Matt Bowles: My guest today is Jimmy Naraine. He is an entrepreneur, adventure seeker, author and educator who has taught over 265,000 people online. After working for companies such as Goldman Sachs, he left the corporate world to become a location independent entrepreneur and travel the world. Born and raised in Poland, Jimmy has been a full-time digital nomad with no permanent base since 2013 and he has explored 76 countries. His online courses have received over 45,000 five-star ratings on Udemy and he is also an award-winning keynote speaker who delivers top rated presentations on stages all over the world. He also conducts personal development trainings for companies and helps experts and entrepreneurs create world class online courses. He has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Insider, and the list goes on.

Jimmy, welcome to the show.

Jimmy Naraine: Thank you so much, Matt. I’m very happy to be here. Great introduction, lots of charisma. Lots of charisma. I see Malbec in front of my eyes that you very graciously provided. It’s a really nice bottle of wine, so I’m looking forward to this.

Matt Bowles: Well, I am so excited that you and I are actually in person today. I have done virtual interviews for the last year and a half through the pandemic. So, to be here with you today in person, sharing a bottle of wine is an amazing feeling, brother.

Jimmy Naraine: Likewise.

Matt Bowles: Let’s talk about where we are, my man.

Jimmy Naraine: Bienvenida, Buenos Aires.

Matt Bowles: That’s right. Which we both came to because we were both keynote speakers at the Nomads BA Conference. Can you share a little bit about that and how the conference was?

Jimmy Naraine: You know, for me, it was quite surreal to be back with people. It was, on the one hand, very grateful. I felt a lot of gratitude. At the same time, it’s a little bit anxious as well to see all of those people around. When you’re stuck at home for so long and then you see so many people and you have to get on a stage. Especially when you teach confidence and you teach social skills and you teach how to present with charisma, there’s this chip on your shoulder. So, this was like a mixture of different emotions. What about you, man? How did you feel? Did you feel this awkwardness as well? A little bit.

Matt Bowles: A little bit, yeah. It was interesting too because you did a speaker training the night before the event for all of the speakers. So, you were sort of the closeout keynote and you offered to do a little bit of a training for all of the speakers the night before the opening of the conference.

Jimmy Naraine: Yeah.

Matt Bowles: Which was great. One, because we got to meet all the speakers and two, because you sort of went through these exercises with us because you knew that none of us have been on stage in at least two years, even if we’re experienced speakers, because everybody’s been in the pandemic. So, you’re like, okay, first time back, everybody’s going to be rusty and here’s some techniques, here’s some things to remember, don’t forget about these things and all that. And so, you, I think, really added a lot of value to the event overall. Not just with your talk, but what you contributed in terms of prepping the other speakers. So yeah, man, that was super fun way to open it.

Jimmy Naraine: Thank you so much. You know, for me, it was strange to do it because I slept only for two hours. So, for those of you listening, I was traveling from Dubai, did another speech in Dubai by like 35 hours before, jumped on a plane, had a stopover, came in, two-hour nap and jump in front of you guys. So, you know, it was very strange for me because even as I was walking into the room, I kind of felt as if the room was shaking a little bit. I was even thinking, do those guys have earthquakes here in Buenos Aires? Because the ground was moving. But only later I realized that it was just the cortisol pumping in my veins and, you know, all the nervous sticks and lack of magnesium and potassium after all the traveling. So, for me that was a comfort zone push to do a workshop while being completely wrecked.

Matt Bowles: Well, you delivered, brother and the conference was amazing. We got a lot of coverage. I got interviewed by Bloomberg after the conference. That article just got published today. And they’ve been getting a lot of media, I think, about the conference in the city of Buenos Aires as a nomad destination and all that kind of stuff. So overall, man, I would say it went off really well.

Jimmy Naraine: And it’s funny because they actually quoted the part where you talked about pesos. So Matt was actually talking about how cheap pesos are. And rather than just withdrawing pesos, you go to one of those Calle Florida, one of those streets in the center, and you can literally get double the rate for your dollars.

Matt Bowles: Yeah. If you can get double the amount of buying power for your U.S. dollar, you’re inclined to buy more expensive things, buy the more expensive bottle of Malbec, do things that you might not do, which is also good for the Argentine economy.

Jimmy Naraine: Exactly.

Matt Bowles: So, people can come here and they can live a lifestyle that is far beyond what they could live in other places. But also, it means people are going to spend more money here, you know, with the local vendors.

Jimmy Naraine: Exactly. And this is something that Tim Ferriss used to talk about and defer our work week, right. He was talking about making money in strong currency. So, trying to set up your business. So, you make euros, you make dollars, you make pounds, and then you come to Argentina or you go to Bali or you go to Thailand and you spend in weak currency. And I feel like 10 years ago when I was here, you were here as well. We are here around the same time. This really inspired me because it was so cheap. And I realized, okay, so you can live your life, you can pretty much live like a millionaire without spending millions of dollars. But at the same time, you are supporting the local economy, right?

Matt Bowles: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. That was amazing because you and I have actually been nomads for the exact same amount of time. We’ve been full time itinerant nomads with no base starting in 2013. And Argentina has a really significant place in both of our travel journeys. Do you want to share a little bit about yours in terms of, you know, and also coming back here, how it is for you now, what Argentina meant for you initially and how it is to be here now.

Jimmy Naraine: It feels surreal because back in the day, when I was here 10 years ago, I was broke. I was completely broke. I was a broke student. That was my final year at university. And I was a big fan of Tim Ferriss. I still am. So, because he was here, I kind of felt like I was revisiting his trip. So, I’ll never forget. I vividly remember, you know, the emotions that came from me just landing here, not having cash, right. Having very few pesos, but being resourceful about those pesos, right? So, buying now, we are drinking a very beautiful bottle of Malbec 2017 Gran Reserva Altocedro. Super nice. Back then, I would buy a two-dollar bottle of wine, but that was okay. I would just go on the streets. I would meet people. I tried to practice my very basic Spanish. I tried to get into the river of actually Palermo. I was in Palermo, in Buenos Aires. And I remember that this dream of one day traveling the world and living like this was becoming real because I was already living it. I wasn’t making the money yet, but I experienced a little bit of that. I experienced this Latin culture. And I remember I said to my friend Francisco, I’m going to be back in this place really soon. Now, that was 10 years ago. But that feeling that I got here triggered so many different things. It made me realize, okay, I probably don’t want to go back to a corporation. I probably want to go out there and build a business that would allow me to come to places like this one.

Matt Bowles: Yeah. Let’s start all the way back with your story because I want to get a little background and context from you. And when I say all the way back, I mean all the way back. You were born in Poland and your parents, though, are mixed. They’re not both Polish. Can you talk about where your parents are both from? And then also, how was that as a kid with. With mixed cultural background? How did that impact your identity as you were coming up in Poland?

Jimmy Naraine: Yeah. So, first of all, when I was born, I almost died. I got. How do you call it in English? Umbilical cord. I got tangled up. So, I almost died. So that was my beginning. I basically, I shouldn’t have lived, to be completely honest with you. Like, they literally told my mom, your kid is going to die. So, I made it. But because my father was South American, he was from Guyana, and my mom was Polish, I was a mixed-race kid with the name Jimmy Naraine. So, as you can imagine, for those of you listening, if you know Polish people, you know that typical names are Stanisławski, Mateusz, Mariusz, Vasilevskiy. Stanislawski. These are the surnames. It sounds completely different from Jimmy Naraine.

So, when I would meet kids, they would often ask me, like, what is your name at. DZIM-mee. Jimmy Narina? How do you. So, there’ll be a lot of confusion. I remember I was training swimming and whenever it was my turn to jump off, they would mispronounce my name. So, a lot of kids were very cruel, right? They would come up to me, they would keep asking me those questions. When are you going back to your country? What are you doing here? Why are you here? Why does your father look different? Because he looks a bit different. So, I experience a bit of racism. And I have to say for me, you know what, when you’re as a small kid, like this really gets to you. It really gets to you. Racism is always tough because you feel like inherently something is wrong with you at that age. You don’t understand that kids are just cruel and just trying to be smart asses.

You start looking in the mirror and you start thinking, well, I am different. Everyone else is different and I am different, right? All those Polish kids in front of me, I have a different name, I look different, I have my elf ears. You can’t see this guy listening, but you can check my pictures, I still have my elf ears. So, I started developing a lot of, I don’t know how to call it exactly, low level of self-esteem and a lot of that doubt about who I am and what I represent. So, it wasn’t easy, man.

Matt Bowles: In that milieu and as you were coming up as a kid, one of the things that you connected with was hip-hop music and graffiti art. And I as well, hip-hop was an absolutely game changing experience for me when I connected with that coming up as well. But can you talk about that in Poland in particular? Can you talk about how you came upon hip hop culture and then what your experience was with that and what that meant to you.

Jimmy Naraine: So, I became a rebel at some point. So obviously experienced this feeling of being an outsider that caused me to have low level of self-esteem, anxiety on top of that. My teachers would often tell me and some of them were great. But a lot of teachers would tell me, hey kids, stop dreaming. You’ll never accomplish anything. Just put your head down and try to study so you can get to some type of university eventually. So, at some point I just became a rebel. I decided to completely rebel against the system. And what do you do if you want to be a rebel in Poland? Well, you go on the streets, you skateboard, you do graffiti, you do all of those things.

So that’s how I started. I feel like for me it was just trying to find the avenue to showcase who I am, to express myself and you know, in graffiti, when you do graffiti, you not just are expressing yourself, you’re doing something against the system. So, when the system kind of punches you in the face, you want to punch back. Now, I never really have to have propensity to become a criminal, right? I was always a good kid. I never wanted to harm anybody. So doing graffiti was something that was illegal enough, but I wasn’t hurting anyone, and I could also express myself. So, I would spend a lot of time just scribbling in my notepads.

And then eventually I would go out there with my crew and we would do graffiti all over the city and we would have to run away from the police sometimes, you know, it was pretty dodgy. There are some moments when I literally had to run through rooftops because the police were chasing me. Thankfully, they never got me. I was a fast runner. But when you look at me nowadays, when you see me on stages, when you see me doing podcasts like this when running my business, a lot of people when they hear those stories, they can’t really picture it, but I feel like we all came up from somewhere and that was my reality back then.

Matt Bowles: And what about rap music and hip-hop culture and all that? I mean, one of the things for me that it did, I mean, you mentioned that it was in many ways a very antiestablishment genre of art, right? And a lot of the narratives and the stories and the content, right, it was a medium for oppressed or marginalized groups to articulate a counter hegemonic narrative. And so, when I heard that for the first time for me, right, because my background was a reasonably privileged background. I grew up in the United States as a white kid in the suburbs, upper middle-class neighborhood.

And all of a sudden, I started getting a hold of music by groups like Public Enemy. And as soon as I heard Fear of a Black Planet and I listened through that whole album, I started asking questions, man. I was like, who are these people that they’re citing? What are they talking about in terms of these historical things they’re referencing? Why have I not heard of that? Why did I not get taught that in school? And that actually put me on a journey, number one. I loved the music, man. I mean, I just connected with it immediately. I became a hip-hop DJ in high school.

Jimmy Naraine: Oh, wow.

Matt Bowles: Yeah, I became a hip-hop DJ. And then I parlayed that actually into my first business, which was a mobile DJ company. So, I started DJing proms and weddings and parties and all that kind of stuff. So, I actually turned into a business, the Core of it, though, was hip-hop. And I DJ’d. When I was in college, I DJ’d a hip-hop show on the college radio station. And then all throughout I was, of course, you know, making mixtapes and this kind of stuff. And I told you I was in this sort of white suburban area, was outside of Buffalo, New York, in the United States. States. And it was interesting because a lot of the DJ companies at the time were based out there and they were mostly run by white people. So, when the city schools had their proms, right, like super majority black Latino schools would have their proms, they would hire a DJ company. And most of the DJ companies are based out here, right? Well, all the DJ companies start to realize all these white run DJ companies that I knew all the hip-hop music and I could play to that crowd.

So, I said, you can subcontract for me to do it. So, they would book these gigs and then they would send me to go. And so, I started getting on the circuit and just playing all of the city school proms and everything else, man. So, yeah, I mean, it was amazing, right? And then that evolved and then I got business experience out of it. I got the public speaking experience. Because you’re not just the DJ, you’re the emcee of the wedding, the prom, the whatever. You’re in front of hundreds of people, you know, So I got all of this incredible experience out of that. But it all started and to this day continues with my love for hip-hop music. So how did you sort of connect with that and what impact did the music have on you?

Jimmy Naraine: So, when I heard it for the first time from me, and it went hand in hand with graffiti and skateboarding, but when I heard hip-hop for the first time, I actually, honestly, I didn’t like it. Okay. So, I heard this guy called Peja for the first time, the Polish rapper, and everyone was going crazy about him. But first few times I heard it, I’m like, it’s a guy speaking loud Polish to a microphone. Like, what is the fuss about? So, I wasn’t sold on it, right. I liked other types of music, but very quickly, and I think because of the peer pressure, I felt like, no, I have to give it a shot. I have to really listen to it. And when I got deeper into it, when I started listening to the lyrics, I realized that, well, on the surface, surface, those lyrics may seem violent, they may seem like they are about very shallow things. But as I listened, I realized, wow, there’s so many metaphors in there. There are so many hidden meanings. And I realized that you can listen to one song 20 times and still not fully grasp what it’s about. So, for me, this was fascinating.

And I realized at some point that if you want to become a rebel, this is the ultimate one way to do it, right? You put some rap music and you start rhyming about what you believe in. And a regular person will not understand it unless they really dig into it. So, for me, that was a big shift, where at the beginning, I didn’t like it, I wasn’t into it. But once I realized the depth of it, I got pulled into it. And then naturally, you start rhyming along. And I realized that there is something very healing, almost very relaxing about rhyming along. I was never a good singer. I couldn’t sing. You know, every happy birthday, kids are singing like, happy birthday to you. And I would just move my mouth. I didn’t want to sing, right? I didn’t want kids to make fun of me. But I realized you don’t have to be a good singer to rap. So, I just started rapping along and eventually it just become one of my loves.

Matt Bowles: And you became a beatboxer?

Jimmy Naraine: Yeah, because I couldn’t sing, I figured, well, what can I do? I can be a rapper. But rhyming can be also very stress inducing because there is a fear of rejection. What if you say something stupid? What if you stumble on your words? But then beatboxing was very comfortable. Oh, you just make sounds with your mouth. If you make a mistake, that’s fine. Maybe it was meant to be like this. So, I was beatboxing for a bunch of years when I was a teenager, and I even got on stages when I was 18, 19 years old. I got on this talent show in the UK in front like, 5, 600 people. But that was the pinnacle for me. And then afterwards, I realized, hold on a second. There are those beatboxers who know how to sing and I don’t know how to sing. And maybe I shot myself in the foot, but I kind of realized that no matter how much I try, I’ll never be that good. Like, you have Rizzle and you have some of those other guys out there. My body, the Polish guy who actually inspired me to do it, and he did stuff with Black Eyed Peas as well. So, you see people like this and, you know, they’re singing along, and I’m like, okay, I know how to sing along and do the beat at the same time, but my singing doesn’t sound that good. And you can work on your singing, but you can work on it to some extent. So, long story short, when I was 18, 19, that was the time when I stopped my career.

Matt Bowles: Would you be down to share with The Maverick Show audience a sample of your beatboxing skills?

Jimmy Naraine: We can do it. After another sip of Malbec. Let’s drop the beat. I’m going to start slow, and I have no idea what I’m going to do. I’m just going to start slow and just do a bunch of.

Matt Bowles: Amazing, brother. Thank you for sharing that, man. That is incredible. I would love to hear how that beatboxing in general, or hip-hop more broadly has factored into your life since then, during your travels.

Jimmy Naraine: Yeah. So, first of all, I like to use beatboxing and also rhyming to get myself into the zone. So, if I get on stage or if I have to film something before, I film, I like to just beatbox. Because when you beatbox, you warm up your vocal cords, right? Like, your voice deepens. Even right now, even just after these 30 seconds of beatboxing, I feel more power in my voice. It’s really interesting how it works. If anybody listening, I actually recommend you try it. Just try beatboxing. Try with something basic. There are tutorials on YouTube. You don’t have to become the best beatboxer out there, but doing it can be a lot of fun and it can help you to warm up your voice. I mean, even before you go on a date, right? You may not use it for business, but you go on a date and maybe you’re stressed out because you really want that person. Well, do some beatboxing. And also, I managed to use beatboxing in some potentially dangerous situations as well. So, for example, you travel in Brazil and you meet a bunch of random people on the streets, and you know, you know the drill. They come up to you and they’re like, you. Hey, Ea. Hey, Belleza. Belleza. Hey, my friend, where are you from? Hey. Right?

So, when this happens, you know that you may be in trouble if you ignore them and you walk away. People get offended, right? You ignore them, they get offended. They may get violent. They may chase you down. If you talk to people like this. Hey, bro. Hey, come here. Well, now you engage. You engage, but you’re not really showing them that you could be their friend. You’re saying, still a target. Now, you can get very easily mocked. So, what do you do in those situations? Well, you can just run away, but some people don’t have bad intentions, you may misinterpret their intentions, and you just run away. You look a bit crazy, right? So, what would I do? I would enter those situations by breaking the pattern, right? So, if the person on the streets says something to me and they look a bit dangerous, you know, most people who grow up on the streets, they do some type of rapping. They like beatboxing. They just, they are involved in this urban culture.

So, I figured, well, what are my assets? What are the assets that I can use right now? Well, I can use my beatboxing. So, one of the first questions would be, hey, man, do you know how to rap? And when you ask this question anywhere in the world, it could be in Ukraine, could be in Poland, Russia, Brazil, Colombia, anywhere. You may not even speak the language. But if you just look and you say, hey. Puedes a ser un rap. If you just say rap or freestyle or beatbox, most people just nod their heads, especially if they are with their bodies, and they’re going to say, well, of course I can, right? So, then what do you do? You drop the beat. And when you drop the beat, you basically break their pattern. Because they completely haven’t expected anything like this. They thought, oh, we see this young boy walk in there, we going to mock him, like, hey, what’s up? Get some money for tonight. What they didn’t expect is this young boy dropping the beat, right? So now they are playing along, now they are rhyming.

So, you make some scratches, and the next thing you know, there are high fives and handshakes and taps on the back. And the next thing you know, you become the part of the gangs. I’ve done this in different places. I’ve done this in Colombia, I’ve done this in Brazil, even in Canada. You know, I was in Toronto one time, and there’s a group of kids, I was 18 years old, group of street kids. They were having some problem in some shops swearing at the shop owner. And they came at me afterwards. They’re like, hey, where are you from? And you can sense when someone has trouble with you. And those kids in particular, they had a skateboard. So, I said, hey, give me that skateboard. I’ll show you something. And I did a kick flip. And they literally, they flipped out, right? I did a kickflip. And they’re like, man, this is crazy. This is incredible.

And I’m like, do you know how to rap? And of course, one of them said, I know how to rap. So, I started beatboxing and the next thing you know, they want to take pictures with me. They’re like, yo, let’s take pictures, man. Let’s take pictures. And it was dark. It was, like, in some dodgy area. I know Canada doesn’t seem like a very dangerous place, but when you’re 18 years old, I mean, anything can be dangerous, right? So, we took some pictures as we reached the peak point where they got really incredibly interested and curious about who I was. That’s when I took off. I’m like, yo, I have to go. I have to go. Hey, yo, high five, yo, great to see you. Bam. And I left. You got to know when to get out.

Matt Bowles: That’s amazing, bro. It is incredible how hip-hop has completely spread across all of the globe. I mean, one of the things I love to do when I’m traveling is to see hip-hop culture in different places around the world and how different cultures have adopted hip-hop and how it’s manifested there. And I’m always. I mean, I am consistently, like, blown away by things that I am not expecting at all. I was in Russia for a month in 2019. I was. I was not expecting any hip-hop in Russia. I had no expectations of this at all. And yet all over the place, the first weekend I’m there, they have Lord Finesse from the Bronx. Is there DJing a party in St. Petersburg. I then go to a speakeasy. I was on a date. We went to a speakeasy, right? It’s like small, little, kind of like, secret bar. And we’re in there, and the guy at the bar. I’m chatting with the bartender. He’s like, oh, yeah, what kind of music you like? I’m like, I just throw it up like 90s hip-hop. He goes, oh, yeah. I was like, yeah, drop. Starts dropping Wu-Tang Clan.

The whole thing changed. Then this dude who’s sitting next to me, he’s like, yo, you like hip-hop? He’s like, I rap. I was like, you do? I was like, can you spit some raps for me? He’s like, hell, yeah. Dude stands up in the bar. I turn my video on and start spitting in Russian. But he’s freestyling. So, he’s throwing. Cause he had asked me, like, where you from? I’m like, Los Angeles. Angeles. You know this. So, he’s throwing in Los Angeles this. I can understand the words that he’s throwing in that relate to me, but he’s, like, spitting in Russian over Wu-Tang Clan, like, in this bar. I mean, it was crazy, but I see that stuff all over the world.

Jimmy Naraine: You connect with people like this. We got to find something. Buenos Aires. We got to do it after this interview. Gotta find some hip-hop heads in Buenos Aires.

Matt Bowles: You know, bro, I went to this unbelievable hip-hop event in Buenos Aires the last time I was here in 2017. It was some sort of, like, sneaker head event where they had. It was like a warehouse. And they had all of these crazy sneakers, right? Like, rare unusual things like this. And there were sneakers with Wu-Tang member, Old Dirty Bastard sneakers. All of this, like, stuff, right? And then they had a DJ, and then they had these B boy and B girl crews that were there doing their breakdance thing in the middle of the floor. It was hip-hop. It was sneakers. Then they had all of these food vendors that just had like a kiosk there, a little truck thing surrounding it and stuff. It was crazy, man. I do remember that.

Jimmy Naraine: Oh, that’s cool. We got to find one of those places.

Matt Bowles: Yeah, for sure.

Jimmy Naraine: Because hip-hop connects people, I feel like. And you’ve been to a lot of places in Africa recently, right? You connect with a lot of people.

Matt Bowles: For sure.

Jimmy Naraine: When you go to a new place and you don’t speak the language, or you barely speak the language, if you love hip-hop and another person loves hip-hop, there’s just something, some instant connection that happens because you may not speak the language, but, hey, anybody, actually, anybody can beatbox a little bit. Anybody can make drums even with your hands. Anybody can learn how to rhyme two or three words together in a foreign language. So, you can feel like you’re part of it, right? Someone is freestyling in Russian. You may not know Russian, but you know how to say dada? See, you know, whatever. You guys just mess around.

Matt Bowles: Yeah.

Jimmy Naraine: And it breaks a lot of ice. Breaks a lot of ice.

Matt Bowles: It’s amazing, man. Well, Jimmy, let me ask you this. In going back to the beginning of your travel journey, when you think all the way back.

Jimmy Naraine: Yeah.

Matt Bowles: Where does your interest in travel come from? You’re growing up in Poland. You’re getting into the hip-hop and graffiti and skateboarding, all this kind of stuff. Where did the world travel interest come from and how did your journey start?

Jimmy Naraine: I honestly think I just have it in my blood. I think there are a lot of things that are paragonic. A lot of things you just, you know, you kind of learn throughout life. But I feel like it’s just a part of who I am. This thirst for adventure. When you think about my father, he was 18 years old when he Left Guyana, came to Poland. Nowadays we are very privileged, right? Jump on a plane to Buenos Aires, change your pesos, double the rate, right? And live the happy life. Back then my father jumped on a plane coming to Poland, not knowing when he would be able to see his family. So, he told me those stories. His parents would, would send him letters, right? Obviously, no emails back then. And he said he would get a letter maybe every couple of months, and he wouldn’t even read it right away. He said he would get a letter, he would clean the entire flat, cook himself a meal, open a cold beer, and then slowly he would open the letter to read it and to really make the most of it, right? Just the way you drink wine. That’s how he read the letters. Completely different times. But you got to ask yourself a question like, like what does it take to do stuff like this? What does it take to be the person who says, I could stay here, but I’m going to go literally to the other side of the world in the middle of communism to study with no guarantees of what’s going to happen to me.

There’s clearly racism there, and I could go on and on, but I feel like in my family we just have this in our DNA. So, when I was a little kid, I would run away from my parents. Not run away in terms of terms of, you know, like literally trying to run away and never come back. But even as a few year-old kid, my parents would come out and I would be already on the other side of the block. I would be trying to venture out and have this sense of adventure. I remember that I would pick up leaves and I would take some soil from the neighborhood and I would put it in my bed and I would sleep in that bed in all those leaves and all this soil. And you know, obviously sometimes some, some bugs would get in there, but I didn’t care because I had a feeling that I was the Mowgli from the jungle. I always wanted to be this big adventurer, right? I wanted to become the person who just goes out there.

So, I feel like I always have this. I always had this in my life. But I still vividly remember that when we did school trips with my school, most kids, you know, whenever we had some break, whenever teachers said, you have half an hour to do whatever, most kids would try to figure out how to get a cigarette or how to find some beer and drink it together. And I was always the weird kid who would just go by himself. I would leave everyone and I would try to venture out as far as possible just to have that sense of discovering the unknown. So, for me, this was always the drive. It wasn’t this feeling of, oh, I want to see the elephants, or I want to see the sea, or I want to see X, X, Y or Z. For me, it was just discovering the unknown, getting thrilled by it. You don’t know what’s out there and you know it’s going to surprise you. You know, it may shock you and you are welcoming it.

Matt Bowles: And you started traveling internationally before you had money.

Jimmy Naraine: Yes.

Matt Bowles: Can you talk about.

Jimmy Naraine: Yes, sir.

Matt Bowles: About how your passion and desire for travel basically inspired you to figure out a way to do it. Even if you didn’t have the money to do it, you were going to do it anyways. Can you share that? That story?

Jimmy Naraine: Definitely. There are so many stories, man, I could share with you. We could do a 10-hour podcast. I noticed very early on that, look, if you don’t have the money, you can either sit at home and you can cry or you can figure out a better way. So, I realized that it’s not about having money, it’s about not having resources, about being resourceful. That’s. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about the skill of resourcefulness. And by the way, I have to say, right from the get go, this applies to business as well. So, a lot of lessons I learned back then applied to business later on. So, realize, okay, so I want to travel, I want to experience Spain, I want to experience Italy, I want to go to Belgrade and Serbia and I want to discover those types of places. How do I do it without having money? Well, I realized that there’s something called hitchhiking. Is it safe? Yes and no. Most people tell you that it’s not safe, but most of those people never hitchhiked.

So, I figured, why not just think outside the box and just go out there and rather than listening to people trying to dissuade me from my ideas of exploration, you know, people who have never done it, why not try it for myself? So, I started doing those random trips abroad where I would literally book either extremely cheap flights, you know, 10, €20 flights, or I would just hitchhike to other locations without any accommodation booked. You know, nowadays you have booking.com, you have Airbnb. Back then I would just take a backpack, I would go to a place not knowing where I’m going to eat, what I’m going to eat, how I’m going to commute while I’m there, where I’m going to sleep. I didn’t know any of that, and that was incredible. So even though I was just traveling primarily at the beginning in Europe, I still had that feeling of being this. This ancient explorer, right? And I had to catch myself sometimes. I’m listening right now to Will Smith’s book, really great audiobook. And he’s talking that when he was younger, he would have those visions, and sometimes he would lose a sense of reality, right? He would create a vision in his head, and he really believed in it.

And all their kids would say, no, this didn’t happen. And he would say, no, that happened because it happened in his head. And because it was so vivid, he believed in it. I can resonate with that. So, I would travel to all types of places. And for example, I would sleep on a beach. I would sleep on a bench, or I would sleep in some big truck, right? And I would literally imagine that I’m an explorer, that it’s the 18th century, and I’m just going out there to find a new world, right? So, I was doing a lot of those things. I’m happy to share some specific stories as well. But for me, the main thing, man, just the feeling of. It’s almost like you bend your reality and you forget about your regular existence. You forget about the Jimmy Naraine that you know, and you create almost like an alter ego, right? It’s almost like you become a different person in those moments.

Matt Bowles: I love that, man. And I feel like that’s very emblematic of a lot of different aspects of your life. You didn’t have the, quote unquote, resources or skills or talents or whatever that’s expected to do something, and you just decided to. You were going to do it anyways. You were going to figure out a

Jimmy Naraine: way to do it.

Matt Bowles: So, you went, what was it, 3,000 km across Europe without paying for any transportation or accommodations.

Jimmy Naraine: Yeah.

Matt Bowles: Yeah, because you didn’t have the money, but you were going to do it anyways, and you did it.

Jimmy Naraine: Yeah, so. So that’s actually a good story. So basically, right before I went to Kilimanjaro, right, I. I climbed Kilimanjaro, and a lot of people told me, especially from Poland, they told me, hey, man, I wish I could travel, but it’s easy for. You have the money. I’m like, I have the money. What are you talking about? I don’t have the money. But when you go to Kilimanjaro, people assume you must have a lot of money. So, I figured, okay, what is the best way to show to people that you don’t need to have that much money. Well, you can either try to tell them, you can try to convince them, or you can just show them. And I feel like showing is always much more powerful, right? You can talk all you want, but if you show it to someone when you walk your talk, people cannot deny that you know what you’re talking about. So, I figured, okay, why don’t I. Because I always wanted to explore Europe. Why don’t I do this crazy trip and go? Well, I wanted to do even more than that. I did over 3,000 kilometers, but I’m like, let’s see how far €200 can go. So, I had exactly €200 to spend, right?

And nowadays it seems bizarre. I mean, it seems crazy traveling around for €200. Like, how many nights of accommodation can you get for that? But I realized that it was possible. And when you embark on adventure like this, you have to push your comfort zone. So, I remember the times when I had social anxiety back in the day, right? And I remember I had to talk to strangers, I had to talk to truck drivers, and I had to persuade them to take me with them. And a lot of them, they didn’t want to do it. They didn’t want to take anybody with them. So, I had to try. I had to deal with rejection. I had to deal with uncertainty. You are at some petrol station, middle of the Italy, right? And you don’t know what you’re going to do. And you know that there is no plan B. You don’t have a lot of money sitting in your pocket. So worst case, you can cab it to the major city. You just can’t do it. So, I realize you just got to push yourself. You got to go out there. And the more I push myself, the more I realize that things are actually easier than they seem to be when you take action, right? A lot of times we think, well, we have this idea, right? You want to do X, Y or Z, and you think, that’s going to be difficult. It’s never going to happen.

There are too many roadblocks along the way. But the moment you take action, you realize, hold on a second. It’s actually easier than I thought, right? And this applies to so many situations in life. That’s why I think traveling is a great teacher for life. So, truck drivers, you think, well, they will reject me. But then you go, you talk to them. The first one says no. The second one says no. But then he connects you to another one, one who says yes. Oh, now you just got 300km for free. Then you meet a bunch of people and you tell them, well, I. I don’t live anywhere. They ask you, where’s your hotel? Where’s your hostel? Well, I don’t really have a hostel or a hotel. I don’t know where I’m going to stay. And then one of them says, hey, you know what? You can crash my floor. We have a party later on; we have some drinks. You can crash on my floor. And situations like this would happen very often. But I feel like one of the biggest lessons for me in those times was to get rid of this idea of constantly seeking approval and validation of other people and constantly being preoccupied about the judgment of other people. Once you give that up, once you realize that no matter what you do, not everyone will like you and you’re willing to fail and you’re willing to be rejected and to be laughed at, incredible things happen, man.

Matt Bowles: Well, one of the other things that you do when you travel that I want to ask you about is you learn things, and you are intentional about your learning process. Languages being one thing that you have focused on. Growing up, you spoke only Polish, right? Now you speak a number of languages. And you were telling me this story about when you went to Spain, you wanted to learn Spanish, so you made it a point to speak nothing but Spanish for a full month and to intentionally go out every night and just talk to strangers in Spanish.

Jimmy Naraine: Si, señor.

Matt Bowles: Can you share that a little bit about that, why you did that, how it worked out, and the broader concept about your approach to intentional learning?

Jimmy Naraine: So early on, I realized that you can actually hack your life, you can hack your learning experience, right? So, when you’re at school, they tell you have to memorize this list of vocabulary. And when you look at it, you realize that a lot of it is pointless. I mean, why would you learn how to call that little fork or knife that you use for some specific type of fish if you don’t even know how to introduce yourself to other people in a foreign language? So, I realized a lot of our education is just very inefficient. And I remember back in the day, back in Poland, how teachers used to teach me. I remember the Math teacher, I used to love Math, and I had my way of doing equations. I would find my own solutions to equations. But when I went to this new school, the teacher said to me, it’s my way or no way. And I would keep getting zero points, even though I was finishing first. I created my own solutions to equations. I was really a geeky kid, right? That was pre graffiti, pre beatboxing.

So, I loved Math and because of that teacher, I started hating Math because I realized, well, if it’s your way or no way, then fuck you, I’m not going to do it. And that’s when I rebelled. So, because of those experiences, I knew that why follow the traditional system that doesn’t work if you can hack the system. So, with language learning, I realized that you can use the 8020 principles to mastering them. So, 8020 basically says that roughly 80% of results come from 20% of causes. So, very few things really matter. Most things don’t matter as much as we think they do. So, the example with some of the vocabulary, most of the vocabulary you will never use, then why would you learn it? Isn’t it better to learn stuff that you will actually use in day-to-day conversation first? So, I realized, okay, what are the 500 most frequent words in Spanish? Okay, that’s the first question. I don’t remember if I did five hundred or a thousand, but. But I know I looked at the list and I realized, okay, if I learn just the words from this list, I’m going to know the majority of the common language, right?

I may not be able to speak to professor about economy and business, but I will be able certainly to go out there, for example, in Buenos Aires and speak to people at a party. So, I realized, okay, I need to learn that. So, I started with the frequency lists. Then I learned cognates. So, cognates are words that are very similar in English and other languages. So, for example, possible, possibly, right? Or Italian possibile or Portuguese possível. Or you’ve got abbreviation in Spanish. Abbreviation is la abreviación, right? Probable, probable. So, there are a lot of words, I could give you lots of examples. There are thousands of those words that are pretty much. I don’t say they are the same, but they’re very similar in English and other languages. So, if you just get the pronunciation right.

You can literally print out a couple of thousand words. You can drink some good wine, go through all of them a couple of times, you underline the ones you want to know the most. And that’s how you learn. Literally within a few days you have all that free “vocabulary in your head”. And then you go out and you push yourself and you push your comfort zone. And when you are in your hostel or in your flat or wherever, or in your tent or on the street, if you live on the streets, which I did many times. You push yourself to finish that glass of wine and actually go out there and talk to strangers. And that’s what I did, right? So, it wasn’t just learning vocabulary. Vocabulary is just a tool now. You have to use it. You have that ammunition. You have to use that ammunition. So, I would literally force myself, man, every day and every night, just going out there and talking to strangers. I had a bunch of phrases written down on a piece of paper. I had some words written down. And I would walk up to people, I would literally say, hola de donde estaba buena fiesta, right? Where is a good party? I mastered that phrase. And then some people would respond with slow Spanish. So more considerate people, oh, hola, perfecto.

And then I would actually have a conversation, but some people would just assume, well, this guy probably speaks Spanish. I’m like, whoa, what just happened? I’m like, oh. But then eventually you get it, because you have to, right? If you do it enough times, if you do it 10 times, you will not get it. But if you do it not 10, but 100 times every night and then every day for a month, you start seeing patterns. And this doesn’t just apply to language. Learning language is one thing, right? I learned Spanish back then, but I also learned social dynamics, and that was even more important. You realize that when you talk to people, there are certain patterns you can predict. And this applies to business as well. When you talk to people, when you ask certain questions, you can predict the answers. When you meet new people, you can predict the questions they will ask you. And suddenly you become sharper. And, you know, from somebody who’s to have social anxiety and didn’t know how to talk to people, you become the person who knows how to talk. But part of it is that you are not so afraid of the unknown because you can predict it.

Matt Bowles: I also want to ask you in general about your travel life and how you structure your lifestyle. One of the things that you and I connected on immediately is that we are both full time itinerant nomads that have had no base for eight years, and we’ve just been traveling the world. I’ve lived in 65 countries. You’ve lived in more than that, you know, six continents. And we are true itinerant nomads with no base. And a lot of times, I mean, I get a lot of questions about that, and I’m sure you do as well. And I’m curious, you know, because I also know a lot of people that get into the nomad lifestyle, and then they get out of it in less than eight years. And a lot of times I’ll ask them, I’ll be like, why did you get out of it? And oftentimes I find that it’s because something was depleted. Yeah, right. I got lonely. I couldn’t find a relationship partner, or I didn’t have enough friends around me to give me hugs and support me, or I ran out of money because I was partying all the time. Something kind of got depleted. So, what I want to ask you, Jimmy, just thinking back on doing this for eight years and being as passionate about it now as you were eight years ago, what are some of the key sustainability pillars to living this life in a healthy, fulfilling, exciting way for this long? And how do you structure your lifestyle? What does your life look like right now?

Jimmy Naraine: It’s one of those tricky things, because on the one hand, you travel because you want adventure, you want to discover the unknown. On the other hand, a lot of people fall to the trap of just burning out. Some of the people we talk to, they try to do too much too quickly. And rather than focusing on other areas of their lives and try to be holistic about how they live their lives, they just focus on, okay, I’m a nomad now. I have to tick off all of those places. I have to go. I have to go all the time. And I feel like, for me, so the secret, if you can even call it like this, was just try not to forget about any currencies of life. The fact that people think it’s just about finances, you got to make more money, you got to build up your business, and that’s what it’s all about. I feel like there are many different currencies in life. Finances is one of them. Relationships, that’s another. Health, freedom, mobility, positive mindset, all of that. These are currencies.

So, in my life, I think I became really good at honoring each one of those currencies. So rather than just focusing on adventure and forgetting about business, or just focusing on business and then forgetting about adventure or forgetting about my friends, I always try to ask myself, okay, what is the balance? What’s happening? As I look across the board at different currencies in my life, what am I doing well, what am I doing wrong? Maybe I’m overly focusing on something and not focusing enough on another thing. I feel like some people may say, well, this is too philosophical, whatever. But actually, I think this is the fundamental thing you have to do as a nomad. Because in order to be a nomad in a sustainable way for very long time, you have to have your foundation sorted, right?

So, so again for me it’s just about looking at my life holistically, focusing on my business, making sure that my business can generate enough revenue so I don’t have to worry about money. But not just that it can be self-automated enough so I don’t have to constantly worry about my business as well. So, it can kind of the basics run in the background so I know whatever happens I’m generating enough money, then everything else is an extra at the same time, making sure that I don’t rush, making sure that I don’t get in this frenzy of trying to add more countries to my list. Sometimes just listening to this inner voice that tells me, hey mate, I know you wanted to go to Hawaii, but maybe you should slow down a little bit. Maybe don’t book that flight, maybe stay an extra few weeks in this place and fully discover it, you know what I mean?

Matt Bowles: Yeah man, for sure. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Let’s just maybe start with what are your travel priorities? What is your decision-making process for selecting which destinations you’re going to go to, how long you’re going to stay?

Jimmy Naraine: Okay, so for me, I’m curious to hear how it is for you, but for me nowadays a lot of it has to do with business. So, what I like to do is I like to always ask myself, because I love traveling anywhere. I could go to Amsterdam and I could go to Santiago de Chile. I’m going to get excited. And by the way, Matt is nodding with smile.

Matt Bowles: Of course, those are two great cities, man. Of course, he resonates. I love both of those cities.

Jimmy Naraine: Good. Even smaller places, right? Doesn’t matter where you go, there’s always something to do. So, I’m always happy to go anywhere. And that’s why I asked myself a question. Okay, so can I get something business wise out of my trip? Where can I go to find business opportunities? Then another question is where can I go to reactivate some of my relationships so I can rekindle them, I can foster them, or where can I go to make new incredible relationships? So, for example, here, you know, this nomad conference in Buenos Aires, this was a no brainer because there are so many nomads that I’ve been wanting to meet. It just makes sense, right? But at the same time asking myself a question, is this sustainable? Am I not trying to bite too much so then I may have problems with chewing it and I feel like whenever I make decisions like this, I look at all of those factors. I make good decisions that just make me feel happy, make me feel stable, and get me excited about my travels.

Matt Bowles: And I think you also choose some destinations, though, like you mentioned, you went to hike Kilimanjaro.

Jimmy Naraine: Yes.

Matt Bowles: Which I assume was not a business motivated choice. Right? Or you went to. You told me you went to hike to Annapurna Circuit in the Himalayas. When you make a travel decision like that, what is that based on? And by the way, how was the Himalayas? I want to hear about this because I haven’t done that yet.

Jimmy Naraine: Okay, so you made a very good point. Okay, so before, I kind of mentioned the framework for making decisions, but there are exceptions, right. So, I make those decisions in terms of relationships where can I do some business stuff, combine it with adventure. These are the decisions I make. But then I like to listen to myself, to my intuition, and to my body as well. And sometimes my body tells me, hey, buddy, you know, we have to go out there and forget about business for now and open our minds and just see what’s out there. And whenever I have that moment, whenever I feel like I’ve been working for a long time on a specific project, I feel like I need to get a breather. That’s when I like to forget about business. And I just like to focus on the bucket list type of context where I ask myself, okay, if I were to die, say, a couple of months from now, what would be the things that I wish I did in my last few months?

And when I make those decisions, then money doesn’t matter, then convenience doesn’t matter. It’s just about me embracing that part of my life. So, when I’m older, hopefully live to 100 years old, and I look back, I know that I optimized my life, but also, I made some decisions to do some random trips that didn’t bring me any other benefit than adventure. And you know the interesting thing, Matt, is that very often when you do trips like this, they give you the most value business wise. It’s crazy how it works, but very often, you know, when. When you go on a trip and you don’t want to have any business benefit from it, that’s usually what happens. And it doesn’t happen. And he’s smiling, but it doesn’t happen directly. It happens indirectly. So, for example, the Himalaya trip, you see this tattoo? I have this tattoo called Adventure on my forearm.

Matt Bowles: I see it, right?

Jimmy Naraine: So, this was my first tattoo ever I was in Bangkok. I did this tattoo. And the reason I did it was because maybe a day before, I was sitting in a co working space, and they were about to close. We had maybe one hour till closing. And I was trying to figure out, okay, where I’m going to go. And I. I spent a lot of time in Thailand doing Thai boxing. I went to Maldives before Philippines, just going around the same places. And I was wondering, okay, where should I go? And Himalayas popped up in my head. And then I realized, huh, interesting. I haven’t been to the Himalayas yet. Why not? And I kind of started digging into my own head. Why didn’t I go to the Himalayas? And I realized that the reason was that it was such a big trip in my head that I kept postponing it because it had to be perfect. Well, if I keep going like this, I’ll never go there. So, I checked some flights, and I’m like, holy shit. I could literally go to Nepal. Bangkok Airways, I could fly there, like, couple of days. I could just go there.

And you know the feeling when your heart just starts beating really fast. And even now, talking about it, man, I’m getting excited because I feel it. My heart is beating fast. I’m like, what the hell is happening, man? I’m sweating. I know they’re going to close the co working space soon. And I’m looking at those flights, and I’m like, yeah, but what about the gear? What about, like, which track? There are so many tracks. Do I need to get a company? Can I do it by myself? I had all of those questions, and I realized, man, just fucking do it. You’ll. You’ll figure it out. So, I booked a flight. I booked a flight. Then I got a tattoo. I think maybe one or two days later, because this tattoo kind of symbolize something that I’ve learned in that co working space. And it’s that, you know, sometimes when you have this deep desire for adventure, when you really feel this almost primal feeling of, it doesn’t matter if it makes sense. I may not know what I’m going to do, but I just got to go and embrace it. That’s adventure calling you. It’s calling you, and you just got to go for it. And you may not know everything, but if you let that adventurous spirit take you, oh, man, it will take you some beautiful places.

Matt Bowles: Tell me about the Annapurna circuit, man. I have not been to Nepal. I have not been to the Himalayas. I’ve heard amazing things from everybody that’s done it. But how was the experience for you what came out of that?

Jimmy Naraine: Oh, it was incredible. I landed. I remember just the surreal feeling of being in Kathmandu, walking around. I saw all of those books, K2 and Everest, and. And I started realizing where I am right now. That’s where all those great expeditions started. Everyone goes through Kathmandu, and I could feel this spirit, this vibe, and I’m going to try to get a bit vulnerable here, right? So deep inside, I also knew that I had a lot of demons to overcome, right? That was many years ago, maybe, what was it? Six years ago? I did that trek in Annapurna. And even though I was already running my business, I was building courses, a lot of people looked at me, and they would say, well, you’re fairly successful. I still had my demons. And often what happens in life is, you know, when you get some type of recognition from people, but those demons are still present, there is this imposter syndrome that starts kicking in.

So, at that stage of my life, I had a lot of this imposter syndrome. And maybe you can resonate with this to some extent. When I felt that the brand, I’ve built for myself, when people introduced me, for example, to other people, that wasn’t me, I felt like, well, what if people find out that this is not me? Because I still had a little bit of that old identity of me being this poor, inadequate Polish kid, you know, running around on the streets, not having any money, not speaking any language. I still had a little bit of that inside of me. And I had this strange feeling in my gut that maybe this trip is exactly what I need to confront my demons, right? So that’s how it started. I made this intention that on this trip, those couple of weeks, actually almost a month in the Himalayas, I’m going to spend plenty of time by myself without listening to audiobooks, without talking to other people. I still did that, but. But primarily focusing on just being here and now, just breathing in, just looking around, just being fucking present. And that’s what I did.

I met a lot of great people, but I also met myself again. I rediscovered myself. I went deep within. You know, you trek and you meet people and they say, hey, man, what’s up? We are leaving in half an hour. You want to come with us? And, you know, they’re cool people are in stamp thing, but I would say, you know what? Not today. I’ll see you later, guys. I got a trek by myself, and I would do those long treks by myself one time, you know, actually twice stuck in Snowstorm, which is not recommended. Don’t get stuck in a snowstorm by yourself. But I had to do it. I had to go by myself to be able to look deep inside. And one time I had this situation. I was climbing this place. It’s called the Ice Lake. It’s, I believe, 4,600 meters above the sea level. So, I had to go from 3.5k to 4.6 in one day and then come back down, and everybody went in the morning. This is one of those unwritten rules that in the Himalayas, you got to wake up early, you got to trek early. But, you know, I couldn’t wake up early. I don’t like to wake up early in general.

Also, you feel the altitude. I had to rest. I took my time. The weather seemed super nice. I figured, what can go wrong? So, I left very late, and I was hiking like crazy. I just kept going up. I decided, I’m going to go there. I’m going to reach my destination. I’m going to get to the ice, like 4.6 K above the sea level. And in that fervor of pursuit, I was so focused on reaching that summit. It wasn’t really a summit, but that the destination. I was so focused that I didn’t even notice the weather changing. I didn’t notice all clouds are coming and the wind is picking up. But I just kept going like crazy really fast, trying to go up. And I remember that eventually, and I was passing a lot of people. A lot of people were going down already, and I was the only one going up. And at some point, I reached the lake. I walked around. You know, the feeling of accomplishment. You feel like, yes, I made it. I’m here. It’s beautiful. I took some pictures. And then at some point, I look around, I realized, hold on a second. It’s a little bit late.

And, you know, it’s not that bright anymore, and dark clouds, and there’s some really dark clouds in the distance. And I realize, okay, probably I should be going back. It’s not like some of those European places where you have, like, a nice bar on the top and you can get a beer. Like, there’s nothing there. There’s actually, I think, two legs. One and then the second one and a bunch of mountains, and there’s nothing there. And at some point, I can’t imitate the lightning, but I hear the lightning in the distance, and I realized, whoa, shit’s getting real now. I realized I have to go back. Because when you’re in the mountains, especially in the Himalayas, being close to 5,000 meters above the sea level. The weather changes so rapidly. You could have a sunny weather and literally within 10 minutes it could be snowing. You could be in a snowstorm. So, it started going down really quickly. And then I hear more of those thunders in the background, right?

So, at some point I realize I’m in real danger. Some running down. You’re not supposed to run down the mountain, but I’m trying to run down because I feel panic building up in me. I realized that the way up was very long and I realized to go down, maybe shorter, but I need to find the right way. And if the weather keeps deteriorating, I’m in real trouble. You know, people die there. Annapurna Circuit every year people die. You know, there are those. Those freak snowstorms and literally people perish. So, I knew this was real. I keep running. I never run that. I don’t say fast, wasn’t really fast because you run down the mountain, but with such intensity. I had never experienced anything like this before. The primal instinct of just trying to survive. But eventually I managed to. To make it back to the base, right? And I just couldn’t believe I had never felt so good just being around people, being able to walk into a hut and order a hot tea. I couldn’t believe I made it. Because for a long time as I was running down, I was convinced that I will get caught up in that snowstorm and I may potentially die there, right?

And in that moment, a breakthrough happened, right? So, I’m sitting in this little house, I’m getting some tea, and I’m still shocked. And I’m very cold. And I’m like hot but cold at the same time. You know, your fingers are cold, but inside you are buzzing, right? Your heart is beating fast and you feel all this adrenaline, but eventually this adrenaline starts dissipating. You looking around and you’re like, wow, I’m so grateful to be alive. But you also realize that was fear that I felt. That was a real primal fear. And it was okay to be afraid. It made sense. That fear propelled me to go really fast. But what about all of those other bullshit fears I have in my life? What about the fear of rejection? What about the fear of being an imposter? What about the fear of public speaking? Because back then, even though I was already making courses because of the imposter syndrome, I was afraid to accept speaking gigs because I knew that people had certain perception of me.

They felt, well, this is this guy who, who makes those courses. He must be incredible on a stage. But because I didn’t have much experience on a stage. I felt like, well, what if I let people down? What if I get on a stage and people find out I’m not as good as they think I am? So, I had all of that, all that bullshit building up inside of me. And that day I realized, none of that shit matters. None of that shit matters. I could have died up there, right? And I still have a way to go. Thorong La Pass almost 6,000 meters above the sea level. Some of this stuff may repeat, but I knew that this stuff no snowstorms, being at altitude, you can’t be afraid of that. These are real fears. Anything else is just some weird pigment of your imagination. And the more you get inside of your head, the more you overthink, the bigger those fears become. And in order for you to destroy those fears, you got to take action. So right then I commented, I’m going to do my first public speaking gig after a very long time. And I did. A few weeks later, I did it.

Matt Bowles: All right, we are going to pause the interview here and call this the end of Part one. Be sure to tune in to the next episode to hear the conclusion of my interview with Jimmy Naraine. Good night, everybody.