce Canyon, utah.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, hard endurance races To me, I think, like the physicality that comes from it I found very addicting.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Like the, I get that runner's high, that euphoric feeling, after you work.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: You know, gibb, I know you run and you understand that feeling and it's like the greatest drug, it's the healthiest drug and it was in those moments of long training.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: You're out there doing three-hour runs, six-hour bike rides.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: It's just you and your mind.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: You have a lot of good thoughts, self-reflections and personal growth that occur in those moments, but what it does is you put something hard on your plate, just like getting to this point where I'm having this conversation with you from Portugal.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: It was really, really hard.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: There were points I worked to the bone where I had this spell where I was throwing up and I didn't know why and it was because I was so fatigued that it was making me nauseous and I was like, oh wow.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: I had anxiety at times because I was working so much, but I was like I got to get here.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: I got to get here.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: I know this is part of the pain, this was part of the journey.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: This is part of the experience, because when you do achieve, like, you cross the finish line of an Ironman, or you do some big life goal like what we've done now the level of accomplishment that you get from that and your personal container of what you have the ability to handle just expands.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: So when life throws you kind of a shitty curveball, you're like whatever, no problem, right, I got this.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: So that's that.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: That intensity I thrive on, uh for sure.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: So it's uh, uh I'm I'm just now inviting that back into my life, the athletic side, because that intensity has been through my businesses as of late.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: But now I'm ready to dip back in because I'm nearing 50.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I was like I gotta, I gotta step it back up again, give start racing again.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I'm gonna start racing again, not iron man, something different okay, okay, um, what are you?
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: what kind of uh race are you?
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Are you contemplating?
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: so I always thought it'd be really cool to do something epic when I turned 50, right.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: So I'll be 49 in October and then you know, obviously 50 the next year.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: And there's this race.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: I've been eyeing for man the last decade and it's it's a, it's a.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: It's a race where you do it's all organized, it's super expensive.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Only, I think like 150 or 60 people have done it.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Maybe, maybe it's a little bit more, because I think there's only been three of them, but it's seven marathons in seven days on seven different continents.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: So you're stupid, right.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: So you're charted on a private jet and you know the seven continents, right.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Like one of them is Antarctica, right.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: So they land that plane right on the ice and you get out and you run and it's minus 15 or whatever it is, and you run a full 26.2 marathon on ice and I think the next day you're in, like Dubai, right.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: So you're like in the desert Dubai, you're like in the desert.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: From having done long distance endurance racing for so many years, the race is actually typically not the hardest part.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: You enjoy that.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: It's the training, the discipline to leading up, to preparing for that and then arriving at the finish line not hurt or overtrained or, you know, having injuries and stuff like that.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: That's the biggest accomplishment.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Um, and then when you get to the race, if you do it right, it's just like you're just there for the ride, like your heart and your legs and everything are primed and ready to go.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: But it's training for something like that.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Living nowhere, I thought would be really cool.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Right to be able to do some training runs, and what a great way to explore a city where I got to go run 12 miles through it or 20 or what five, and I was like, and what a cool way to.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: I want to do it.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Gib, where we raise charity or raise money for some charity.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: I don't know what that is.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: I'm open for ideas from anybody for a good cause, because something of that magnitude gets a lot of attention, especially training for it in this type of environment, and I think we could probably raise a good bit of money for it.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Got a little experience raising some money with you, as you know.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: So we're just raising it for a good cause.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: Something out of benevolence.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: So that's the.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: I'm eyeing it, man.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: I'm really really out of benevolence so.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: So that's the.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: I'm eyeing it man.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: I'm really really, really, really considering it now that I put it out there and it's going to go out into the ether, I guess.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: I guess I got to do it now.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you've.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: You've spoken it into existence, derek, and now you've got now.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Now you've got to do it.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: That sounds like an amazing adventure.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about your itinerary.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know that you're living a nomadic lifestyle and you've sold all your worldly possessions and you're traveling all over the world.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: You've mentioned that you're in Portugal now, and I think you said you're going to Pakistan next.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Do you have like a?
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Can you kind of give us an overview of, like you know, the next six months, where you'll be, how long you're going to be there, that kind of thing?
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're doing Portugal for a total of about three months, and the reason for that is, you know, we did not get a visa.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: So you get, you can come to what's called the Shenzhen region of Europe, which is most European countries collectively have this agreement.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: They call it the Shenzhen region, and you can stay here for 90 out of 180 rolling days, otherwise I'd stay here longer.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: So we have to leave, basically, and go to other parts of the world, which is fine.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: So we're here until mid-October, then from there we're going to Pakistan for about 10 days, then from Pakistan we're going to Dubai.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: It's right around the corner, so to speak, and the reason is we're leaving the Shenzhen region and then we're going to go back to Europe.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: We're going back to Germany to meet with, actually, some friends from back home.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: My buddy works for the NFL and he's going to be in Germany because the Carolina Panthers are playing I'm not sure somebody else in Munich in early November.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Back home, my buddy works for the NFL and he's going to be in Germany because, like the Carolina Panthers are playing I'm not sure somebody else in Munich in early November.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: So we're going to go meet up with them.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: So we're going to fly back to Europe, do the Germany thing and then from there that should place us a few days or a week or so before Thanksgiving.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: So the plan is to come back to the US and do the round of family and friends from Thanksgiving through Christmas.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: So that means going and visiting my daughters in college and my daughter in South Carolina.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: I've got my mom and one of my daughters is up in Pennsylvania, so we're going to kind of do a round where we'll stay with them.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: And it's funny quick aside sometimes we take for granted having our friends and family so close to us.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: I've noticed that my mom used to live an hour away from me and I didn't spend as much time as I probably could have.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: You know both of us reciprocally with each other.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: But now the time we have with our friends and family is of a higher quality because we either fly them over here and they spend time with us here, or we go and we actually stay with them.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: So it's like intense, meaningful time together and we've really enjoyed that aspect of it, versus that like quick dinner here and there where you got to run home and worry about mowing your grass or taking care of your house.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: We don't have one right, so we just, we have nothing to worry about, just except for our friends and our families.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: So it's been so we're going to spend the holidays there and then we're going to bounce down to South America.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: We're still planning that leg but because of the reverse seasons, we're going to chase summer a little bit Gibbs.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: So we'll probably end up in Columbia, paraguay, uruguay, the northern part, and then Brazil of South America for the first part of 2025.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: So that's the plan so far.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: And then, I think, the next year, bali, the next summer.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: So Bali, thailand, vietnam, I call it that whole part of the world.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: So we'll see, geopolitically, what's going on.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: So we got to kind of play that that's got to factor in.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: But we don't walk in fear.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: You know we trust in God having our back and we, so we just we travel without any fear of you know what a lot of people are like oh, you're going to Pakistan, why, right?
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: And like Pakistan's a beautiful place.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: I'm'm like don't believe what you hear in the media and all that stuff.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of beautiful, awesome, amazing things and people to see there.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: So that's part of why we're going there is to show people that right to open people's eyes this episode of go big with gibb is brought to you by irons equity.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: At irons equity, we specialize in helping investors like you create long-term generational wealth and save money on taxes through recession-resistant real estate investments that create passive income for you and your family.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: If you want to secure your financial future, go to investwithgibcom to schedule a 30-minute introductory meeting with me.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Gib Irons Again, that's investwithgibcom.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: No, that's amazingwithgivecom.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: No, that's amazing.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: So talk to me about the financial piece of all this.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Like, how has this affected you financially?
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Did you have any insights, first of all, from selling all your worldly possessions?
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Like I mean, that must be an interesting thing.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I've thought about that many times.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Like, what would it be like if I sold all my assets today?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Like, where would I end up if I got rid of all my assets today?
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, a financial reset could actually uh, most people don't experience that until they die.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: You're right, I never thought of that You're right.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's a crazy thing to think about, but for somebody that's done it, I mean what insights do you have?
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: What takeaways did you learn from it?
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: I'll start with the biggest one.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: It's been mind-blowingly amazing to go from a life of materialism to a life of minimalism.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: You always hear people, there's documentaries on minimalism, there's always people talking about it and I was kind of like I would kind of scoff at it, gib, and I'd be like, ah.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: I was like, wow, what do you mean?
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: You have no car?
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: What are you crazy?
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: No watch, whatever, like any of that stuff.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: And then the more as I grew older bought the houses, cars, the things I was like sure they made me happy for a minute, but I realized that they just they don't really make me happy and at the end of the day is when I die, you know, unless they bury me with those things, the things that take with me are the memories and experiences.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: So I was like, all right, we're going to try this minimalism thing, we're just going to rip the Band-Aid off.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: And as we sold everything, I remember working like in my house and Amy was responsible my wife for selling all those things and just day by day I saw couches and chairs and stuff just leaving the front door right Because I'd be in my office and it was right by the front door and they would just go out and I'd be like, oh, what'd she sell?
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh shoot, there goes the TV on my quarter.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: It was so weird to see it just completely disintegrating inside of our home.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: And it was the feeling I got.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: It was a feeling of release.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: I didn't feel like I missed any of that stuff at all.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: I was actually glad to get rid of it and you received some capital for it.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: We sold our house at the peak of the market.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, I assume it could still go up, but to not have to go buy another home, so to be able to take all the collective capital that we accrued from selling cars and all this stuff, we now invested that and that's producing cash flow for us, right, Literally, it wouldn't have to work, right, you know, just from selling all our stuff and just that alone.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: So now to have no debt, to have no worry, the financial side feels really, really good and it's also way less expensive.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: I haven't cooked dinner in six weeks.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: I eat out every single night and I eat healthy food and I live in someone else's Airbnb and there's some struggles that come with that from time to time.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: But the power's included, the cable, the cables included, like financially it's actually less expensive to live in Airbnbs on the road than it is to live with my mortgage, car gas, all these things Right, and so financially it's been, it hasn't been it's.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: It's been a lot less expensive.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Our overhead has been a lot and we've been living like I said we eat out nearly every meal.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: You know I don't do that at home, right, I cook and groceries and all that stuff.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: But it's the release, also on top of the financial, of like everything that you own.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Every possession takes a little away from you.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Like, oh, I have to worry about, like calling the weed guy for the yard, or I got to get my car washed, or if I wear this watch tonight I'm worried about scuffing in against something based on where we're going.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: All those things add up, they compound, they take a little bit of your energy.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: So that's been the biggest gain I feel is the level of energy I have back to be free of all the possessions and financially have, like you said, a total reset.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: It's been pure bliss.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: If I'm being honest, I will one day write a book about this and tell people like that you need to do this because it is, it is pure bliss.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a lot of people, you know they don't really know their own financial situation until they do something like this.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: You know like it's easy to think you know I'm doing well or I'm or I'm struggling, or you know it's hard to know how everything's going to pan out.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: But I like to think about it Like if I you know, god forbid, if I keeled over and died tomorrow, how would my family be?
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Would they be well off or would they be struggling?
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Would, um they have no debt or would they have like an insurmountable about amount of debt?
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: You know, and and um, we all make these um financial decisions throughout our lives.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: But when you really hit the reset button, like you've done, it gives you a really good indication of where you're at right now, um, and so I mean that's amazing.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: So you, you guys, are debt free and um, are you traveling like at a discounted price or you have you been able to get discounted pricing um as part of your um influencer, um thing that you've got going on?
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Because I know you've been like 10 times more active on social media since you left the states than you were before, which is awesome because I can follow your, your journey.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we uh.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: To answer your question, yes, we have, when we're just getting rolling with that just as a matter and function of time and processes of setting up collaborations, right.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: So, if we roll into a uh like we rolled into Madeira, which is an Island of Portugal beautiful, stunning, but has a lot of really cool activities there, and one of the activities that we wanted to do there was canyoneering, a level three canyoneering, which had you abseiling or rappelling down this 200-foot waterfall, right, just like crazy, awesome, amazing stuff.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: And for those who are into that and uh, you know the canyoneering for myself, uh, we took, uh, my wife, my daughter-in-law and my daughter.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: I think it was like a thousand dollars right To do it, cause I'm sure there's insurances and all this stuff.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: So I leveraged the fact that we have a travel company and a marketing firm.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: I said, hey, I'm going to come out with all my cameras.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: This is my Instagram, these are my Instagrams, this is my marketing firm, this is my travel company.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: We can promote you.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Would you be interested in working together?
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: And they gave me a 70% discount.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Right, it wasn't free, but 70% is pretty good.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: It saved me $700.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: So we went out there and they gave us a private tour, right, so normally you're with a group of other people.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: We got a private tour because I said, hey, I'm going to be lugging these cameras around.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: I think it was another $500.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: I saved quite a bit of money and just had an awesome, awesome experience.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: So we're just now starting to lean into that again, where we've created a marketing kit.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: So I'm giving my agenda to my executive assistant.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: He's going to go out and start to research places that want to play ball.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Um, we're already there shooting it because we're launching a youtube page to your point at the beginning of the show.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: It's going to be called rich and homeless.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Um, I can talk about what that name actually means, and, um, and, and, yeah, so, so, yeah, we're leveraging, so we are saving money through that as well, on top of the fact that we have zero debt and things are just cheaper here.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: My wife and I went to dinner I'm talking like overlooking the water sunset, bottle of wine, steak, tuna, fresh caught $32, right, that would be $132 in the United States.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was a Nazare.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: So, um, yeah, Tell us like um.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Where did the name rich and homeless come from?
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: It just came to me in like one day, I don't know why, uh, I was making a joke about something saying um, how we're going to be rich, we want the channel and the brand to project richness, like redefining rich.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: So to us, naturally, you need to have money to do these types of things.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: So there is the financial side.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: You got to understand how to invest and obviously you and I work together on that.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: You got to understand how to be responsible with your money, be responsible as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, to be able to create your businesses.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: So there is the financial side of rich, but it's really more rich in experience, rich in culture, rich in life.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of times American culture it's all about hustle, grind, buy, buy, buy, get things.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Amazon packages stacking up on your doorstep like that type of thing.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen a single Amazon truck or a package outside of anyone's door since I've been here in six weeks.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: It's wild, right.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: So just some of those nuances.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: So that's the rich, and the homeless is pretty obvious, which is we have no home, but showing people how you don't really need one when you're experiencing this type of lifestyle.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: And then the two are kind of a bit of an oxymoron, right, you know, rich and homeless is just kind of a shocker, Like those two words don't belong together.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: So my marketing mind was like okay, that's fun.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: You know it might offend a few people because they'll read it out of context and I don't really care.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so talk to me a little bit about as far as what you mentioned earlier in the podcast, you told me that you were working four hour days and getting more done than you were when you were working a full day.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Talk to me about that.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: We're running a little short on time, so what I want to do is I've got to hit that before we end this thing.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: So tell me how it is that you're doing that.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: So I had a vision right that it was possible to be able to.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: So having multiple different businesses is a challenge all unto itself, right?
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: How do you compartmentalize as an entrepreneur, doing all these different things?
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: And when you're an entrepreneur, you have the tendency to wear a lot of hats and do a lot of things.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: So within my marketing firm and all these other businesses, I wore a lot of hats because I want it done my way or the highway, and I sort of realized that I needed to.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: I watched this YouTube video and this guy said delegate.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: What was it?
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Eliminate, delegate or automate everything in your life.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: And this was this digital nomad dude that was working four hours a day and he had like multi-million dollar businesses and just those three words eliminate, delegate, automate everything, systems, processes, people, all of that build systems around you.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: So I was like, damn, I'm like that's brilliant.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: I was like it's so simple.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: I was like but I'm not doing it.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: I'm like how did I not know this?
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: And so I was on a mission for a year.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Gib of just every single thing I did how do I create a process around a system?
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: And I hired an operations manager.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: I said fire me from my own company.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: That's literally what I said I said fire me from everything.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: He's like I got you.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: And so shout out to Michael came in and he literally me for him.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: Everything we brought in consultants, tech stacks.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: We went through some growing pains, right, you know, the customer experience had to change dramatically, a lot of stuff that had changed.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: But our company tripled in size in doing this and we've grown quite big.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Products has changed, the experience has changed for customers.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: The products has changed, the experience has changed for customers and was able to then create this whole system around me and what I call this maker-manager time, which I don't know how much time we have on that, but that was a big, big difference in how I manage my calendar.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: And then it was like the plan was made and then I got on the plane, I came over here and I was like, well, let's see if this stuff works.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: And it's worked perfectly.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: I got out of the way.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: I created systems, processes and I got out of the way and more meaningful so I can make a bigger impact with the company and where I should.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's huge.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: That's huge.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: So, for somebody that wants to do what you're doing, that some someone that aspires to sell all the worldly assets and go travel around the world or maybe they don't sell all their their assets, maybe they just want to sell all their worldly assets and go travel around the world.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Or maybe they don't sell all their assets, maybe they just want to sell certain things, but they want to be able to have an experience like this.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: That's like a once-in-a-lifetime type experience, something different than what everybody else is doing.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Like what are the steps to get you know, can you break it down into?
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Can you articulate, kind of, what you have to do in order to accomplish something like this?
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: It's a lot but given the time we have, I'll kind of give my Reader's Digest version.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: I think it first starts with a belief that you can do it.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people think, and they look at their circumstances in their life and they're like I couldn't do that Right and we're at that point, we couldn't do this Right.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: We're everyone's at that point.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: But if, if you believe you can do it, then and you and you have that energy and that manifestation about you, things start to fall into place.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: You look at things differently and find a way to fit it into your puzzle.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Second, I think you need to make a decision.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Are you doing it right?
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: You got to commit right, and with that commitment comes a goal and a steadfast deadline.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Right, put the pin on the map.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: We had this giant calendar on our wall.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: It was called the Big Ass Calendar.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: It was like literally gigantic and it had these post-it notes with all these benchmarks that we had to hit.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: So we planned everything out, we looked at the end goal and then we worked our way backwards in terms of okay, we've got to sell our house by here.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: We have to have the businesses running here.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: We have to have our investments in by this, so logically find the end goal and then reconstruct or deconstruct it backwards and reverse engineer it to a point in time where you can start and then, instead of looking at this big, hairy, audacious goal, just like training for an Ironman, right, like I got to go 140.6 miles and I can only swim 100 yards today.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: That can seem like impossible, but if I just know, in tomorrow's workout I swim this and then two weeks from now I do this and then just chip away at it, right, small ball, singles, doubles, singles, doubles.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: You don't need a home run, right?
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: A lot of people see the end result.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: They don't know in the pain, but just know in that journey there's gonna be ups and downs, there's gonna be curve balls, there's gonna be stuff that's thrown at you and you're gonna wanna.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Then it get hard.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Like I said, I was throwing up, I had anxiety, I was stressed to the nines.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: I even said before we started this journey I said there are going to be times to my life.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: I was like I'm probably going to snap at you.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: I was like because I'm going to be stressed out and tired and so are you.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: I was like let's just know when that happens, stop and be like, okay, the outcome you're about to reach, so like you're here and you're going here.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: But I mean, this is just a point in time, right, but it's in between all that meat, right, that we can't discount that time, right, that's where the experience is.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: So you look at the crappy times, the hard, the struggles, the throwing up.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: I remember throwing up a couple of times and being like laughing, like sweet, it's right where I need to be.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: I'm like I'm right at the cusp of this is what I'm physically capable of.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: I'm like good, and uh, I used to do that when I was training for Ironman, so it would just be like it went.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: It was so painful.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: I'd be like, yes, this is what I wanted, this is what I signed up for, this is where I become the next level or version of myself.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: So that is.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: I think we can go into a lot of other details around how it's.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: You know all of this.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: We are starting a community give um, probably in about three months where we're going to teach people how to do what you just asked, step by step by step, because I want to allow a space for people to experience the same thing and give them the resources and tools to be able to do it.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: So, derek, for people that want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to reach out to you and also for them to follow you along in your journey?
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Because, um, I know, uh, man, there's a you're putting out a lot of content.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: People can can check out what you're doing from day to day.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, how did they get in touch with you?
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple of places.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Um, you can go to my website.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: It's just Derek Peterson dot life.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: So it's D E R E K P E T E R S O N dot life.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: That's my personal website and that sort of branches out to the different businesses.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: You can find all my social media channels on there, all the different companies we have.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: You know, if you want to follow the travel journey right now, you can go to our Instagram just Amy and Derek travel.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: We're soon launching a YouTube page for travel the rich and homeless, and then a personal business um YouTube page as well, just teaching people about entrepreneurship.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: And you know much of what you're doing, gibb.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Um, in terms of just providing value to entrepreneurs who want to kind of level up their game, and, uh, but just do it with a bit of a you nomad twist.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: So, but that's probably the the best way to get in contact with me.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: All my emails, contact forms, are right on there.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: One last place would be my email.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: You can email me at my marketing firm.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: So it's derrick d-e-r-e-k.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: At adapt media agencycom.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: So I should probably have less places to get through to me, but that those are.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Those are a few spots.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but the the main, the main place that would contain all your different contact info is Derek Peterson dot life.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Derek, look man, I love what you're doing.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: It takes a ton of guts to do what you've done and I mean you know I've got a ton of respect for you.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: We've been friends for a long, long time and I just love watching you on your journey.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: You're one of those people that increases my energy level, makes me want to go out and run an Ironman or something.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: So maybe when we sign off here I'll go for a jog or something In your suit.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe in the suit.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Of course, when I run around with the suit in the neighborhood, everybody runs inside their house.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: They think I'm coming to sell them something.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: But look, brother, it's been a pleasure.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Enjoy the rest of your travels, be safe and thanks again for coming on.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks, gib, appreciate your time man, thank you so much.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode of Go Big with Gibb.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: If you haven't already, go follow us on social media at Gibb Irons.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.