The Traveling Dutchman, Jasper Ribbers on the Different Hunger Podcast

hello everyone i'm super excited to introduce today's podcast guest um the traveling dutchman jasper rivers uh jasper's a world traveler entrepreneur and author of his brand new book get paid for your pad super excited to have them on the show so let's go ahead and get started all right hello everyone i'm here with my buddy jasper rivers

aka the traveling dutchman very excited to have him on today this is actually take four we've had some technical difficulties but we're finally up and running jasper thanks for being here and thanks for being so patient yeah you're welcome matt thanks for having me on the show awesome so uh jasper why don't you go ahead and uh

tell tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself and uh your website the traveling dutchman and uh just kind of give us um you know some more information into your background and your story sure so i grew up in the netherlands and uh sort of followed the sort of standard path early in my life went to

high school went to university got a job and kind of always felt like i wanted to do something different but didn't really know what it was so you know um i figured i'd just try and be successful in my career and i got a finance job in amsterdam trading stocks and options did it for about five years

then decided i was ready for a new challenge and i moved to chicago working for the same firm and uh did that about one year or so and then uh i finally decided that i uh i didn't really wanna spend my whole life working in the office looking at a bunch of flat screens and uh made the

decision to uh to give it all up and i started traveling and that's what i've been doing since awesome so you know i'm guessing you are in a pretty financially stable job uh you know you're in finance that's always well paying so what made you kind of take that giant leap of you know a secure stable job

stable income um to just travel the world i mean it seems like a pretty substantial risk there so kind of walk us through that what really motivated you to do that well my biggest motivation was that the the thought of just kind of living my life without ever trying to to do what i really wanted and having

regrets later on in life that fault like seemed so horrible to me that it was almost like i didn't have an option you know i was i was 32 at the time and i was pretty sure that if i if i didn't take a chance right now that it was gonna only get harder and harder to to

do it later on in life you know once once you settle down and you know have family and stuff obviously it becomes uh much more difficult than if you're uh if you're just by yourself it was really i i just didn't want to live with the idea of not ever having tried to to really just pursue my

dream and my fashion and so what made you decide on travel um you know why not stay wherever you were and kind of you know maybe just open up your own business or i don't know uh sail around a lake near you or something like that what was it about travel that excited you and motivated you as

well i just wanted to experience what it would be like to have the ultimate freedom so i didn't want to be bound to a certain location i just wanted to know what it was like to be able to go wherever i wanted to do whatever i want and to be with whatever whoever i wanted so yeah it's

kind of like this this adventurous spontaneous sort of lifestyle that i i just wanted to know what it was like and deep down inside i felt like that that's what i wanted you know to have that freedom very cool and so i'm guessing you initially funded your travels um you know from your previous job um so is

that the case how did you initially uh you know fund your travels and um all that good yeah so i i did save up some money and then in the first few years i uh um i i kind of just used my savings um i had an apartment in amsterdam that i rented out in the long term

as well so that gave me a little bit of extra money but uh i i i did start uh looking into you know money and making money online from from the day i started traveling you know i remember literally googling how to make money online when i was in uh in my first destination which was which was

brazil so yeah i tried all sorts of things and you know most of thing most of these things didn't work and you know some work for a little bit and you know some were a little bit more successful but uh but yeah i definitely was in a in a fairly comfortable position where i i had my house

and i did have some savings behind as well and so um i listened to uh another interview you did and you talked about one way in which uh you made money in brazil which i thought was absolutely hilarious could you could you share that with our listeners yeah so they're uh in brazil brazil is a big country

and and there were all these keywords um that millions of people were searching for every every month in google and uh you know these were some some governmental websites that a lot of people had to use for like text purposes and stuff and um so i bought a bunch of domain names and uh where the url was

equal to the keyword and then i i hired somebody to write some portuguese content on the site and basically just optimized the whole website for this one keyword and then i would put google adsense on the website to monetize it and uh well i think the particular case that you're referring to is that at some point the

government actually ran a google adwords campaign so the website my website they were advertising on my website to get people to go to the the real website which was the website that we were searching for in the first place so it was uh it was a bit of a uh you know a gray area that i was

operating in and you know at that time i was i was very new to the internet and you know i i literally was just trying to figure out like how everything worked and just it seemed like like uh i found i felt like i had found like a little loophole or something but uh obviously google wasn't very

happy with what i was doing so they uh yeah it didn't take very long until they kept me off yeah that's that's hilarious and just a disclaimer to all of our listeners probably you know maybe not the most sustainable business but definitely um you know whatever works at the time i guess but uh awesome so um how

do you uh make your living now and uh you know what it kind of talk us through um what you've got going on currently yeah so about two years ago i i found this uh this apartment rental website called airbnb and um i was at the time i was running out of my house long term but i

wasn't very happy with with the return and also i didn't like the fact that i couldn't stay in my own apartment when i was back in amsterdam so i figured i'll give airbnb a try and it was a big success from the get-go um within a few months i was uh i had like almost 100 occupancy and

i was able to raise prices quite a bit and until the point where i was kind of putting uh putting in like a full-time income so i kind of abandoned everything else i was doing and just really started focusing on you know how do i how do i do this airbnb thing uh how do i perfectionize it

how do i optimize my listing you know and as i was doing that like i was able to raise my prices even further and then you know it was such a revelation to me you know i was making two and a half to three times as much as when i was renting it out in the long term

and um so that's basically what i've been uh drawing my income from for the last uh in which you tell readers uh how to do just that and uh so could you give us a quick kind of rundown of your book and uh also just you know any advice in case any of uh our listeners or anyone

else is looking to rent out their own apartments and make their own income through uh doing yeah absolutely so i i came up with the idea to write this book uh because i noticed that a lot of people didn't know what airbnb was and secondly i noticed that a lot of hosts were not making the best out

of their listing a lot of hosts are you know they were just making a lot of mistakes and and not doing uh the things that you need to do in order to be successful so i started writing my thoughts down and i just figured i wanted to to write like the ultimate resource on airbnb because i couldn't

really find anything good online at the time there were some websites and there was a couple books but they they didn't really cover all the different aspects and they were more like a sort of a how-to guide like how to create a listing not so much as how to perfectionize and optimize it so that was really my

goal to create the ultimate airbnb resource and you know it talks about pretty much everything you need to know uh when running your airbnb listing as well as countless examples and templates that you can use for example for communicating with your guests you know i i have i have a system in place where i send out certain

emails to my guests like before a couple weeks before arrival and then like a few days before arrival during your stay after their stay and um so uh people who buy the book and can really just kind of copy paste all those templates and you know base their own emails on on based on that also i wrote

a pretty large guidebook that contains all the information that my guests will need when staying at my house you know not just the technical stuff like how to turn on the radiator how to how does the oven work and you know the wi-fi and stuff like that but also you know what are the what are good places

to go for drinks what are good places to go to eat you know what are my my own favorite uh local spots and um so that comes along with the book as well so people can just kind of use that as a base for for their own um and just to give you a few uh fewer insights

into the book it talks about how to prepare your house for arrival for of of guests you know how do you manage like the check-in process how do you manage like cleaning how do you communicate with guests before they arrive which is really important um a lot about pricing pricing is one of the more complicated aspects of

running an airbnb listing and um it also talks about how to get high up in the search rankings on within airbnb as airbnb it kind of has like a mini google you know where if you search for a place in a certain city it will show a first page with a bunch of listings and a second and

a third page and as we all know in google being on the first page is a very big advantage over being on any of the other pages and you know same is true for airbnb so but in general it just covers all right so jasper thank thanks for uh that awesome rundown of your book um could you

also talk to us about the traveling dutchman which is uh your website yeah absolutely um so a few years back uh i was i was traveling a lot and you know a lot of my friends and family were always asking me questions like where are you where are you gonna go what are you gonna do there and

i kind of got a little tired of constantly having to update everyone so i thought you know what why don't i just create a travel blog so i just i just started off with a few personal stories about the things i've been doing and and then i i was just having a lot of fun with it so

you know i started expanding a little bit i actually wrote a uh a travel book um that people can download for free my website but um yeah really just i was just doing it for fun you know i wasn't really planning on like making any money with it but uh this com this coming useful uh you know

when i travel i get i get offered like sponsored trips and free hotel rooms and stuff like that so you know it has some some nice perks uh that come along with it but essentially it was just kind of uh you know a fun thing for me to do and kind of share my adventures with very cool

family friends and later with generated quite a community website very cool to see that as well um could you also talk about how kind of how travel has helped kind of create a sense of that community and you know kind of create relationships with people from all over the world for example uh you're from the netherlands and

here i am skyping with you um although you are currently in la but um you know it's cool just kind of how travel as well as creating your own website or entrepreneurial ventures just kind of opened so many doors so could you just kind of expand on that a bit yeah absolutely i mean um you know before

i started traveling i i had one sort of fear i i had doubts about would i be able to would i be able to travel by myself would i get lonely or you know would i meet people and uh it's just being mind-blowing to see how many people you meet when you travel by yourself you know so

i still i've met so many people over the last four years uh during my travels yep and often you meet people who are sort of in the same niche or sort of doing a similar thing right um you know people who are location independent uh these days it's you know it's possible to run any type of business

from your laptop from anywhere in the world and you start building up a whole network of of like-minded people and over the last few years what i would often do is i would get in touch with uh with some people and see if they were up to up to uh you know sharing like an accommodation or something

somewhere and uh and that's really been inspiring you know to just sort of camp out somewhere for a month with a bunch of fellow entrepreneurs that's been uh extremely inspiring and and also a lot of fun so yeah and you know through the blog i also if you have a place on the net where people can find

you right so i often get like emails from people who are either doing something similar or who have questions and you know like through my facebook page people can see where where i am so i often get questions and from people who happen to be in the location where awesome and uh as well since i do follow

your blog i am aware of some of the awesome places you've been uh for example indonesia australia uh all over europe etc um so could you kind of walk us through i guess a typical day um in the life of the traveling dutchman well it's interesting because typical days don't really exist for me to be honest you

know it just really depends on where i am but typically i i wake up like most people do i uh i have breakfast and then usually what i do is i just pull out my laptop um check my emails and uh sort of schedule the rest of my day but uh you know it's one thing i'll i'll

say um it's something that i really had to get used to you know if you're used to having a like a nine-to-five job and you have a boss who tells you what to do um it's kind of hard to transform into a person who uh works for himself and has to you have to motivate yourself and tell

yourself what to do especially in the beginning i wasn't really being a very sort of strict boss with myself so which resulted in me becoming uh kind of lazy so that's actually been uh been a bit of a struggle for me to sort of create a new sort of discipline for myself to to be to be to

be productive and i've gotten a lot better at this but that's basically how i start my day i i just write down like a bunch of things that i want to get done during the day and then i i won't stop so yeah definitely imagine so that way uh tough to you know transform my best job into

you know pretty much being able to do whatever you want so great advice uh for sure so i'm back to your traveling a little bit um could you kind of talk about some of the maybe the top one or two places you've been and i might i'm sure it's hard to to narrow it down but yeah i

mean i can give you some of my favorite uh places i'd say uh brazil is probably my favorite country i've actually wrote a blog post on this uh that explains why but it's mostly because there's just such a positive vibe in in brazil and for some reason when i land in brazil i kind of feel like i'm

coming home you know it's a it's a weird feeling uh it's hard to sort of describe and pinpoint why but but it's definitely like uh there's an attitude where where people kind of trying to feel things in the positive light and people are tend to be quite expressive and you know extrovert and outgoing and you know that's

something that i really enjoy just being being around people with positive energy another country that i really like is the philippines it's not as well known as some of the other countries in south east asia and uh i'm not sure why actually because in my opinion it's one of the best travel destinations in asia you know it

has a lot of things going for it first of all everyone speaks english so you can actually communicate with with locals which make makes it much easier to sort of go off the beaten path secondly it's one of the most beautiful countries i've ever seen you know it's compiled of over 7 000 islands and it just seems

wherever you go in the philippines you're never far away from the from like a a beautiful remote uh white sand beach with tropical crystal clear waters and um you know it's it's a it's also a great place to go scuba diving and snorkeling something that i really enjoy plus just like in brazil in in the philippines as

well like people seem to have this general positive attitude to life you know and and that's really admirable especially specifically given that it's actually kind of a you know it's not one of the richest countries in the world you know a lot of people have to get by on on not very much money and then they also

get hit by these typhoons and and natural disasters on the on a pretty regular basis uh last year uh and i think it was in october november a pretty big one hit and destroyed like you know hundreds of thousands of houses and it actually just completely destroyed a little island that i have recently been and just to

see how yeah how quickly definitely need to get over there as soon as i can so um so jasper it does seem like you're someone who is living the dream per se you know you travel the world pretty much go wherever you want get paid while you're doing it is achieving that kind of lifestyle possible or is

it just a pipe dream or you did you just happen to win the lottery or something like that you know could you kind of speak to that a bit for people who do have you know hopes and aspirations to travel the world um and hopefully you know run a business while doing so yeah absolutely um so i

saw i was in a somewhat fortunate position to to have quite a little savings but during my journey in the last four years one thing that i've realized is that you definitely do not have to have a lot of money behind you if you want to change your lifestyle so i've met all these people who were just

running like small businesses online you know making a couple thousand dollars uh well while they travel and traveling also doesn't have to be that expensive you know you have all these uh platforms these days where you can you can find like really cheap accommodation you know for example there's there's house sitting websites like housesitting.com is is one

of them how sitters.com it is i think where you can basically just look after somebody's house while while they are away you know so you basically stay for free and then there's places like couchsurfing um and then also you gotta realize that if you go to a low a lower cost country you know like in in central

america or in asia that's countries where you can hire where you can rent an apartment for a couple hundred dollars a month so you know i i know a lot of people who go out of the sort of the corporate world and started working in their own business while spending maybe like you know a thousand dollars a

month so even if you have you know twelve thousand dollars in savings you can you can get by for for maybe like up to a year while you're working your business and from what i've seen is if you are passionate about something and you are willing to put in the effort it it doesn't take much more than

like six to twelve months to actually build up you know a base income so yeah i'm not saying like everyone should just immediately quit their jobs and you know and and start uh and start traveling and trying you know and starting their their online business i mean it's definitely good to sort of prepare um while you're still

working and i know a lot of people who do that as well you know um i know people who have started building their business before they quit their jobs just in the evenings and in the weekends so that when they quit they already have uh you know a business going so and you know another option would be

to for example just moving with your family for six months you know and just really minimize cost while while you get your stuff going great so i know i definitely don't really need to hire hundreds of thousands of dollars for audience thank you if you want to change your lifestyle and sort of 24 year olds which is

the primary audience so do you have any other kind of advice for that demographic that you would offer to not necessarily travel the world but just to kind of take the necessary steps to begin living a lifestyle that you know we've always dreamed of or something we're passionate about which may be world travel maybe starting a business

or something like that so anything there well i'd say the first thing is um make sure you know what you want you know because because that's the first step like people have have these dreams and you know but but really the thing is i didn't start figuring out what i really wanted until i was like 32 right

and if somebody maybe if somebody had told me at the younger age like hey you know what are you doing like is this really what you want you know it it's not that easy to find out what you want i mean the way that i did it is just by literally just started traveling and and you know

and see how that goes and then i ended up liking it and and then i ended up getting into writing you know for my blog and then i wrote a book and and then it turned out that i was really enjoying myself you know during that process so so now i know that writing a book is something

that i really enjoy you know i'm building like products around it and sort of teaching people how to do things that's uh that turned out to be a passion of mine but i didn't know that four years ago so you know it's hard to figure out what you want but um it's definitely worth spending a little time

or maybe taking some time off go you know hang out in a in a remote location for a couple of weeks or a month or so and and just really try to figure out what it is that you're passionate about because you know looking back i think i i'm pretty sure the uh the ingredients for being successful

starts with doing something that you're really passionate about because you know being an entrepreneur is is living with ups and downs you know like i think on average 80 percent of businesses started will feel you know within a year or two and uh i know that this this sounds like not the most uh promising prospect but but

but i've i've come to the conclusion that this is actually something you should embrace because by failing you learn and almost everyone you talk to who's successful they all have all these like failure stories and it's just it's just part of the process you know so my uh my advice would be like try to figure out what

you want to focus on something that you're passionate about then go ahead and and try it and don't be afraid to fail and and don't uh get discouraged by by failure because the road is gonna it's not gonna be straight line to the top it's gonna be full of like ups and downs and i think how you

uh how you manage the the valleys you know the dark times when when you doubting yourself and you know you're you're doubting your decisions and you really don't know if uh yeah you still want to do it awesome and uh you manage those at the waiting room the next question um when i went to australia for uh

study abroad uh last fall um aside from it being absolutely gorgeous and beautiful waters and awesome funny accents um you know i really learned a lot about myself um and i did have a lot of time to myself um so could you kind of speak to what travel um not only does for you in terms of visiting

amazing places but uh yeah how does it kind of develop who you are as a person and you know what have you learned from travel in that uh regard yeah it's a good question and you know i think everyone should at some point in their life travel by themselves for a while because it's really amazing like what

happens when when you do that you know i think when you're living in in the in current society we are influenced a lot by the people around us our families our friends and when you're by yourself everyone who you meet um will will judge you on who you are at that time right nobody knows anything about you

about your history about what you do whatsoever so people really judge you on on their impression from you in just maybe like a few minutes or so and that's that makes a great situation for reflecting yourself thinking about who you are what you want and making changes because when you try to make changes in an environment where

everybody knows you people always have a tendency to sort of like stop you people kind of want you to be that person that they know and when you try to change something you will get a lot of negative feedback because people just don't like that right so that's the first thing i'll say is like when you're by

yourself you can you can really just be whoever you want and no one's gonna say anything and no one's gonna like try and stop you so that's why i think one of the main reasons why traveling by yourself is so good and you know that i mean i can talk about this for for like an hour or

so just a single question because obviously also it just really completely opens up your mind you know you see that things aren't the thing the way things are back home that's not necessarily what's normal you know because in other countries it could be completely different so that's another big realization that uh you you start seeing things in

perspective and also i mean one of the things that travel did to me was that i i started realizing that uh you know back where i'm from i'm i'm we're pretty fortunate and you know you guys here in the us are i think are pretty fortunate well to grow up in a country where you know you have

quite a lot of opportunity and and most people are pretty well off and then when you uh you know when you go to some countries where that's not necessarily the norm and you see how people get by um and just try to make the best out of it with very few resources it it kind of it kind

of um it made me complain a lot less about about you know sort of third world problem first world problems right it's just uh i i caught myself complaining about things and then i would think you know back to the experience that i've had in in like third world countries and the people that i've met there and

like how you know how they were like how much effort they put into to make the best out of or very little and i would just feel really embarrassed you know i feel bad i would i'd be like why am i complaining about this you know this is just something minor that really doesn't affect yeah i know

i couldn't agree more so it's also very very very inspiring hours talking about to see how that amazing benefits travel who are some of your most inspirational uh some of your most inspirational resources whether it be maybe a book maybe it be an author or other entrepreneurs um so you know some of our viewers are looking to

kind of you know figure out some of the things that we've discussed today um who would you send them to and uh you know who's kind of shaped your ideals i guess well let me mention a few a few resources for me it all started by reading the four hour work week which i'm sure you'll you'll know

that one but uh you know for those who uh who haven't read it that's definitely uh one of the first books i would read by uh by tim ferriss um in terms of business there's a friend of mine his name is jesse krieger he runs a business in a weekend program and he's really helped me to find

sort of my my passions he he wrote a book lifestyle entrepreneur and it covers uh it kind of helps you define like what you want to do and how to build a business around that so i think that that's a really good resource for for people who are looking to start uh a business um and then i

would also recommend people to to listen to some podcasts you know and a few goods one out there are um smart passive income podcast by pat thin um and then tim ferriss actually has a podcast as well and i think by by listening to these podcasts you kind of get into the mind the right mindset you know

you you you kind of uh uh you start understanding what it takes to to run something successfully online and um yeah so let's see what else um one course that i can recommend if people are looking to start a blog there's a course called how to start a blog that matters it's by corporate bar who's a very

successful uh online person um so that's that's something that people could uh could check out and then i've also read a lot of sort of self improvement books that have really helped me so let me name a few of them um uh the power of habit is a great book for people who want us awesome several of

those in our lives been fortunate to read and uh definitely life-changing especially for our work great books as well seems like a win of lifestyle entrepreneurship that that's kind of how they got their start so it's very cool and um amazing amazing book so thanks a lot for coming on to uh the podcast today jasper it's been

super awesome very very helpful and you know i'm ready to get out there and take on the take on the world as i'm sure our listeners are as well um so if anyone wanted to contact you or follow along with your travels and uh you know read your book could you tell us where we could reach you

at and stuff like that yeah absolutely so for those who are interested in potentially renting out their house in airbnb you can go to getpaidforyourpad.com and we'll we'll send you the prologue the introduction and the first chapter of the book for free along with a three-part email training course so if you're interested in doing that then i

think that's a really good start big thanks to jasper rivers the traveling dutchman for coming on to today's podcast