Five Star Freedom: How 2 Brilliant Women Freedom Hacked Their Way To 5 Star Travel

Hey.

Hey.

Welcome to Bacon Wrap business. My name is Brad Costanzo and today's a very special episode, or I should say episizzle. If you are listening on itunes and stitcher and podcasts and just the audio, I want to let you know that this is a very special video edition. There will be a link to the video in the show notes. So if you want to see me and my guests today, you can just click on that link and you can watch the video as well. That being said, thanks for joining me. My name is Brad Costanzo. I'm the host of the show. If this is your first time listening, this is my platform to talk to people. I love to talk about, about topics I wanted to talk about anyway and talk to people that are doing really amazing things in the world that inspire me, that make me curious. I often say that I've got the most selfish podcast on itunes because that is the requirement to get on my show is I gotta want to know about what you're doing, how you're doing it, or build a relationship with you in one way or another. That being said, the people on my show today, if you're watching the episode, you can kind of see them right here are Leanne Callal and Alex Catoni. I should say Alexandra Catoni in case you are listening and you think this is like Alexander, but Alex and Leanne are two super close friends of mine. We've known each other for about eight years and we met years ago in much different lives than all of us were living. And I've been honored to not only be their friends but to watch them do some really kick ass things in business. And today we're going to be sharing one of the coolest.

Things that they've been recently working on. And I saw the genesis of this years ago and I've been dying for them to release the. How did you do this? How? Because the one thing you'll notice about Leanne and Alex is that especially if you follow them on social media also you'll see the links is they live extraordinary lives and they do things their own way and they have really freedom hacked their life to where people are like how the hell are you doing all this? Are you worth like just tens of millions of dollars to have these experiences? And they both do very well. You're going to find out that it's not about the money, it's about the way they go about setting up their lives and the way they hack their, their freedom. So I can't think of any other better way to Introduce you guys and then just say, alex and Leanne, welcome to Bacon Wrap Business.

Thank you, Brad. That was such a good intro.

Thank you. So let's talk about freedom. Let's talk about freedom. Okay, so I want to give the listeners a quick background. Here's the way I want to lay this episode out. So quick background about your history as entrepreneurs and marketers, and even when you were working at mindvalley, and how that fostered your entrepreneurial drive, because it was that moment that you made that transition from employee to business owner and doing your own thing, this huge epiphany came forward, and it has led to something amazing that you're working on today. So take us back in time to a story that I already know, but share it with my listeners.

All right, I'll start off Alex, then I'll chime in. Well, Leanne and I, first of all, we've been friends for years. We met in university well over, I don't know, 10 years ago now. 12 years. Yeah. So we were friends. We were in a marketing class together, you know, following the traditional route of studying and, you know, getting going up there into the workforce, getting jobs. You know, I had high hopes of being a lawyer. I know Leanne had ended up working in sort of a corporate job in Canada. Long story short, I decided to put law school on hold and accepted an internship at the time at Mindvalley, which at that time, back in 2008, it was a very small startup company, was just getting off the ground. Now, of course, it's a household name in the online marketing and personal development world. One of the world's leading online publishers. Long. Long story short, I ended up staying there for a total of three and a half years. A year after I moved there, Leanne and I were talking on the phone, and she's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, you need to come check out this company. So she applied, got the job at mindvalley, and that was really how. What brought us together to start working together as colleagues at mindvalley, which, of course, definitely is a huge part of. We were both travelers before that, but living overseas for a number of years and being in that entrepreneurial environment really put the bug in our ear of, like, there's got to be another way. Obviously, it wasn't too long before Leanne and I made the decision that, you know, I was never gonna go to law school and be a lawyer, and she was never returning back to corporate Canada.

And, you know, that's. That was sort of what I guess got got us on the track of realizing that we are in charge of creating our reality and doing whatever the heck we want with it.

Absolutely. And then so you guys were running all the marketing. You decided, all right, we're done. We're quitting. We're gonna go off and form a partnership and build this ourselves. And I remember saying, well, before we do that, we're gonna go take a vacation because we need a sabbatical. Where did you decide to go to? Was it the Philippines?

Yeah. So I can share. So this all came when we were working at mindvalley. We were introduced to personal development, world entrepreneurship, going to these events. And we recognized at the time, like, this is still the case, but at the time, females were very underrepresented in the online marketing world. We're like, okay, we're gonna charge forward, and we are creating a business that's dedicated to female entrepreneurship. And we birthed that while we were still actually working at mindvalley. So then we ended up in the Philippines for. It was actually while we still worked at mindvalley. And we were there in February for Valentine's Day because I had broken up with an ex, and I got those tickets. We split the trips. So Alex and I went to Boracay in the Philippines for Valentine's Day. And we're laying there, drinking margaritas, like, literally rolling around in the ocean, like, right on the edge and getting these margaritas delivered right there. And we're like, man, this is incredible. What if we could. Like, what if we could do.

We were talking about quitting.

Yeah, we were already talking about quitting. And it was. At this point, we're like, how can we do this all the time? We're like, well, let's actually make it. Go for it. Let's do it. So we went back, we both handed in our resignation. Alex gave hers a little bit before me. And then we ended up. We came up with this crazy idea, and it was when we were there, laying in the ocean, looking at this row of hotels, and we're like, wait a minute. These hotels have something we want, which is accommodation. And for free, or really, really cheap, but ideally for free. And we have something that they need, which is online marketing information. We know how to get traffic to websites and how to bring them their ideal clients. And like, hell, we are their ideal clients. So we have this insider information. So we went back to Kuala Lumpur because we lived in Malaysia at the time. We started putting together. We hatched this plan, and we reached out to. We made our Hit list. And it included. We started off with the Shangri La. We're like, screw it, we're going for five star. Went on to agoda.com and filtered five star hotels and made our hit list of the places we wanted to reach out. And through this process, we developed a system. And before we knew it, we had quitter jobs. And we were over in the Philippines, and we spent an entire month at a five star hotel resort over there. And it was absolutely incredible. And that's where Freedom Packing was birthed. And basically it was like the best way to start a business. Like, I'm gonna start a business, quit everything, and then go live it up on this incredible island for a complete month. And at the time, it was a thousand US Dollars a night. Now their prices are a bit cheaper, but when we were there, it was well over $30,000 worth of staff. And we had a 1500 square foot sweets and free food and free spa services because we negotiated all of this in. And so that was the. That's how we started our entrepreneurial journey.

That's so awesome. I remember when you guys called me up or emailed me or letters like, yeah, we did this basically for free. And I'm like, what do you mean, for free?

What is this language you were using to say that you did this? You're like, well, well, we had this idea of.

The fact. And especially. So this was several years ago. Social media was still kind of new. Not everybody had started to really kind of figure it out. And you guys have been doing this for a long time. You're like, well, it's basically barter, right?

We bartered.

It's not a new idea.

Yeah, yeah, we're gonna give you our skills in order to use your facilities to. And make it our playground. And I was like, well, that's kind of genius. Do tell me more. And let's go in to. Let's take me into this because I've loved this story many, many times. You guys know, it's like one of my favorite stories. Whenever we're all together at an event or something, we're all drinking. I'm like, girls, tell the story.

One thing I want to add to what you're saying, Brad, maybe you're getting there. But like. And like, to what Leanne had said is it was like, purely out of necessity. You know, we were quitting our jobs. We were living in Southeast Asia, making good money, but Southeast Asia.

For Southeast Asia.

Exactly. For Southeast Asia. Thank you. And, you know, we had this like, extreme fear of. Are we going to be able to make it? Are we going to be able to move back to Canada and support ourselves while we're starting our business and not wanting to give up the lifestyle, but being so connected to what we were creating and knowing, you know, there's that every, like, every entrepreneur can remember that moment where they're like, I need to quit my job to make this a priority or this is never going to happen. And, you know, absolutely freaking terrifying. And so it was birthed out of creativity and necessity, which I think is like, is like the ultimate entrepreneurial mindset. Everyone listening to this, who's a business owner, an entrepreneur, like, everything comes out of these creative ideas and then doing it, even though people said you were crazy. Like, I remember when we came back to the office after our Valentine's Day trip, so that was in February, and we spent the month of July in the Philippines at this five star resort for free. And in between that time of us passing in our resignations and, you know, of course, letting everyone know that we were leaving and what our plans were, people were like, what? That's never gonna work. No one's gonna give you free accommodation. Like, what are you talking about? And like you said, the idea of, like, bartering is bit has been around for forever. And we took that idea and then just got creative with it and figured out, okay, like Leanne said, they have something we want, we have something they need. How can we make this work?

And it was like, it's a necessity. But I'd also say, like, is it a necessity? This is where we are very. Like, we share. We have a shared value of travel and adventure and of truly experiencing life. And so we've always created our businesses and our life around this. This is one of the values. Obviously there's others, but I think that we were very, very clear about what we wanted to experience and not doing things the traditional way. And then we were able to look and evaluate different situations and get creative, like Alex said, to really come up with this system that we created.

Yeah. And it's like, I love, I've always loved barter. It is one of the most. It is one of the most underutilized strategies in the world. It's one of the oldest. It is the oldest form of commerce, but it's now one of the most underutilized. Everybody thinks I gotta get paid, etc.

And especially for people who don't have the skill sets, like, you have the skill sets to do it and you could have asked for the money, but it's way easier to ask, listen, do you have any unsold inventory of the unsold rooms? We'll go ahead and do this for free, but that's actually not the way you proposed it. And I want to jump into that the way you proposed it, which was really genius and took some real good marketing and persuasion ninjutsu to pull this off. But speaking of barter, like, I've told people for a long time, like, one of them was my cousin who is like 20 years younger than me. And I told other younger people, like, look, if you're trying to go out there and get skills or job experience or just a job, there's three ways you can do it. You can go apply and compete with absolutely everybody who's trying to get the job and maybe they pay you, but if your skills aren't, you know, number one, like, there's only one person who's going to get that job, typically number two, you can do the internship and you can work for free. And you can say, and by the way, you don't have to be an intern to do that. You could, meaning in college. You can do that at age 40 if you want. Let me work for free. Let me learn from you. Let me prove it. And then the flip side is like, screw it, I know you're trying to hire somebody. Let me pay you. You know, this is not, this has nothing to do with free to fight and all this freedom hacking, but it's like, I want this skill set. Let me pay you to work for you. And you never hear that many people doing it, but it's like a paid apprenticeship or a paid, you know, let me shadow you. And it blows me away that, that, that people aren't trying to build their skills like that and a little bit more. They'll spend $40,000 to go to a year on tuition, but they won't pay a company to get job on the job experience. And just to segue a little bit further, just Today I hired two apprentices from a company called GenM and they match make internships, but they call them apprentices. And these are people who have some little bit of marketing. They give them a little bit of marketing courses and understanding and then they agree to work for free for 90 days. And I just hired two people. There'll be a link in the show notes and to that you guys can check it out. So I hired a paid media intern or apprentice and I hired a content apprentice to listen to that podcast, take notes, content, curate, do some other stuff. He'll probably be listening to this. And I told him, look, congratulations, you are correctly using barter to generate skill sets which will lead to experiences. Now back to y', all, because that's what this is all about. Yeah, the, the type of bartering you did and the way you presented it was what was genius. You didn't say, hey, can I will do this stuff for free if you give us a room, because that puts you in a very weak position. You took a very strong position. Floor is yours.

Yeah.

Okay.

What I love about it is it just felt, I mean, I guess when you think like a marketer, that's just how you operate, you know, and knowing very well that. And again, you know, everyone that we were telling what we were doing to was thinking not like a marketer, they were thinking like someone who wants free accommodation. So of course they're going to go, this is crazy. You can't just ask for free accommodation and they're going to give it to you. And so essentially what we did is, you know, we thought back to that time that we were sitting on the beach in the Philippines and we're looking at all these hotels and we happened to be there.

Or, sorry, we happened to be there at peak season in February. And we knew that, you know, after doing a little bit of research, that July was still a very lovely time to go, but it was shoulder season. So, you know, there's all these hotels that, you know, aren't at capacity. I mean, we could fairly confidently say every single one of these five star hotels, I mean, all up and along the beach, are not at capacity. So essentially what we did is we put together a proposal which wasn't a typical proposal. It was fun, it showcased our personalities, it had some of our credentials, but for the most part it was just an irresistible offer. And that basically was, hey, look, we are.

Marketing experts. We've spent the last five combined years working for one of the world's leading marketing companies. We've developed these powerful marketing strategies that we believe will help you.

We have opened up applications for our services and we've sent this proposal to five five star hotels in your immediate vicinity. You have. This is like the short nuts and bolts of it, but we've opened up the application we get, we've sent this proposal to these five hotels. Application closes in three days. You essentially have three days to apply and then we'll review and let you know which hotel we've decided to work with. And of course, if we pick you, you know, all that you need to give in exchange is a free hotel room during our duration of our stay while we're supporting and helping your business grow. Along with spa services, free breakfast, transportation, any amenities, laundry.

So that we might properly evaluate your product and service and be able to.

We need full access. We need full access.

And so we kind of, you know, obviously turned the whole proposal idea on its head rather than, here's what I really want to do for you and I hope that you accept it to, hey, this is now a contest. And they're thinking to themselves, okay, you know, shit, I have a boutique hotel, I'm competing next to the Shangri La, which has a huge marketing budget and head office in Hong Kong. How can I compete with that? I don't want them getting a leg up by having these two marketing experts come and stay with them. And we have this empty room. Anyway. And so anyway, long story short, we didn't actually send the hotel. We were doing a. Sorry, we were doing a test. So we were like, let's send this to two hotels first and then if that doesn't work, we'll rejig the strategy. Because, you know, we didn't want to send it to everybody and then go, oh, shit, that didn't work. And then we're out of hotels. So we sent it to two, like Leanne said, the Shangri La and this smaller but beautiful Mediterranean style boutique resort right on the beach. The Shangri La and this other hotel were both extremely excited by being chosen to apply. The Shangri La unfortunately couldn't make our application deadline because head office was in Hong Kong and they needed to go through the proper channels of getting approval and basically got back to us and said, oh my God, we're not going to be able to apply by the time, like your three day deadline.

Jumping through your hoops. I love it.

Yeah, I remember it was actually a phone call and he was the marketing director for this region for Shangri La. And I remember talking to her and she's like, I love what you ladies are doing. And we didn't call it a proposal when we sent it in an email. We called it market research. We have, we've spent time doing market research for your area, in your area. And so already it's not like they're like, oh shit, I'm gonna open this thing and it's gonna be another proposal. We added a ton of massive value. And we did our homework as well. We researched the names of, like, we found out who is the marketing manager or the marketing director. Like phone calls, we got their names, we Got their email addresses. We followed up with phone calls after. And so we created this whole system. It was extremely strategic and it works. Sorry to hop in, Alex.

That's a great point. Yeah. Because the whole going back to whole, you know, Kern, Frank Kern's results in advance, like, we're like, if we send them a proposal, they're not going to open it. At least I wouldn't. I mean, God, we're all jaded marketers, right? So we're like, let's just send them results in advance. And so the first few pages of the proposal is just genuine information about, about social media and about the trends that are happening in the industry. And it's valuable.

Make your marketing valuable is make your marketing valuable. It's such a big part of it now. Yeah. So that powerful position, I love that people were jumping through hoops and this is a perfect segue because for years you've talked about, yeah, we should probably teach this strategy because people would probably love to learn from this. But over the past several years, since this all happened, this, you guys have both.

You work with clients, you've got your own business together, you do a lot of other work that has really been making other people, including yourselves, a lot of money. I mean, you run a tremendous mastermind and you're doing all this other stuff. And I know for a while revealing these secrets have been on the back burner and like, okay, we're going to get to that, et cetera. But just recently you came out with this beautiful brand and course and members area that everybody can go check out it once more. It'll be in the show notes baconrapbusiness.com freedify but I want to talk about now how you're making these tactics accessible for other people. I want to talk about maybe some of the things that have changed since you started doing it because the, you know, the, you know, social media, consulting, etc. Is more prevalent now than it was when you started to do it. And selfishly, remember I said this is a very selfish podcast. I'm going to in one month. So it may be way too early, but let's flesh this out because in one month my wife and I are going for a three week trip to Japan and Thailand. I don't. And we haven't booked everything and we haven't done all this and I don't know if there's an opportunity, but I'm that kind of guy who is like, this stuff sounds fun and I'm going to try to pull something off if I Can. So let's do that. Let's talk about a little bit about what free to fight and freedom hacking is all about. Let's talk about some of the things that have changed and some of the opportunities and then what the hell Brad should do to get free stuff.

I love it.

Cool.

I already have fun ideas for you, Brad, so I can start off and share. So the system that we've created is called the five Star Freedom system. And we designed this with people like us in mind. People who the reason why we've got like created our own businesses is so that we have freedom and we can live life and we can work from wherever and we can adventure. And so with that in mind, we're like, okay, how can we support fellow freedom hackers in this? You know, in the quest of really lifestyle design and designing. It's the how to of lifestyle design. That's what we like to say. So the program is divided into two main parts. So part one is every like actually going in and helping people select who. Where do you want to go? Where does it make sense? What kind of hotels should you approach? You know, we learned really quickly boutique hotels are a lot easier to work with versus large chains because it's more the Ma and PA style. They can make decisions in house. So we go through actually, what do you do? It's the sales process. How do you choose who you want to target? How do you put together your proposal? And then how do you actually go about the sales process and finalizing an agreement? And in that part we make it super, super easy. We have scripts for like, yeah, you have to pick up the phone. So. But we have scripts that you can read when you're on those phone calls.

Wait a minute. So millennials. You guys are millennials though. You can't millennials pick up phones. What?

That's actually what we say in one of our modules. We're like, sorry guys, but you're actually gonna have to like pick up the phone.

No texting.

I think there's one, maybe two, one main phone call and then a couple follow up phone calls.

It's easy. Yeah, it's easy.

Scripts because we know this is not normal anymore. And then there's the video. Sorry, not video. The email templates. And so basically the swipe copy. Do this, put in information here. We give you the exact proposal that we actually use and we show you like insert personal information here, insert personal information there. Yeah, this is our membership site. So Brad's pulling it up right now.

Anybody who's watching on the video gets extra special treatment because I'm screen sharing inside this big, beautiful membership site.

Yeah, it looks so nice. Yeah, we love. We spent a lot of time building the branding and coming up with the visuals to really match what we're helping people do. And so then phase two, or part two of the program is what we call, like, why? Like the part one is like, how do you get there? And part two is like, why they're gonna beg you to stay. And they really did beg us. They're like, please, can you stay? When are you coming back? We want you to stay longer. But basically part two is what do you do once you're at the hotel? Because it is a barter, it's an exchan. So they're giving you something which is free accommodation and the other things you negotiated and then what are we going to give them in exchange? So what we did is we spent two hours a day training, not doing it, but training their team on basically different marketing tactics. And we are. This is the proposal and it doesn't look like a traditional proposal. You'll see. This is where we infuse that it looks different, it's, it's eye catching, it's more engaging and we'd like to think.

It literally makes me want to just go somewhere tropical, but I live in San Diego, so.

Yeah, you have no excuse.

Yeah. But yeah. So anyways, part two, we actually tell you exactly what do you do once you're there. And you don't actually need to do a lot because you're training. So you're giving the team. We have different documents for you to fill in and give the team to fill in.

You're basically like a, like a free to five facilitator of our strategies. So we've done it all for you. And I think that's the big question that a lot of people get kind of going to. Like where you said things have changed. I think there's two really important key differences that I want to highlight with our system. We are not social media influencers. I mean, you can go follow us on Instagram if you want, but like, for us, we are marketers, like true blue marketers. And so although we use the word social media in our proposal, our marketing report, a little secret is that social media is actually a tiny part of what we help the hotel with. It's a buzzword. Hotels think that social media, everyone thinks. Who doesn't do what we do? Direct response marketing and online marketing. Social media is online marketing. Right. Social media is the Internet now Exactly. So if you were to send a report saying, you know, we're going to do this direct response marketing, they're going to go, huh, huh? Say what now? I don't know what that means. So we use social media as a buzzword because that's what people understand. And we do give some strategies that are sort of timeless on social media. But that's only one of our core strategies within the program. And so that's the first thing I think that we want to say is we know there are a lot of people out there and like, good on them who are exchanging free accommodation for representing their, the hotel's brand on their social media accounts. And if I had hundreds of thousands of followers, I would totally do the same thing. But we don't. A lot of people don't. And so this is the program for the out of the box thinker, the entrepreneur, the marketer, the freelancer, the coach, the consultant who has the time and the freedom to possibly go do this for a month, or maybe two weeks, or maybe six months, or maybe a year, whatever, but can take our strategies and run with them. Really. Social media is such a tiny, tiny, tiny part of it. I mean, if you have massive following, I would say use that as a bargaining chip in your proposal to say, hey, I have this following. But that's not what this is about.

Right? So a lot of the people listening to this, watching this. Well, you know, there's two types of people, people who don't, you know, have much marketing chops. And a lot of what's great is because I've been through a lot of. Part of your system is you don't have to know.

Much about marketing or whatever. Like you teach from the ground floor, the foundational levels, what they need to know. So somebody could come into this, like, they have no background in this, like we do, and they can still pull it off. But for.

Mom could do this. My mom can check her Facebook account, she can do this. Like, we give, we give you everything.

That's, that's awesome. But so then for people, you know, like myself, who do have these skills, what do you think the, what do you think the biggest leveraged activities right now that these people would probably want? Like if I just said, screw all the other things I'm doing, I'm just gonna go travel the world and freedom, hack my way to happiness.

What do you think are some of the things that they find the most value in right now? Like, social media is kind of a buzzword. It kind of gets you in the Door. But I mean, I've got like 1500 Instagram followers and nothing, you know, super major either. What do you think is the like, oh man, go do this. You'd be a rock star.

Well, this goes in to what we were talking about before we hopped on here. I'd say I like the idea ideas, but like centered around customer experience because anybody can, anybody can like pump a ton of money into ad spends and get people to a place, but it's about creating a really, really unique experience for people once they're actually at the resort. And that's when, you know, like the viral, viral loop comes in and the word of mouth marketing and all of these extra things that like, it adds exponential, exponential growth to your business. When some people, when somebody can go and see your hotel and they have this amazing experience, they're naturally going to share it on social media. So you can still find ways to leverage, you know, leverage social media, but doing it in ways that you don't need to pay for or people are.

You know, and it'll be from personal accounts and people are going to want to go back there and rebook again and bring their friends and refer. And so I think for you, Brad, because you're such a creative person that even if you just went to a resort, and here's the funny thing, we ended up actually consulting on a lot of our experience when we were at this resort above and beyond what we, you know, what we were actually there to do. And at the end I was like, I'm a luxury experience consultant because I really felt like there's so much value you can add when you're a customer and you're in that point of view and you're sharing your perspective on like, how can they wow and go above and beyond. So that's the very first thing that comes to mind.

That's awesome.

Yeah, I want to add to that too because I think, yeah, I think, I think you're so right, Leanne. Like this getting the yes is the easy part, to be honest, because I mean the process is really so no brainer that getting the yes is the easy part. And then the strategies that we share within the program are so like they're the baseline there. If you have absolutely no experience, you can come and just do what we give you, like get, you know, get the documents, pass along the documents, get the, like really just mapped out step by step. We'll do all that for you. However, our module 2 in the program is completely dedicated towards customizing the experience for your unique Skills, assets and experience. Because here's the deal. We realize that we all have unique skills and unique experiences that we can, that are valuable, right? And we just tend to not think like that if we're not entrepreneurs. But most entrepreneurs can kind of be like, all right, I can make a quick buck if I needed to, right. And how can I add a value on what I can show or teach? And so we get, we really help the consumers of the product say, okay, look, if you're a yoga instructor, a web designer, a marketer, a writer, a photographer, a videographer, if you have a drone, I mean, God, think of what you can add as like a value add to your proposal. And we've had people buy our product or use our product that buy it for the sales part because they're like, you know what? I love all your, all your strategies, but I want to take it and kind of change my offer a little bit because I have a health blog and I want to use that as the bartering chip. It's like, go for it.

That's killer.

And to add to your question, because you said, what can people do now? I do think it's really focusing on the customer experience. Again, getting there is the easy part. And then once you're there, it's so easy to recognize little things that people can be doing better in terms of getting their users to follow up, getting their users to leave more reviews, getting their users to come back again for a second stay, which I think is something that never really happens. And I think local video marketing is huge. That's one of our core strategies in the program is, you know, when you're in the States, targeting, you know, trying to put up video content on YouTube, targeting English speaking, an English speaking demographic with English ads. You're getting lost in the noise. Right? But what a lot of people don't do is put English content at popular destinations. I should say what, what a lot less people do is market locally in those, in those destinations where they're, where they're speaking, where they visitors speak English. But the local businesses and marketers aren't necessarily quite figured that out yet.

I love that.

I have a couple other ideas for you, Brad. Can I share really quick? Because I'm fine.

You know how I hate ideas.

These are specific for you because I could totally see you, like, even if you're at these resorts, I'm not sure if you, like, you can, you can choose places that we're not booked yet.

I mean, our flights are booked, but our hotels are not.

So you could choose resorts that are more catered to business travelers. And you could interview, have a podcast, have a show there, but be down by the pool and have their events coordinator there talking about what's the process that they do to create a really unique experience for business groups that come in. And so you could actually choose hotels, look at who's your market reach for this podcast and then choose hotels that you know you have their ideal customers and then leverage this podcast for that. I totally see you sitting by the pool, drinking a margarita in Thailand talking about how this could be an amazing place for a team retreat or how to.

Or an ideation intensive.

Exactly. I was gonna say an incubator and something else too that just came to mind. It's like looking at different ideas. How can like imagine we all, most people use Expedia or Hotels.com to make a reservation. How incredible and cool would it be if you actually got an email directly from the hotel or a phone call like, hey Brad, we just saw that you that you booked online. We're excited for you to come. Are there any little extras that we can do for you? Like really taking the experience to the next level and coaching these one, leveraging your podcast, I'd say for sure leverage your podcast and your network and coming up with really fun ideas. So anyway, super cool now.

So what about for it just made me think of something else. And maybe you talk about this in here, maybe you don't.

Traveling. This is super cool to say, I'm going to go around the world, I'm going to go to these amazing places. But realistically, not everybody has as much freedom in their life as we do to just go do that and the desire to just like go travel. I'm going to go spend a month somewhere. What can people or can people use a lot of the strategies here to do this stuff in their home city like San Diego is actually pretty relatively easy because it's a tourist destination. But what if somebody lives in like Chicago or New York or St. Louis or Dallas or something like that? Can they use a lot of the same strategies to where they can get some of this stuff where it doesn't involve having to travel, but they can actually create a really real business out of it using a lot of the same principles?

That's a good question. I would say of course it would still work. Would it be as effective? Probably not.

Or fun?

I mean. Yeah.

Or fun.

Let's be honest, you don't want to travel what you call yourself an entrepreneur. But I do think like the program. And because it's such a unique opportunity, I think, you know, when you look at the marketing environment and the level of market success, sophistication for tourism in North America, it's just so much higher. Right. And so I'm not saying that it wouldn't work. We've never tried it in a North American hotel. I think that there's definitely some boutique hotels that would absolutely go for it. I just think it's a little bit more, little bit more of proving the value that you would bring given that like just imagine, right, you're going to a hotel in the Philippines or the Maldives or South America or somewhere where just by the sheer fact that you speak and write in fluent English is a massive benefit to their marketing team. Right. Again, not saying it wouldn't work in the U.S. in fact, that's a challenge for anyone listening. If you use our program in the U.S. let us know. We'd love to talk to you about it. But yeah, I think, you know, I think it's worth a try.

Absolutely. Well, it just makes like my, what I love about this kind of stuff is it makes my brain go crazy with like, what if, what if, what if. That's what we love about you. Right. And it's almost a. So I just started thinking just domestically like, and it goes with the barter, it goes with the positioning and taking these skill sets to offer something valuable. Like and I know with some stuff like this, and one of the things that makes it work is you're dealing with companies who have excess unsold inventory. So it doesn't really cost them anything like this. That place, that room was probably going to go empty anyway. So it's not like you're asking them to write you a big check, right? It's just like, well, nobody's going to be in there, we'll give it to you. So that makes it more of a no brainer. It kind of makes me think about, you know, what if you're in a bigger city or whatever and maybe there's a development, maybe there's a really nice condo or apartment building or whatever and you have these skill sets and you offered it like, listen, let me live for free for a year or six months or whatever and I'm going to do all this stuff, I'm going to do all your social media, I'm going to do, you know, create a better customer experience. I love the idea of trying to hack your way through life and adding value but extracting it at the same time. It's not Trying to get a bunch of stuff for free, but it's just realizing that there's a different way. There's nine ways to skin that cat, right? And it's most people are only aware of one. So.

Yeah, I love that. Like, I want to say, because that's exactly it. Like, you know, sometimes I think there's a negative connotation with hat with the word hack. Like, oh, you just want everything for free and you know, you're just, you're scammy or you're, you know, with, with all the different ways that there's hacks. And I think what the way to look at it, at it is our whole mission and our whole, you know, like Leanne said, we started this business because our value, our number one value is freedom and adventure. And for us, it was all about finding unconventional shortcuts to unforgettable experiences. And that's truly like, we do this. And so like when you say, can you do this locally? I'm kind of like, yeah, I guess. But like, for me, I'm like, no, it's all about like having your toes in the sand for 30 days straight. How many times do you get to experience that in your lifetime? And you know, it's all about, it's all about those shortcuts to having those experiences because you're gonna die. And who cares how much money you have in your frickin bank account or where you live in the grand scheme of things, you want to have those memories and feel like, wow, I've had a life of unforgettable experiences and this is the fuel to the freedom. We say that a lot, but I think that that's our whole mission is to help people fuel the freedom in their lives and however that looks to them. For us, travel is a huge part of that. And the value we add is there. Our hotel was like, do you have to leave?

Can you stay?

When can you come back? They still ask us to come back and we're just like, geez, like, talk about, I mean, like adding value.

Talk about some really good problems. Like, yeah, I don't know, like, maybe.

We can come back.

Seriously though, we're like, oh, we're just so busy. But it really is. I mean, this whole program is all about delivering value first. And once you're there, you can't help but see the ways that you can have help hotels improve. I mean, how many times just as a traveler are you in a hotel and you're like, man, they could be doing that way better, you know, and it's just that's how we tend to think as entrepreneurs. And the way that we present the information is it's done in a way where at the end of it, you literally have like a package of resources and documents that you pass over to the hotel. So, like, they have this playbook of everything you've done so that you're not just leaving value in those 30 days, you're actually leaving them with a training manual that they can give to you to their next marketing manager or whomever.

Yeah. You know, this also makes me think of somebody I need to introduce you to. Have I talked to you guys about Justin Ross Lee?

No.

Yes, you. Yes. When we asked you about someone to interview for our podcast.

Did I make the intro?

I think you just gave. I think you just gave him. You said his name and then I think you said, ask us if we want the intro.

Oh. So here's why I brought this up. So Justin Ross Lee.

Also known from the New York Post, is the ego that ate New York. And he wrote a book called don't you know who I think I am? Confessions of a first class asshole. And he's coined the term. He is a Jewish man, so you can say this, but he coined the term Jew Jetting. He's like, I am a Jew Jetter. He basically is a enormous travel hacker, but he's hilarious. He is a complete asshole, but he is a. He is a great guy and very, very entertaining. And he's kind of done this. The reason I bring him up again, because, you know, he's made a book, viral videos, all this other stuff about the way he travel hacks, and he really, he does some stuff that's a little, or, you know, borderline highly unethical.

Like, or not borderline highly unethical, depending.

On what you say, but hilarious nonetheless. However, what is genius about, and he started to allude to it on our show together, was that because he's made this name for himself. Like, let me give you a quick example. And this has nothing to do with your strategies, but he's made it a habit of if he checks into a five star hotel, he knows exactly what to complain about, specifically to get upgrades, free stays and all this other stuff. Because he's got this eye to detail that's like second to none. Because he's going to try to get something out of the hotels. He's like, they're in the business of screwing you. I'm going to screw them back. Same thing with airlines. However, this has now led to him partnering with airlines and hotels, kind of as a customer experience consultant because he goes, listen, I like five star everything. And I'm the guy who's looking for all the ways that I can call you on your crap so I can get free stuff. They're now paying him for consulting to make sure that they don't screw up. And he's turned what was like this kind of crazy travel hacking thing into this amazing five star lifestyle where he just gets paid to go show off, have the most amazing life ever. So he's travel hacked in a complete, completely different way. And I'll link for anybody listening, I'll link to that, that episode on this show note. But yeah, I want to make the introduction because I think it would be hilarious for you guys to kind of share and collaborate. You never know what it'll turn into. Additionally, you never know. Maybe he could be a great affiliate for your program for the people who can't pull off what he's doing.

I love that he's a luxury experience consultant.

100%. I knew it started off as a hacker and ended up a luxury experience consultant.

But I like. Yeah, I think it's so.

There's so many people doing it. I think that's, that's the thing. And finding. Finding the what? The way that it works for you.

Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to kind of thinking about some ways I can do this. I mean, I'll only be in Thailand for a couple weeks and it's not the exact same thing.

Thing.

Or Japan for a week, Thailand for a couple weeks. But I'm looking forward to see what I can do. And one of the reasons I can afford to do this, you girls can afford to take any vacation you want and all this stuff. But there is this cool satisfaction of knowing that you bucked convention. And you're like, I talked about this when you guys interviewed me. I hacked the exotic car market. I drove for four years an Audi R8 for really the price of a Honda Accord. And, and it's because I found a way to rent it out and do all this other stuff and it was amazing. And I had way more fun driving the car and telling the story because I knew that I hacked my way into it and I recently sold that car, so hooray for me. But the things that you guys are doing for anybody out there who's looking for, it's not a business opportunity, it's an adventure opportunity is what I see it as. Like it, the fact that you guys have laid out beautifully, methodically what You've done. This is not for somebody who's sitting around struggling like, oh, man. I just want a new job. I want to find a way to make a few bucks online. This is for somebody who's like, I want to have an unconventionally awesome life, and there's ways to do it. And the fact that very few people are qualified to teach this. You guys are tremendously qualified.

I see this as, just as I said, as a ticket to a potential adventure that I think everybody should check it out. And I love it. So love that you love it. Yeah. Love it, love it. Now, I have got a fun little surprise for y'.

All.

So remember. And by the way, I just totally realized this while we were talking on this. So how long have we known each other? What year was it?

2010. And we met in Austin.

Okay, you ready for me to share my screen?

Oh, gosh.

What are you doing?

Something came up on Facebook.

Memories.

It just so happens that the day we met was eight years ago today.

Oh, my gosh.

Look at this. This was traffic conversion.

Look at Zach and David. Oh, my gosh.

That is crazy.

Awesome. Now I don't think Leanne's in this picture. Or at least this. Oh, my God, look at this. This was literally 2010.

Oh, my God.

And we were out.

Is that Brad Howard?

Yeah, that is Brad Howard in the back. That is Zach and Devin. Look at this. This is me and Mike. Feel same.

Oh, my God.

We were wearing really similar shirts. I gotta send him this. Look. This was that night that we went out. So this was the night I met Vishen.

Yep.

And you and I remember this night like it was yesterday. And it is funny.

Today is our eight year friendiversary. Oh, my gosh.

Eight year friendiversary. We are recording this amazing interview.

I love it.

How awesome is that? Yeah, I was pretty geeked up. I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe I got to share that.

What are the ads? Facebook. Thank you for tracking all of our friendships.

Honestly, Facebook, I can't. I do a lot of things which, you know, we all have busy lives and, like, thank God for Facebook. It reminds me of all the cool things I've done. I need to continue to post on Facebook just so I can be reminded.

I need to keep. I need to continue to look on those memories because it always shows, like, one memory of something you posted, like, a year ago, but then you click that. More memories, and it shows more from this day.

Yeah.

I'm just grateful. I'm just grateful we've all been friends like this for eight years and I'm looking forward to many more and some cool adventures. Hope to see you both in San Diego sometime soon. So we're wrapping up now. Unless there's anything else you guys want to drop, I'm going to tell everybody to check out baconratbusiness.com FreeDefy F R E E D I F Y and you can go check out the five Star Freedom System. I'm going to put all the links to follow you guys. Are there any other parting words you'd like to say to my audience?

And no, Just thought if anyone does end up going and grabbing the system, write us back. Let us know that you found out about it from Brad and we'll send over our Freedom Hackers Guide to Adventure, which is like our 70 page travel tips, shortcut hacks for how we stay productive on the road, stay fit on the road, stay, you know, taking care of her beauty and our hair on the road.

Sexy on the road.

Yeah, it's all of our tips, so we'll make sure to send that over as a little bonus. But no, just thank you so much. We love your podcast and we're so excited that we're finally on it. I love that you said the sizzle. What was the sizzle part at the beginning?

It's not an episode, it's an episodal.

I used to work at the Keg Steakhouse and they always used to say, you don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle. I just love that. So thank you.

Absolutely. And Leanne, thank you. And I can't wait for our next adventure. For everybody else watching or listening to this on YouTube, Facebook or iTunes or podcasts, thank you so much for tuning in every single week. If you're not a subscriber, hit subscribe. And at any point, if you want to send me an email, you can always send that over to AskBradaconrapped business.com and let me know what's on your mind. Let me know if you have any suggestions of topics that you think I should cover. And if you would like to explore being a guest on the show, you can email me and let me know why. Keep in mind, as I said, it's a very selfish podcast. I don't accept. Everybody make it sizzle. Make your pitch. Like, this is why Brad would want to interview me because he could really learn something that he probably doesn't know and I turn down way more guest requests than I get. But I love talking to some amazing people like the two ladies on the show right now. But Leanne, Alex, thank you so much for making my Friday our pleasure.

Thank you for having us.

Absolutely. And we will see you guys on the next episode. Talk soon.