One of the reasons many of us work hard as entrepreneurs is to have the means to soon travel the world to our heart’s content. But have you ever considered the possibility of being a traveling entrepreneur? In this episode of the podcast, Scott Carson interviews digital nomad, location independent entrepreneur, and host of The Business Method podcast, Christopher Reynolds, about being a traveling entrepreneur and how to achieve that. Chris helps entrepreneurs and business owners grow and expand their businesses by implementing high-performance business methods in their professional and personal lives. He shares those methods with us, along with the story of how he overcame the financial crash of 2008. He lets us in on his journey from there to being an international traveler non-dependent of location while growing his business and entrepreneurial mastermind. Pick up some great lessons and insights from Chris in this great conversation.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

High-Performance Business Methods For The Traveling Entrepreneur With Christopher Reynolds

I’m excited to have a very special guest. We got introduced by a mutual friend, Matt Bowles. You remember him from a few episodes ago. Our guest is a new Austin knight. He just moved here to the city, but he’s doing some amazing things. He’s been an amazing individual up there. He’s a lifestyle entrepreneur, international speaker, Founder of The Business Method and Get Shit Done Live. Both help entrepreneurs grow their businesses rapidly using high-performance productivity techniques. He’s been a location-independent entrepreneur for many years traveling the world consistently during that time.

Over the years, he has spoken in five different countries and created ten business accelerations in Spain, Brazil and Thailand. He interviewed more than 300 successful entrepreneurs on his podcast, including but not limited to Laird Hamilton, Steven Kotler, Jim Rogers, John Lee Dumas, Casey Fenton and it could go on and on. He is an absolutely amazing guy and interesting. I guarantee if you read this blog, you’re going to get a lot out of it. We’re honored to have our buddy, Chris Reynolds, join us here. What’s going on, Chris?

Scott, I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to arrive in Austin.

Let’s dive into why are you crazy to be back here in Austin?

I spent years traveling the world. I’m still traveling the world. I’m only hanging out in America longer than normal. Every awesome person I meet traveling the world that’s doing a location independent digital nomad person, when they’re not abroad, they’re in Austin. For years, people have been saying, “Austin this, Austin that.” I was like, “I like living abroad and seeing all these foreign countries.” It’s very thrilling. I’m pretty adventurous. Finally, after hearing Austin so much, I was like, “I got to go check it out.” There’s a couple of conferences by South by Southwest that I’ve never been to. I’m going to for the first time and Austin is another entrepreneur community that I’m a part of.

They have an event in April and I think there’s a paleo thing going on in April that I heard about. It’s a good time. I’ve teamed up with some good friends. We booked and reserved this awesome house. It’s in Travis Heights and we’re going to make a high-performance house with a cold plunge ice bath that we could do every day. We’re going to put a gym in the garage. We’re going to have a coworking space. We’re going to have non-alcoholic parties with healthy juices, full of drinking games and costumes and all the fun stuff. It’s going to be top of the line, awesome house. I’m excited to be here and thanks for having me.

What made you take it back from traveling and hanging out in the United States? What led up to you wanting to become location-independent? When we talk about that evolution into that, what were you doing then? We talked a lot about real estate here. Every one of our readers is an entrepreneur of some sort. I know everybody always talks about wanting to travel more like, “I wish I could go do that.” Why don’t we talk about evolution and how you were able to achieve that?

I started my entrepreneurial career many years ago. It was in real estate. I was part of a real estate investing community called Nouveau Riche, which some of the readers may remember. I loved that. I got my sales training, business training and real estate training there, but 2.5 years or so, I started in 2006. In 2008, I was in Phoenix is when the recession hit and it wiped that company out. It wiped many people that we’re investing in real estate out. It was tough. I had a sports car that got repoed. I was broke and I went through this process of building myself back up. I moved back to the Midwest, worked on my buddy’s farm and started building money. I came there started recreating money, recreating income. I came across this book that we all know. It’s called The 4-Hour Workweek. It’s pretty cliche for a lot of us location independent entrepreneurs, but it’s also the Bible in many respects for us as well.

I literally followed that. I read that four times. I listened to the audio a dozen times while driving in this pickup truck around the Midwest while working on his farm. I knew that was what I was going to do. I started building websites online. I started building niche websites online. I started doing a few things here and there. About 1.5 years later, I bought a one-way ticket to Costa Rica. I was ready to go and hit it to Costa Rica on April 27, 2011 and I never looked back. I kept building stuff online and doing different things. I’m making a podcast while doing the process. I’m talking to location-independent entrepreneurs and that’s what led me to where I’m at.

I think back to that time because many people, especially in real estate, went through a tough time and struggled during that period. A lot of people would give up on their dreams and say, “I’m going to take a job and go back to the rat race.” There’s nothing wrong with having to put your dreams down for a little while, while you go back and put money in your pocket to do what you need to do. Not everybody has the chops to say, “I have a plan. This is what I’m going to do. We’re going to do something different this time around and get rocking.”

It’s a bit of chop. It’s a lot of courage, but sometimes it’s naiveness. You’re being completely naive and it’s like, “What else would I do?” I studied business in college and grad school and I thought, “I’m not going to be happy doing anything else so I’m going to do it.” Sometimes, I was broke. Sometimes, I was really broke. Sometimes, I was in debt, but I kept going forward one day at a time and that was it. I wouldn’t accept living a life that was unfit for me to live where I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing. I kept at it.

It’s a beautiful thing. If you’re unhappy with what you’re doing, you’re doing something wrong. When you’re unhappy, stress comes in and it is God’s way of saying, “You need to go do something else that’s going to make you happy.” We all make sacrifices and negotiations with what our dreams are and goals are for us. The biggest thing that I liked to share with people is if you have a goal, you have the ability to go do it, but it may take a little bit longer than you expect. Many people have a lack of patience these days when it comes to building things. It’s like, “We’re going to do a little bit this. We’re going to have some success. We’re going to take a step forward and take a step back.”

Sometimes, two steps back, but then you learn from changing and tweaking and evolving as an entrepreneur. When you are talking to many people and you are going out meeting and talking to entrepreneurs of independent location, what do you see as being the top two or three characteristics that they have that have helped them overcome obstacles? Everybody I know faces obstacles from time to time. It’s a guarantee it’s going to happen no matter how successful you get. You’re going to face it. You have to take a step back. Markets change, career change and things like that. With you doing much talking with people, interviewing, what are the characteristics that stand out to you, Chris?

A lot of location independent entrepreneurs, and I’ll refer specifically to entrepreneurs that are traveling on a regular basis, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that could be location-independent, but they choose to stay in one place. A lot of us are once upon a time backpackers with laptops. You see the location-independent entrepreneurs that have been doing this 5, 7 or 10 years or so. Back then, they wanted to keep traveling and we were making $1,000 to $2,000 a month and trying to keep it going. We didn’t want to go back to the US or we didn’t want our home countries, wherever that was for whatever reason. There’s a massive sense of adventure. One thing that’s cool, and they talk about this in The 4-Hour Workweek, is when you have geoarbitrage and location independence, you become what they call the new rich. You can live a wealthy lifestyle on a lower income because you can make dollars to pay in Rupees and live on Pesos. I go to Thailand every year for 2 to 3 months. I live as well as I do in Austin. I spend $5,000 to $6,000 a month in Austin and in Thailand, $2,000.

It is an amazing lifestyle and you’re having all this fun adventure with a bunch of entrepreneurs as well. That’s fun, especially if you’re a new startup or if you’re a new company. You can go to another country and you only have $2,000 a month in rev or $3,000 or whatever. You can live with low expenses and dump all the rest of the money back into the business, where necessarily you couldn’t do that in the Western part of the world. That’s a huge sense of adventure, a love for travel and the courage to look at the world differently. Many people struggle with needing the 9:00 to 5:00, needing office space, needing a tight-knit community, needing their regular schedule in a home base area, or needing a three-mile radius and not rarely going over out of that, unless it’s on vacation. For location independent entrepreneurs, you have to break all of those molds. As an entrepreneur, you have to think completely differently. It almost takes it to another level if you’re a location independent entrepreneur because you thrive off the thrill of going to a new city or a new country. It’s almost a necessity and you can’t stop thinking about it.

 

I’ve done this for many years and I go to where I have a purpose. I go to where my community and friends are. I’m not limited by any social norms, not insurance policies, not having a car and a mortgage back home. You create new systems as a location-independent entrepreneur. You create new norms. You create new social and you could almost say social migrations. I know that there’s going to be a couple of hundred entrepreneurs similar to what you would find here in Austin or in Thailand every October and November. I go there because I know they’re there. I know Europe is a great place for summertime. There’s a bunch of location-independent entrepreneurs hopping around the different cities in Europe. Lisbon is a hot spot. Barcelona is a great one. It’s easy to create that. This is different in 2020, but for the past years, I’ve spent Q1 in Brazil, all summer in Europe. I extended summers in Europe, October and November in Thailand. I come back home for Christmas and I do it all again.

I loved your analogy about making dollars, living on Rupees and then spending. Let’s paint that virtual picture. Are you a backpacker with one bag of clothes and your essentials for the most part and then picking up things where you’re at because they have about everything you need in other places? Do you have two backpacks? What does it look like when you’re traveling?

I started out very much as the guy with a backpack and a laptop. That was about it. I graduated and I had to roll along and carry on a suitcase and then a school-sized backpack. As you grow older, you need some more things as you go along. I have checked in the bag and then a school-sized backpack. That’s it. I’m sitting on a yoga ball. I always need that. It’s good for my back. I have exercise equipment and I travel with a yoga mat. I have a light to help with my podcasting and videos. About half of that is equipment for the business. Every time I go to a new place, I want to get new clothes. I’m not a complete wardrobe, but a few new things. I always leave some things that have worn out. They are a couple of years old. This place here has got a nice big walk-in closet and I fill up about 5% to 10% of it.

If you’ve read the book Essentialism, it is very much that type of lifestyle. I haven’t owned a car in years. I sold it after a year and a half or so of traveling. It’s been nice not to have a car. You don’t have to worry about gas and insurance and to maintenance on the car. It’s an essentialist lifestyle. I don’t want to say minimalist. You recycle the things that you need. Your priorities are very much like, “Will I use this? Is this thing useful? Is it going to be useful in the next country or city I go to?” If not, you leave it and then to pick up some new things in a new town. It’s like $100 and you got everything you need for $150 max. Sometimes, if I want a juicer, I’ll leave the juicer somewhere. I’ll donate it to a cleaning lady or the apartment complex or a friend and then buy a new juicer in the new town when you get there.

That’s the smart thing because many of our objects and responsibilities lay us down in a variety of things. When you look at that, you can bootstrap your entrepreneurship or the things you’re doing. You can maximize what’s going into your business or what you’re saving. As you said, “Your overhead is a minimal thing.” Whereas, we all know overhead often kills most of the entrepreneurs in the first year because they’ve got all this office space or the things that they think they need to have and they don’t.

When it comes to the lifestyle too, because you have a lower budget depending on where you’re living. You have access to do these fun adventures and trips. Literally, we do a downhill mountain biking trip one day, then maybe a dirt bike a few days later, then maybe go rock climbing a few days later. We take it when we leave. When we die, we take our memories with us and our experiences. Not our offices, our homes, and our money, but those epic memories that we love and cherish. Those experiences with people you enjoy being around. That’s what the whole The 4-Hour Workweek mission started out as. More people are doing it. It’s exciting because I don’t think it’s going to become more of a new norm, because thousands of people start this lifestyle every year. It’s an exciting movement to be a part of.

Let’s transition a little bit over because you’re working with a lot of entrepreneurs and helping them achieve growth by using high-performance productivity techniques. Let’s talk about some of these things. I guaranteed that you’ll probably teach the same techniques that you’re using for growth and things like that, correct?

Yeah. We work with entrepreneurs that are looking to either scale their business or take their business to the next level. They have a big goal or a new product launch that they want to do. A lot of entrepreneurs come to us because they want more balance in their life. They’ve been working away and they need it. I use a simple goal-setting method that I’ve used for many years. It’s setting the goal, having to target and reverse engineering that goal, having accountability, having a coach look over your shoulder and having encouragement. I also like to talk a lot about neuroscience and neurochemistry, how our productivity levels affect our brain and how that affects our physiology. The rest was experienced on a regular basis and in balancing that, you’re using or getting your daily dose of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins.

You can keep that excitement and not flooding your brain with dopamine hits if you have too many games online or too many unhealthy habits online or too much watching Netflix. That can wear down the pleasure centers of our brain. If we can balance our neurochemistry and balance the dopamine that drips into our pleasure centers, then we’ll be much more productive throughout the day. We’ll be happier. We’ll be excited. Also, helping people realize the things that they need on a daily basis to make their day great. For me, I need meditation, exercise and planning. If I get those three things in, there’s a 98% chance that I’m going to have a great day. If I miss, if I’m not having a great day, I’ll think, “What am I missing? I forgot to exercise. I didn’t plan it in.” I got busy and did something else. If I get those three things, my days are on-par. It seems things always line up well and it’s a fun, happy way to live.

You are setting up routines that we’re getting things rock and rolling on a daily, weekly basis. Are those routines easier when you’re stateside or a more difficult stateside than when you’re traveling?

Yes, I 1,000% agree that they’re easier stateside or wherever your home base is because you’re in a community. You’re in an area that you know well and that reduces the friction. It makes it easier to go to the gym that you need to go to and the grocery store that you need to go to and do anything that you need to do. When you are abroad, when you are traveling, one of the things that I make sure that I do is before arrival, I need to have accommodation with good wifi in a good area that I know I’m going to enjoy. I need to know where it’s going to have a close gym and a good grocery store that’s close. Those are the priorities. Through different methods, there’s a lot of different websites or different ways you can do that. You can have that all set up before you arrive.

Sometimes, if it’s a new city and I want to get a feel for the city, then I’ll arrive in the city and spend 3 to 5 days feeling out the neighborhoods and checking out some apartments either on Airbnb or NomadX. It is another website that you can use. I’m taking the time to feel the area out and see where the great gyms and grocery stores are. I’m making it handy and see the apartments to see if you vibe well with the apartments. When I do arrive in a new place, my priority is to continue my routine, not to go see all the sights and sounds. I make sure I have my week scheduled. I make sure I have my eight hours or so of work that I’m doing every day. I make sure I have my exercise and my goals are the ones that come first. That creates a foundation. In the evenings, on the weekends, you can go play. You can go see the beaches and you go see the elephants. You can go see whatever.

What have you found that maybe not only in your day-to-day activities or things that you’re doing but also with your successful entrepreneurs? Those that are struggling and they remove something from their life, maybe it’s something that they were doing, such as removing Netflix. Is there a thing when it comes to diet or energy that helped them get that first boost of success that helps them drive towards being more successful in the long run?

The first thing and the most important thing for anybody is to do less. I’m a performance productivity guy telling you to do less. I love all the PI, performance mechanisms, techniques and all of it, but the less we do, the better we can do things. We can do them with more energy and clarity. Doing more is about pleasing a restless mind. We create a restless mind a lot of times to cover up hidden emotions and pains and trauma from the past to keep us busy, so we don’t feel that stuff. Many times, people get burnout because they’re trying to do more and they’re running away from some hidden feelings and emotions that they had when they’re a child or from a relationship or losing a business. It’s not about doing more. The more we can make our mind more peaceful and slow it down, the better decisions we can make. The more clear we can make a decision. We can make decisions that don’t attract drama or more trauma or restlessness to our lives. A restless mind creates more restlessness. A calm and relaxed mind creates more relaxation, clarity, peace of mind. Take time to slow down your mind. Walk in nature. Go for a weekend camp out by yourself, even do some personal growth, journal and meditate.

Do those things to slow down that mind. When we slow down our minds, then the things that are important, the priorities come up. It’s longer about catching up on the Netflix series or it’s no longer about trying out all the new restaurants in town. It becomes, what are the juiciest priorities that I have, the 4 or 5, 2 or 3? Plan your day to make sure you focus on those. The more you do that, the more it becomes a habit and more becomes a way of life. Time and time again, people say, “I got rid of my phone. I got off social media and I don’t miss it.” They can say, “I haven’t watched Netflix in years. I don’t miss one bit, although they were constantly wrapped up in it. I haven’t done an email for so long.” Take time to step away and you need to do that on a regular basis, weekly, minimal, daily, optimal. Step away, slow down and relax. Focus on what the priority is. When you have your priorities, you’ll be amazed at the energy that you can put towards those priorities, the amount that you can create because you have so much energy focused on those priorities and the results that you get from those two.

 

That’s the big thing if you’re trying to do too many things, you’re not going to be successful at any one of them. The proverbial burning the candle at both ends, you end up burning out quite quickly.

Stressed and miserable is not fun at all.

If you look back at the stress and the market being a crap hole years ago when it’s going on, what would you say looking back? Would you recognize yourself from years ago with the differences going on or you would be like, “I don’t recognize that individual?”

I lived through it, so I would definitely recognize it. Maybe other people wouldn’t recognize it. It is funny you said that. I was in Austin and I have one San Antonio friend and one Austin friend. We all started out in Phoenix many years ago with that real estate company. We’ve followed each other along in many aspects because I think the foundations of my personality from back then and now are similar. The values are similar, but there are different habits. I’m a more mature version of that younger guy. What I am doing is that pleasing my fifteen-year-old self and 95-year-old self. If you can answer that question, yes, my 95-year-old self is happy with what I’m doing and my fifteen-year-old self is happy too, then you’re in the right spot.

We’re talking about traveling and working abroad, but you’re working with inter-preneurs. How are you finding them? How are you discovering forever? How are you paying the bills for what you have with what’s going on with you?

I fill funnels like anybody else. We have a podcast. We have courses. We have high-performance coaching. I have a live event we do in Thailand every year. I do it in different places. I speak abroad quite a bit. I was in Lisbon in the summer of 2019. You make connections and if you’ve got a podcast, anywhere you go, you’ve got a reputation going. Fortunately enough, since I’ve interviewed many location-independent entrepreneurs, in that scene, I’m decently known. I get asked to speak quite often to conferences or events or workshops and that helps. That’s part of filling the funnel up. Then, the podcast fills the funnel up. It brings them to the website and then people either come in through the coaching, the courses or the live event. People are already reaching out for me to do courses for their networks.

We had a guy reach out and we spent a few months building a course. He sold it to his network and then we split the profits. I’m working to build my value ladder up better and always add, but not add much to it. I’ve got three things that people come in all at the same level and there’s not that step-by-step. That’s one of my goals for 2020 is to work on that value ladder better. I’m proud of the way that this business has been designed in 2019. I set the goal to work less and make more and I hit that goal. I didn’t even know I was hitting that goal. I was happy about that. It’s a long road as an entrepreneur. We’ve got a lot of ups and downs and we’ve got a lot of growth. We keep going one day at a time.

Would you find that a lot of your clients are still US-based or is it a mixture of international clients?

It is spread out. I would say, 60% are US-based and then 40% are international, but the majority of location independent entrepreneurs are still Americans. It’s probably 60% to 70% of them. One thing that that type of travel does is it gives you the insight for realizing how privileged we are in a Western world and we don’t even know it. A lot of people could make that argument, but location-independent entrepreneurs aren’t coming from South America as much. They aren’t coming from African countries as much. They aren’t coming from the Middle East as much and it’s because of the social system that has been set up and the education and the access to money that we have.

That’s something that makes you grateful. It’s good because more people are going to different parts of the world to spread the ideas of entrepreneurship and working online that are helping more people become wealthier. A lot of people hire people from Eastern Europe or the Philippines. It’s a bargain deal to hire people for us there, but they’re making a lot of money compared to their countries. There’s this 23 years old and making more money than their father ever made in their lives. It’s good to see that because people are growing in different areas and it’s like a globalization effect. More people are realizing that with a computer, a phone and internet access, you’re limitless.

Especially the internet is spreading and access to Wi-Fi have become better in some countries than it is here sometimes. It’s not the same thing. You don’t have to be tied down to a specific city or a state. If you want to do it, there’s a way to make things happen. Unless you’re selling a physical product and you were the guy going out and picking oranges or carrots. There are some industries that have that, but what would you say is the number one lie that entrepreneur is telling to themselves that you help them overcome? What’s the biggest misconception that they have? Doing less is probably up there, but is there something that when you hear it from entrepreneurs why they can’t get what they want, you kind of shake your head?

It goes back to that and we think we can do everything. We’re highly ambitious entrepreneurs. We think we can do it all. We’ve got a lot of energy. When a new idea comes across our plate, we’re going to think we can tackle it. It’s part of too much confidence, a little bit of ego, but also part of we like to take things on and we’d like to make things happen. Many people overwhelm themselves, myself included, from time to time. I have a new opportunity to come across my plate and I would sit back. I think to myself, “I’m going to have to take away this and that if I’m going to make this happen.” I think that’s a good exercise, Scott. If we sit down and measure what we have to take away in order to start a new project, then all of a sudden that new project that comes across doesn’t seem necessary as exciting. If it is still exciting, realizing that you have to take other things away, then maybe it is the thing you should be working on. I would say the biggest lie that we tell ourselves is that we can do everything and we can do anything, but we’ve got to pick and choose the things that we can do and focus on those.

You’ve talked about the big thing that you do in Thailand. Let’s dive in a little bit of that and the evolution of how you came into creating that event.

We do this event called Get Shit Done Live in the North of Thailand every year. We pick the North of Thailand. There’s a city there called Chiang Mai that is the digital nomad and location independent hub of the world. That’s where a lot of it started. I was traveling the world for a few years and I was lonely. I lived in Costa Rica, Peru and Spain. I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I was missing is like-minded people. I’m an extrovert and I need my tribe. I need my like-minded people to feel me and to keep me going. When I realized this, I thought, “Why don’t we create some sort of co-living, coworking business accelerator?” At the time, I was in Barcelona, so we did in Barcelona. We put it up on a website and see if people come. This was late 2014. We put it out there, sent it out to the networks and we got twelve people to come to Barcelona for three months. We lived together. We set goals together. We enjoyed the city together. We had a good time. We built a business together. We Mastermind together. That’s where my podcasting day started. At one of the Masterminds, I said to the guys, “I’m thinking about making this a business. What do you all think?” They all overwhelmingly said yes.

That was before any of the coworking, co-living places, businesses or startups out there got moving at all. We were one of the original ones. I called it the Entrepreneur House. I did that in Brazil, in Barcelona, and in Thailand. Eventually, I got into a relationship and I realized I couldn’t live in a house of entrepreneurs and create a sustainable business and be in a relationship at the time. I realized that I was very much trading time for dollars. I thought, “How can I take all the productivity, all the juicy stuff out of this and create it into something that’s completely online and then create one event each year and it’s ten days long?” I continued the event in Thailand. We finished our fifth year there.

 

It’s ten days long. It’s called Get Shit Done Live. It’s all about setting one or two major goals in those ten days. Something that’s going to take your business to the next level. Something you’ve wanted to finish and knocking it out, working on nothing else but that in those ten days. It’s cool because the magic happens. When we’re there, you have these groups of entrepreneurs and we put them in small groups based on experience, income and niche. Everybody’s working together and helping each other. Somebody may be good at Facebook ads. Somebody may be good at copy or another person’s good at design. You can meet up with those people and get free thousands of dollars of consulting. They help you catapult your goal to the next step throughout that process.

We have two check-ins a day. We do Pomodoros every day. As we get closer to the end, the last four days, the amount of progress that people make on their goal in the last days is amazing. One guy came, his name is Dave Sheffield. In his last two days at the event, he ended up creating Facebook ads that produced him shy of $200,000 in business revenue. You get people that come. They’ll knock out six months of income and they hit the event. For what we charge, it’s shy of $1,000. If you stay with us, it’s $1,500 to $2,000. For what we charge, it’s like pennies on the dollar compared to six months of income in ten days, that’s awesome. It’s fun to see and I’ll keep doing it. I’d like to do it in Austin one of these days, but that’ll be one of the things that I have to start when the other projects that are priorities slowed down.

For those that don’t know, what’s a Pomodoro?

Pomodoro is originally 25 minutes of work and a five-minute break. You can also do those in 50 minutes of work and a ten-minute break. A lot of flow state experts claim is that 90 minutes of work, fifteen-minute break. That’s for the creative flow if you want to get in those creative flow states. Checking email and doing miscellaneous tasks, 25 on 5 off is good.

That keeps the brain fresh. It keeps it flowing and the mind can only absorb what the ask can withstand. You’ve got to get up and go do something like that. That’s the big key. I try to work in quick bursts, 30 minutes and then I’ll go for a walk around and go down and get the juice. I’ll get up and stretch or I’ll change my mindset. It’s flexible. Working eight hours straight isn’t going to make you effective a few hours of any day.

We got to balance it.

Is it $2,000 to come to one of these things plus your travel costs or am I wrong on that?

The actual event is shy of $1,000. It’s $750 in 2020. We have accommodation there. If you choose to stay at the accommodation, it’s $1,500 for a studio and then $2,000 or $1,900 for one-bedroom. We have two-bedroom options too because we do have families come from time to time. You get that apartment for four weeks. It’s not just the ten days that we’re there. About 60% of the people stay, hang out, play around and go see the temples and the elephants and do the fun things in Thailand.

I love it because when we’re thinking about international travel, a lot of times people get worried about the cost. It is expensive. Tony Robbins charges $75,000 plus travel cost to his big events and stuff like that. The beautiful thing is you can go and do some great things less than most people’s mortgages in a year and be able to knock out for the price of that to accelerate your business, surround yourself with like-minded individuals. What kind of size are we seeing here? You started at twelve, what it’s grown into? What’s been your biggest group?

We have anywhere from 30 to 40 people.

It comes to a close-knit group by the end of that ten days.

It is a very close-knit group. At the end of it, we go to that obstacle course, water parks that they have in Thailand. It’s also like team building. We have so much fun. We let out like all the aggression we built up over the past ten days. We play and we race around the obstacle course and every man for himself throws each other off of it. We jumped off 30-foot cliffs. It’s fun.

What’s your big goal for 2020? You’ll be in Austin for a little bit, but what’s been the big goal that you’re looking to accomplish?

In 2018 and 2019, I did make two or three main goals for myself. That was powerful. I used to write a list of 100 things I wanted to do and I’d knock off 25, 35, or 40 of them. I started doing more research on doing less better. I’m thinking about myself at the end of the year. I encourage the clients I work with or anybody trying this exercise, think about yourself at the end of the year and what are the two or the three things that you’ll get done that will make you feel good. Think about yourself at that moment with those things. For me, in 2020, it’s three things. One is to continue to grow the podcast. Two, to continue to sell the course. We have new courses that we launched. The third thing is we have this high-performance brain scanner that you put on your head. It shows you the alpha, beta, theta, delta gamma waves that are going on and everything that’s happening inside your brain. It is to learn more about that and to do more brain scans to help more entrepreneurs grow.

You’ve got some courses you created to help a lot of entrepreneurs, would you want to share a little bit about that?

 

One course that we have, the main course is to optimize your time to increase your productivity by 100%to 200%. If you can do that, it’s doubling your output. It’s doubling the things that you do. The best flow state experts will tell you if you get into a flow state on a regular basis and make it a habit, you can easily get a 500% to 700% increase your creative output. This course is about measuring your time over a couple of weeks and then figuring out your unconscious habits that you’re doing that get in a way that stops you from creating the results that you want. You get clear on those priorities, the things that you should double down on. It’s a two-week course and we take people through the whole entire process. We walk every single day. We have a video walking you through what you should do. At the end of it, you can increase by 100% to 200% of your productivity, but you can do even more.

It’s because you become aware of the things that are holding you back. You become a fly on the wall of your own behavior. It’s a great exercise. I learned this exercise from a mentor of mine when I started on entrepreneurship. A guy that owned 42 different businesses and he taught me this exercise. I use it six months to a year to realign to make sure that I’m on top of my game with my own performance. Every time I do it, I learned so much more about myself. It’s cool. There’s high-performance productivity. There’s no ending to it. It’s like peeling a layer of the onion. The more you learn about yourself, the more you can see how you can perform better. The more you realize simple things like doing less better and the more you can get a lot of things done.

What’s the best way for people to engage or connect with you? To find out more details about Thailand and find out some of the other classes you mentioned there. What is the best way to tap into that?

Everybody, you can go to TheBusinessMethod.com. There’s a little link up there for the events and for the podcast and everything is up at the top of the menu. You can check everything out.

Since you’re here in Austin, what’s one thing that you have not done in Austin that you are looking forward to doing?

Everything, having coffee with you and meeting you in person, we’ll make that happen eventually. I’m here for 6 to 8 months.

Definitely, we will make it happen sooner than later for sure. We’ll talk a little about that afterwards, your buddy here locally. It was a Nouveau Riche. It wouldn’t be Kurt Nalley by any chance. I’ve known his journey. He’s a great guy.

I got him into Nouveau Riche and that was his first entrepreneurial journey and mine too. We’ve gone a long way together.

He does a great job. I’ve known him since his Nouveau Riche days.

He probably tried to get you into Nouveau Riche.

He did, but I was already doing stuff. I was like, “I don’t need that, but we appreciate it because it’s the same thing.” One of the great things was the community, the aspect of things, the education and that’s the biggest thing I think we all need as entrepreneurs. I know it’s one thing that I crave is hanging out with fellow like-minded entrepreneurs. A lot of us get sucked into being into our own comfort zone, our own office, or home if we can versus going out and networking and bouncing ideas off that. I crave that in a lot of ways. Part of what’s helped me to add that dopamine is the show and be able to network and talk with people like you. It’s a small word. If you think back, Matt Bowles introduced us, but we’re friends with Kurt Nalley both. There’s something to be said about good people surrounding themselves with great people.

It’s always fun to meet new people, especially when you go on Facebook and you realize you’ve got 150 mutual friends with a person you’ve never met before. You’re like, “Why don’t we know each other?”

Chris, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for sharing some big knowledge bombs out there. Guys and girls, less is actually more in this world. Chris talked about it. If you want to accomplish something, you want to travel more, take a look at it. I bet you’d be willing to some ways that you could do some amazing things. Maybe you’d walk in and say, “I take this job and shove it,” but something you can do as a ramp-up to getting forward. Chris dropped some great nuggets on some places to look at and tactics. We look forward to going to have Chris back on again at a later time as well too.

Thanks for having me, Scott. It’s been a pleasure.

Go out and check Chris’s website. Do me a favor and go over and check his podcast as well too. He does a great job out there. He’s a presenter on the Pecha-Pod-Pitch at the Mass Media Podcast. We did a great job, great stuff on there. We have great guests that will add more to your mindset and thought level and help you with being more productive. Not only as an entrepreneur, but as an individual. Go out and take some action and we’ll see you all at the top.

 Important Links:

• The Business Method
• Get Shit Done Live
• South by Southwest
• The 4-Hour Workweek
• Essentialism
• http://TheBusinessMethod.com

About Christopher Reynolds

Chris Reynolds is a lifestyle entrepreneur, international speaker and founder of The Business Method & Get Shit Done Live. The Business Method and Get Shit Done Live both help entrepreneurs grow their businesses rapidly using high-performance productivity techniques. Chris has been a location independent entrepreneur for almost 9 years and traveling the world consistently during that time. Over the years, he has spoken five different countries, created 10 business accelerators in Spain, Brazil & Thailand while interviewing more than 300 successful entrepreneurs on his podcast including people like Laird Hamilton, World’s Top Big Wave Surfer, Steven Kotler, author of Bold and Abundance, Jim Rogers, former partner of George Soros, John Lee Dumas, #1 Business Podcaster, Casey Fenton, founder of Couch Surfing and Ron Lynch the marketing mind that took GoPro from $600k to $600 million. Currently, Chris focuses on helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses and life using research-driven high-performance techniques.

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