The Adventure Begins… Again

Greetings from Nashville!

I’m down here in Tennessee for the Killer Tribes Conference, where I’ll be giving a talk on Saturday on how to build a rebellion (pretty appropriate, I’d say!).  On Sunday I fly up to Boston to spend a few quick days with my family before shipping off to Ecuador next Wednesday, April 4th!  Why Ecuador? How long am I going for? What’s next?

Hold your horses, my dear friend.  I shall answer those questions and more in today’s post.

Today’s article is chock full of announcements, explanations, and even a request for the next member of Team Nerd Fitness!

Let’s get it on!

TEDx Emory

I’m excited to officially announce today that I’ll be one of the speakers at TEDx at Emory University in Atlanta on April 21st!

I’ve known about this one for a few weeks and I’m so pumped to finally be able to talk about it!  For those of you that don’t know, TED conferences host speakers that discuss anything and everything interesting, from the Paleo diet to how to start a movement.  I have a talk planned that is so Nerd Fitness it’s ridiculous – I promise I will do the NF community justice with this one 🙂

I’m not quite sure how long it takes for them to post my talk online after I do it, but I’ll make sure it gets posted here!

I thought you were all set in DC?

One week from today, I’ll be in Quito, Ecuador, hopping on a bus headed to Manta.

Since making this decision about a month ago, I’ve received dozens and dozens of emails and tweets from people asking “I thought you were all settled in DC? What happened?” and “I thought you were done with travel for a while?”

I made this decision for a NUMBER of reasons.  This is why I’ve decided to start traveling again.

• I got lazy in DC!  I have HORRIBLE time management skills.  Despite living in DC for 3-4 months, I didn’t do much other than Nerd Fitness work – I probably spent 80-90% of my time in DC in that apartment “working” instead of doing things to level up my life.  Except that I wasn’t working the whole time – I was checking email, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest 47,000 times a day and then getting to the important stuff after that.  What should have taken me four to six hours was taking me ten to fourteen hours, which meant I never had any time for anything else.  I realized that I was wasting my time doing unimportant tasks rather than finishing the important stuff and exploring my new surroundings.  So last night, I spent a good two hours putting in some time management systems, and I’m excited to spend my days exploring and learning new activities rather than hunched over a computer for twelve hours a day.  Expect a post on how I’m doing next week or the week after.
• I didn’t love DC – Although I enjoyed my time in DC, my three month lease was the perfect length of time.  As I started looking for another lease in the city, I decided that I was crazy to be spending big bucks to live in a place that I didn’t love when I could live (and work) anywhere else for far less.  I look forward to coming back and visiting the district, but I don’t plan on setting up my permanent home base there down the road.
• We live only once.   Reading this article from Gary Arndt of Everything-Everywhere really reinforced my decision to get back on the road and explore what this world has to offer.  We only get one chance to do what makes us happy and makes us feel alive, and it’s not spending all day every day cooped up in a tiny room hunched over a laptop.
• I want to enjoy my story.  I’m excited to strike a good balance of building a world-changing company with also living in the moment…something I’ve struggled with since “settling down.”  I’m not happy with how I managed my time in DC (other than my work with Jim towards the very end), so I need to get back into the habit of leveling up myself along with this company.  What I’m trying to say is, I want to look back and say “I enjoyed my story.”
• I’ve kicked my travel hacking addiction into high gear, and it’s getting worse by the day.  I blame Chris Guillebeau. Right now, I have somewhere between 700,000-800,000 frequent flier miles scattered across various airline, hotel, and loyalty programs, and they’re burning a metaphorical hole in my virtual wallet.  Although I traveled 100,000 miles last year, there are still so many places I have yet to see, and last time I checked, this Epic Quest of Awesome isn’t going to complete itself!
• I want to do this while I can.  I’m still young and have no obligations or ties to any particular location, and I know there will come a day when neither of those things will be true.  Although I plan on traveling for the foreseeable future, I’ll be doing it differently than I did in the past.  Rather than spending every night in a different place, I’ll be renting a place for anywhere from 4-12 weeks at a time and setting up a quasi-permeant home base.

Why Ecuador? What’s next?

Yes, that picture above is from the apartment I’ll be staying in while living in Manta!

I didn’t really have any requirements as to where I wanted to move to first other than it needed:

• To be outside of the US
• To be near an ocean
• To be warm
• To have wifi

Other than that, I didn’t have any prerequisites.  I started looking through the Caribbean and Central America and found most places to be either too remote (with poor wifi) or not practical.  I speak Spanish decently, so most of South America was available to me.  I had already “conquered” Peru, but Ecuador (Manta, in particular, which I had discovered thanks to a NF rebel on Twitter!) caught my eye – relatively inexpensive, on the coast, modern, reliable internet, and so on.

And then I stumbled across this place for rent – ON the beach, with a pool (sure why not), washer/dryer, wifi, a modern and fully stocked kitchen, located in a gated community, in a really nice part of Manta.  The best part?  It will cost me less than a 3rd of what I was paying to live in a shoebox in Washington DC!  I’ve never actually lived ON the ocean before, so this should be a fun experience.  On top of that, I’m looking forward to taking some salsa lessons (yup, I legitimately enjoy dancing), maybe some kite boarding lessons (Manta’s known for that apparently), practicing my Espanol, and learning to cook more meals to share with you.

I currently have the apartment rented for a month but can extend as long as I’d like provided it’s still available.  Right now, it looks like I’ll be in Manta for a month (with a quick weekend trip back for the TEDx talk), and then spending two weeks exploring the rest of Ecuador before returning to the states in Mid-May for a friend’s wedding.

(quick side note: the members of the NF running guild are currently racing me to Ecuador.  How awesome is that?)

After that, who knows!  I might head back over to Southeast Asia, or maybe to another part of South America before returning to the states in early July for the World Domination Summit in Portland, OR!  From there, it’s anybody’s guess.

It looks like I’ll be back on the road for the foreseeable future, but this could change within a few weeks – I feel very fortunate to have that flexibility to make these decisions, so all I’ll say is don’t let anything surprise you as to where I end up and why I’m there.

It’s funny – last year when I started my trip around the world, my parents wondered if I had gone crazy.  Now when I call them up and say “by the way, I’m moving to Ecuador in two weeks” they just say “That’s nice, Steve. Have fun.”

My parents are the best.

What does this mean for Nerd Fitness?

Short answer: Nerd Fitness is only going to get better and stronger.

Long answer: Last year was really an eye-opening experience for me. When combining my travel with my poor time management skills, Nerd Fitness didn’t get the attention it deserved, and at times was in danger of turning into a “Steve travel blog,” which is NOT what I wanted.  I don’t want that to happen again, so I’m putting systems and plans in place to make sure that Nerd Fitness continues to stay focused on the most important thing:

Helping YOU feel better, look better, and live a better life.

Although I might occasionally write about my travel or something on my Epic Quest list, the majority of writing on this site will remain focused on providing insanely helpful content full of actionable steps that will allow you to make positive changes in your life immediately.  I have so many ideas for how Nerd Fitness can grow and make an impact on this planet, and I’m excited to start implementing them.

To make sure you’re getting the attention you deserve, you might start to see more guest posts or contributors pop up on the site, offering opinions, advice, and lessons on topics that I don’t have a lot of experience in (yoga, more advanced cooking, swimming, and more, for example).  You’ll also start to see more success stories from members of the community – folks like you who have found a way to successfully change their lives and want to share their story.

If you want to contribute to Nerd Fitness (make sure you read my ridiculously long Guest Post Guidelines first) or have a great success story to tell (make sure you have some before/after photos), email us at [email protected] and let’s get the conversation started.

Which brings me to my next point…

We’re looking for a Managing Editor!

Nerd Fitness is starting to grow at ludicrous speed.

The main site gets 200,000 unique visitors and over 600,000 page views a month; we rocketed past 15,000 subscribers (bring on 20k!); we now also have over 5,300 members on the message boards.  With my upcoming travel, lack of time management, and awful organizational skills, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time to level up the organizational and grammatical aspects of Nerd Fitness too.

I’m looking for a part-time Managing Editor to join Team Nerd Fitness!

(NOT A FULL TIME POSITION – somewhere between 5-10 hours per week)

You can read all about the job description and requirements here, but in a nutshell: I’m looking for somebody with strong editorial and organizational skills to edit Nerd Fitness articles, organize the editorial calendar so we know what’s going to be posted and when, and coordinate with Staci and myself to make sure there’s new awesome content as often as possible on Nerd Fitness.

We expect quite a few applications for this, so we’re going to take our time in reading over everybody’s stuff – I’m not in any rush to make a selection, but once I find the person that fits the best with the NF philosophy and my style of working, the work will start immediately.

So after reading over the job description, email [email protected] with “MANAGING EDITOR” in the subject field with the following info:

• Name and location (mostly so we know what time zone you’re in – this is a virtual position and does not require relocation)
• Amount of time you can dedicate each week to working on NF projects
• Your experience in dealing with any of the “preferred experience” parts of the job description
• How long you’ve been reading Nerd Fitness and if you’re part of the message boards (no worries if you’re not!)
• Why you’d be a good fit for Team Nerd Fitness!
• Anything else you think we should know about you.

We’ll pick a handful of applications that jump out at us, conduct a Skype interview, and then have you edit an unfinished NF article and go from there.  Once selected, the new team member will start with a 3-month contract.  I honestly have no idea where NF will be 3-months from now, but I’m excited to see what it CAN become with the right people in place.

And yes, you will get to pick your own job title.  Staci is “Master of Deadlifts,” for example 🙂

The Women’s Fitness Guide (…or something like that)

Okay, so we still don’t have our name for the upcoming fitness guide specifically dedicated to women.

But that doesn’t mean we’re not working on it!  

In fact, we’re hard at work writing this sucker, and we’ve already done ALL of the video work for it – we flew Mike Bridgman (yep, the guy who designed the Nerd Fitness site and is hard at work on a site redesign that we can unveil VERY soon) up to Boston a few weeks back to film Staci doing every exercise for the guide in super high definition (1080p) from multiple camera angles.

We’ve already spent more time, money, and effort on this guide than we have on any previous Nerd Fitness project.  

We’ll be doing something different this time around; rather than just a set of PDFs with links to videos, we want to create more of an interactive experience.  In late April/early May, we’ll open up registration for a week or so, and then close it for at least two months.  During those two months, we’ll have weekly emails and updates and discussions for the people who joined – think of it like an 8-week crash course/boot camp to take women from newbies to confident, powerful, strong lady rebels (with the added side-effect of “damn you look good!”) .

If you’re interested in learning more about this guide/class/course, you can sign up for updates JUST for this here.

When you sign up for updates, you’ll receive an email asking you what you’re struggling with right now – just hit reply and let us know what your biggest struggle is when it comes to diet, fitness, and health.  As we continue to create content, we’ll be taking your comments and suggestions and working them in there.

We want to create something that removes any barrier or concern you might have to start strength training, living better, and looking better.

Let’s do this

And there you have it.

Next week, my life gets flipped turned upside down once again as I hit the road for a new country, more adventures, and probably some hilarious experiences.  I’ll be outside of my comfort zone, but I’ll be leveling up my life.

I encourage you to do the same.

Odds are you aren’t going to win the $500 million in Powerball this week, which means you’re going to have to build your own destiny and create your own adventure.  I encourage you to start planning your own adventure – as Chris will tell you, taking an epic trip doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

Please leave a comment with where you want to go, and ONE STEP you are taking TODAY to get closer to making that trip a reality.  Remember: the more specific you are, the easier it will be to take baby steps towards actually getting there!

For the Rebellion,

-Steve

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photo credit: JoshHunter