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Freedom lifestyle with Sam Laliberte
130 Plays2 years ago
In today’s episode Vasilis meets Sam Laliberte to talk about her podcast - The Freedom Lifestyle. We learn about what it means to be a digital nomad, and about her secrets for balancing podcasting with her personal life.
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Samantha Laliberte social handles at https://lnkfi.re/sam-laliberte
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Episode's page https://podcast.changemakerz.org/sam-laliberte
Produced by Vasilis Skarleas
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Transcript
Introduction to Changemaker-Z and guest speaker
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello everyone, I'm Kennedy. And I'm Vasilis. We run Changemaker-Z, a student-run initiative that aims to empower, educate, and connect in zeros interested in entrepreneurship. We interview teenagers with impactful projects and create resources to help you change the world. If they can't do it, so can he.
00:00:23
Speaker
On this podcast, we discuss the logistics of creating different types of projects with Jin Ziers who have already done it. We will leave our social media and website information in the description.
00:00:47
Speaker
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of the Jan Zerterise Podcast. We're so excited for today's episode. Soon with us today is Sam the Liberty, the host of the Freedom Lifestyle. What's your free podcast? Today, we're talking about designing your dream life and unlocking your own version of the Freedom Lifestyle. Sam, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
00:01:13
Speaker
I'm so excited to meet you since we talked only through like our podcast community that's called Autry. So excited to be with us today.
Living as a Digital Nomad
00:01:23
Speaker
So Sam is an entrepreneur, a digital nomad and a freedom seeker. Would you like to tell us more about yourself? What do you do in your free time? Sure. Well, I'm a Canadian based entrepreneur, but for the last five years I have been building a business and a lifestyle.
00:01:42
Speaker
that can be run from anywhere in the world. And so I started off doing freelance work and then started my own business and started creating my own products and have figured out how to
00:01:54
Speaker
create income remotely from anywhere in the world. You mentioned my podcast. So that's been a really fun project in a way that I've been able to generate revenue for myself that I can also do from anywhere. Right now I'm in Costa Rica where I'll be here for three months before heading to Mexico and then back home to Canada for a little bit. So my life looks like a lot of travel and a lot of prioritizing life and what I think
00:02:23
Speaker
makes life special, which is adventures and, you know, spending time with people you really care about, having time for hobbies and also having work just facilitate all of that. So yeah, that's what I'm all about is the freedom to kind of create your own days. So that sounds so interesting. This reminds to me like, like this creates a question to me, how you can balance your personal life, like while you work remotely,
00:02:53
Speaker
since like during COVID everybody had to work from home and it was a struggling period for people to keep their schedule. But actually you do this before COVID and traveling alone is something that like for most people is a dream. So how do you balance like working while traveling and doing things that you like? Yeah, you definitely need to be disciplined
00:03:19
Speaker
Like I've seen a lot of friends try to either start businesses or even just try to work remotely and from home and
00:03:27
Speaker
They had to be honest with themselves that, you know, maybe they're not the most self-motivated or disciplined person. It's very easy for them to get distracted. If they don't have kind of a boss watching them or motivating them or encouraging them, you know, maybe they'll just relax throughout the day and their tasks will pile on. So if that's who you are, you know, you either need to be honest with yourself, like maybe this life isn't for me, but really, I think it can be for anyone. You just have to work on that discipline skills and
00:03:57
Speaker
You got to just work on getting better at motivating yourself. And what I find is so helpful and what really works for me is just having a really strong why for why I'm doing all of this. When I think about the alternative, which would be having to have a normal office job and, you know, having a boss, the idea of that just is so not aligned with how I want to live that that's the motivation for me.
00:04:23
Speaker
It's I have to make this work because this is how I want to live. And because I have that strong why for my life of freedom and kind of creating my own schedule, I just want it so badly that I naturally have this motivation and drive and I can organize myself and stay disciplined. It's not perfect. Like I said, I'm in Costa Rica right now. And so the sun is shining. I'm looking out the window and I can almost see the beach. And yeah, like I'd rather be at the beach swimming and hanging out with my friends, but there's some work I have to get done.
00:04:53
Speaker
So it's definitely a little bit about being disciplined and then also just getting really good at organizing your time. So every night before bed, I sit, I write down what are the three most important things that I have to do the next day. And then I look at what am I already committed? Do I have a bunch of calls? Like I had this podcast interview this morning. I have one call this afternoon and I have an evening call. So then I think, okay, well what time of the day am I going to do each of those tasks? And then I plan for fun time. So I know today at,
00:05:22
Speaker
3.30 until 5.30. I'm going to the beach and I'm playing beach volleyball. And then I'm going to come back and I have to do my final call of the day. And I've just thought through my day ahead of time. And that also really helps with you balance both of the things and making sure that when you're creating your plan for the day, it's a realistic plan. Cause there's nothing worse than going to bed and feeling like, Oh, I only did two out of 10 things on my to-do list. Maybe your to-do list is too big. I see. So,
00:05:51
Speaker
We keep that we need organization and of course a goal so that we can like have a schedule and also like have fun and at the same time being in balance with everything that we need to do in our task list. And previously you mentioned that like the podcast that you started is a very interesting like project.
Starting and growing a podcast
00:06:12
Speaker
So my question is how did you get inspired to start this podcast?
00:06:18
Speaker
Yeah, when I started my podcast in 2017, I was in a transition in my life where I had previously had a job. I had had a nine to five sales job in an office with a boss, and I knew I didn't want that. I knew that I wanted to have more freedom to be able to work from anywhere. I was actually in a long distance relationship, so my partner was in San Francisco.
00:06:41
Speaker
I was in Toronto and it was just getting really expensive and hard to make it work. And you know, I loved him and I didn't want to have my job and this nine to five lifestyle be the reason I had to break up with this amazing person in my life.
00:06:55
Speaker
And so my initial motivation was actually like a love story and actually figuring out how I could make this work and spend more time together. And so when I started the podcast, I didn't know how I was going to do this. I knew that there was this movement called the digital nomad movement. And I knew that some people were working remotely, but back in 2017, it was definitely not popular culture. Most companies were not remote.
00:07:19
Speaker
And it was this, you know, thing I was curious about that I knew some people were doing, but it wasn't as mainstream as it was now. And so initially my motivation for the podcast was kind of selfish. I figured I'm going to find five people who are digital nomads, who are working online, working from anywhere, and I'm going to interview them about how they do it. I'll call it a podcast because, you know, podcasts are becoming popular and, you know, maybe this could be a fun, unique project for me where I could learn a new skill.
00:07:49
Speaker
And by the end of five episodes, I hoped I would have an idea for my own freedom lifestyle and how I was going to achieve it too. And it ended up being this amazing experience. I didn't expect where so many people reached out to me saying, I want this too. Like I am so glad you're creating this podcast. I've been really wanting to work remotely. Like I also don't agree with this current work.
00:08:13
Speaker
culture, like keep going, keep going. And it just had momentum right away. I was able to get brands to sponsor the show pretty early on because they really saw my vision. And so what was meant to be this selfish way for me to figure out how I was going to have the freedom lifestyle ended up turning into this amazing community and project for me that now I'm on season five. Well, that's amazing. Like,
00:08:41
Speaker
the whole story that you like share with us today is more like that you resisted onto the different capitalistic world that we work with a schedule and actually you wanted to find a way to go out from the schedule and to create your own schedule and I think that as you said that's ideal for most of the people that they don't like having both over their head and the podcasting
00:09:10
Speaker
really helps like right now we are in two different locations I'm from Greece right now and we can have this amazing conversation while having an internet connection and on the same time talking about this interesting subject and I'm also so glad that you mentioned the term digital nomad. So digital nomad what exactly is that?
Understanding Digital Nomadism
00:09:33
Speaker
Well, a digital nomad in the most traditional textbook sense would be somebody who essentially has no fixed address, right? Like if I wanted to send you a letter in the mail or ship you something, I don't have anywhere for you to send it to. I don't have an apartment. I don't have a place. I don't have rent. I don't own a house. And I'm for the most part, like living out of a backpack. Maybe it's a couple of backpacks. Maybe it's a few suitcases. That part doesn't really matter.
00:10:00
Speaker
You're typically moving around and working from anywhere. How often you move around doesn't really matter. Some digital nomads, you know, every month they're in a new place. Some people it's every six months, but it's this idea of no fixed address and living and working from anywhere. And typically also encompasses a lifestyle of minimalism, right? Where, you know, I need less. And so I'm just going to carry around the essentials.
00:10:27
Speaker
It also is typically somebody who is more of a knowledge worker, so is able to actually work online using, you know, intellectual skills versus maybe their physical skills and having to physically be somebody somewhere. So that's what the digital nomad lifestyle is all about. Where I'm at right now is I consider myself a halftime, 50% digital nomad, because I do own a house and I do own items in that house and I'm there half of the year. But the other half of the year I'm traveling and
00:10:57
Speaker
I've actually Airbnb'd my place. So that's become a great revenue stream where for the four months I'm here in Costa Rica and Mexico, I have someone living in my house and generating income from that.
00:11:09
Speaker
that's great that's really interesting so first of all congratulations for your 56 episodes and for being on season 5 like your community is really so supportive and that's that's great because we really know as podcasters that it's really difficult to keep a podcast keep going
00:11:29
Speaker
what you have to do with advertisement and some other codes to cover. And in general, if we consider that the majority of codecasts do not exceed two years of life, you have already exceeded four years of life for your podcast. That's amazing. Yeah. So do you run this whole podcast on your own or do you have any team that helps you in general to support this whole community?
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah, I have a virtual assistant who helps me with a lot of the marketing aspects. So creating graphics and creating little video teasers that I can promote on social media. She also helps me upload to my podcast hosting site and schedule the episodes. She helps edit them a little bit, but I think the hardest part for me has been to actually outsource the editing. I don't know about you, but I'm so particular.
00:12:25
Speaker
about how I want my episodes to sound and what parts of the conversation I think are really interesting. So I end up editing my episodes pretty much myself, but for my company, because now I also offer this as a service. I help other people produce their podcasts and I have like a bit of a podcast agency. I have a team there who will
00:12:47
Speaker
edit other people's podcasts. But for my own show, I'm a little bit of a control freak. I really know how I want it to sound and what parts I want to keep and what parts I want to cut. And I've found that hard to outsource. That's totally acceptable. We do the same thing. We want to control the way that we present ourselves, but it's also great that you run this podcast company.
00:13:11
Speaker
It's very interesting since, as you said, podcasting becomes more and more popular. And we have seen that with numbers, like we have seen an increase about 60% the last two, three years. That's great because people tend to want to listen more to people. Maybe the podcast, podcast lifestyle comes to become more like an art. What is your opinion on that? I do think it's a creative expression.
00:13:38
Speaker
I do because there's so many parts of creating a podcast that are very creative. And you know, some people maybe can't relate to that, but for me, everything from the music that I choose and the sound effects to going through the conversation. And I like to take maybe a 10 second clip from the middle of the episode that I find really interesting is like a hook. And I put that at the beginning so that as soon as you listen, you're hooked in.
00:14:06
Speaker
It is very much an art to create this content and to have an idea for a valuable piece of content in an episode that you think people would really benefit from listening to, whether it's educational or entertaining. And it is a creative expression. I totally agree. And I've been trying to use that language more because often when you become a podcaster, people will
00:14:31
Speaker
Question, why, right? Are you making money from
The art and value of podcasting
00:14:34
Speaker
this? How many downloads are you getting? Like, why are you been doing this? This is a lot of work. And you find yourself kind of to defending it, which is a bit annoying sometimes. And when you're just starting out and you might not be getting those downloads you want, or maybe you haven't figured out how to monetize, it can be really frustrating and discouraging to have to answer those questions or to not see that traditional metric of success.
00:14:58
Speaker
So I find it so helpful to see your podcast as something else, right? This is like, it's cathartic for me. This is a creative expression. This is having these conversations are just as inspiring for me. It's free mentorship. Opportunities come from my podcast that I wouldn't even think of. People invite me to speak at events or speak on other podcasts or can think about me for other projects.
00:15:21
Speaker
There's so many intangible wins and benefits from creating your podcast that even just seeing it as an artistic expression is a really great way to keep going and to see this as a valuable use of your time because it is quite a bit of effort as you know. I totally agree with you. Everything that Sam said is really true. The whole work
00:15:45
Speaker
about combining different point of views, presenting the way that you want, selecting the music. This whole process creates a unique like vision for the broadcaster and experience for the listeners, you that you're listening right now. I have a personal question for you. Which was your favorite guest that you talked with, interviewed and why?
00:16:14
Speaker
Well, definitely the one that is the most credible and brag-worthy is Nomadic Matt. So I don't know if you know Nomadic Matt, but he's like really big in the digital nomad space and working online. He was one of the first travel bloggers who was talking about, you know, how to travel the world for $50 a day. That's his Amazon bestseller. And he created a travel blog and figured out how to monetize it. And, you know, he was one of the first nomads, digital nomads.
00:16:42
Speaker
And he's quite popular. And so that was, of course, like a celebrity type guest I really wanted to have on my show. And so when he said yes, and he came on, that was such a win. And I'm super proud of that. It was a milestone for me. But then when I think about like, what were the most engaging conversations and conversations that inspired me the most, I definitely think my latest season, the new season just came out, uh, maybe a month ago. So I have two interviews.
00:17:10
Speaker
that have been released and a few solo episodes. And the guests this season, I think are just, they really symbolize how my definition of freedom has really expanded over the last four years and how I've really thought deeply about what it means to be free and what role I think this podcast plays. And so at the beginning,
00:17:36
Speaker
I was so focused on location independence, right? How do you work from anywhere in the world? But I realized that a lot of jobs that'll hire you remotely are maybe like $10 an hour. And that's really difficult to maintain.
Expanding the concept of freedom
00:17:51
Speaker
So then I was like, well, it's not just about location freedom. It's also about financial freedom. And how do we
00:17:57
Speaker
you know, generate income that allows us to have the lifestyle we want in and even just be comfortable, right? Like I don't want to stay in hostels anymore. I'm in my early thirties now. I have my own Airbnb. I need good internet. I need hot water to shower. I want a good comfortable bed. Like you want to be comfortable while you're traveling. And so, you know, financial freedom is also important.
00:18:18
Speaker
But then also schedule freedom. Like if you have a full-time 40 or 50 hour a week job, but you can do it from anywhere and you're not in control of that schedule, that doesn't feel that free. And I've seen that before where your just whole day is scheduled and you don't have the flexibility to say, like I said, I'm going to go to the beach today at three and play beach volleyball at sunset before coming home and doing one last task. And so really where I'm at now in season five is that
00:18:46
Speaker
True Freedom is checking off all three of those boxes. And so now I'm talking to guests who have been really thoughtful about all three and we talk more deeply about that. And I think it really just shows where I'm at and, you know, how much progress I've made as well over the last four years. So I would say check out the latest season. All right. Everyone should go and take out the last decision. I am so inspired.
00:19:10
Speaker
I would love to comment on something that you said that most of the remote works offered a couple of dollars per hour. And actually, if we consider that, like they do not have these companies to cover expenses about a building or a place for your office, equipment, maybe computer, internet, so on.
00:19:34
Speaker
I think that's unfair to only offer like so little money for people that they're working remotely since they continue to be part of maybe a team working on the projects being part of the meetings not so sad that they do not take the same I don't know maybe they don't have the same position as the other people that they are existed in a company place
00:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, and that's changed, right? At the very beginning, I think, when I say the beginning, I say the beginning of my journey. So this is 2017, 2018, a few years before the pandemic truly revolutionized remote work and accelerated the adoption of this work culture. Prior to this, the fact that I would allow you to do your job from anywhere was seen as enough of a benefit that people would be willing to do that for very little.
00:20:33
Speaker
It's changed, you know? It's really exciting to be talent right now because there's so much power in our hands. Never before have we been able to determine our working conditions more than we can right now. And employers realize that remote work is the new standard. And being able to work flexibly and even just have a couple days a week at home is the new expectation. That is no longer a perk. And so we're seeing raises, we're seeing wages raise,
00:21:03
Speaker
In terms of these remote jobs, of course as an entrepreneur and a freelancer, you choose your rate, which is I think the best way to be. And so it's improved. I don't want anyone to feel discouraged by that $10 an hour. But I remember when I interviewed people who were back then who were doing it, I was like, how, how am I going to make that work? Um, I don't do anything for $10 an hour. So.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah, that maybe that it's not too much not only for you, but also for the work or the things that you're going to offer. When you work as a freelancer, maybe you are a web designer, a designer, a developer. Actually, you have a knowledge of things. Maybe you have a degree on something. So this whole process needs to be valued by the people that they are hiring you. And it's important to know that.
00:21:56
Speaker
Absolutely. And I do think it, you know, it's worth noting that it really depends where you live. Like, for example, in the Philippines, you can outsource and hire virtual assistants from there. And, you know, that's where my virtual assistant is from. And so I've spent a lot of time talking to her about the wages there and why, you know, people are paid so little there compared to what we would expect. And, you know, there's also something to be said about where you're spending your dollar.
00:22:23
Speaker
And if you're in a country where your dollar goes a lot further, that's different. And that's something to be considered. And maybe you truly need less dollars per hour. But if you're going to be traveling to a lot of other countries or working from different places, you really need to think about what it's going to cost you to live in that place and live and work comfortably as well.
00:22:49
Speaker
I think that this is for today's episode.
Closing and final thoughts
00:22:52
Speaker
We were so excited for this episode since like you covered the freedom lifestyle for working from wherever you want and also creating your whole schedule. And it was our honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being with me today, Sam. Thank you so much for having me. Great questions. Guys, please go and check out Sam's podcast. You will find the link in the description.
00:23:17
Speaker
You will learn more things about creating your own lifestyle and also be more fit in your own schedule. Some has great interviews with guests and also some great, you know, advices to follow on. But until next time, don't forget to change the world. Bye.
00:23:49
Speaker
Thank you guys for listening. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. We had such a great time. Make sure to leave us a review. If you want more Changemakers content, you can follow us on Instagram at JinsearsToRise and on Facebook at ChangemakersE.