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- [00:00]
A
In 2009, Jonathan Goodman was a broke personal trainer living in Toronto, making only $41 an hour. He started the blog, self published a book by 24, and by 2013, he had his first seven figure year. Today he's done over $35 million in revenue, built a $14 million net worth, never raised a dollar, never sold a company, and takes his family abroad for six months out of the year, all while paying 50% on his income to his Canadian taxes by choice. This is the story of a guy who found his number and stopped chasing. Money Wise is a Hampton podcast. Hampton's a private community for founders doing 2 million or more in revenue. There's real conversations that happen in the Hampton community behind closed doors that you really just can't get anywhere else, especially if you're a wealthy founder. If you're looking for a community like this, go to joinhampton.com now. John Goodman on Money Wise. Welcome back to another episode of Money Wise. Today we have Jonathan Goodman on the show. Thanks so much for joining us today, John.
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B
Yeah, what a joy, man. I'm looking forward to this.
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A
Me too. Me too. I wanted to just start off with your family growing up. You grew up, youngest of four in a Jewish professional family. It sounds like there were doctors and lawyers and accountants. What was money like in your house growing up?
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B
I mean, money, we were like middle to upper class, so we'd go out for dinner once a month at the Pickle Barrel. We had our timeshare in Orlando, but beyond that, yeah, if something was on sale, we like stocked up. There were four hungry kids. My parents never made a lot of money, but they made enough and they were very smart with it. And although I was never really taught like explicitly about money growing up, through osmosis, I could see what they were doing and I think that that kind of watered down and helped me a lot. Now.
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A
That's great. And when you started this personal training program in your 20s, you've vocalized even on X and elsewhere on the Internet, you were a broke personal trainer. What did broke personal trainer look like? What did that actually mean?
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B
All personal trainers. It's interesting because I was about as successful as a personal trainer as you'd get in Toronto at that time. 30 client hours a week. I was the senior trainer at my club. I was referring my overload of clients to other trainers. But I mean, I was making $41.80 an hour. That was what I was taking home. That wasn't what I was charging out at.
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A
That was Canadian dollars or USD.
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B
It's Canadian dollars.
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A
Okay.
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B
And I was getting a monthly salary for being a senior trainer. So I was making about $70,000 a year. Right. Okay. Which is actually like a pretty good salary as a personal trainer. The problem is I was kind of at the cap.
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A
Yeah.
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B
In that industry, there's only so much you can grow unless you want to own a gym or become a business owner or whatever. And so I reached this point, I call it my red couch moment. Cause I was living in my parents basement and I was sitting on their red couch and I looked up and I was working like 12 hour days and I had just pulled a hamstring playing hockey at night.
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A
Oh, Jesus.
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B
And so I was off my feet for two weeks, which means I couldn't work for two weeks. And all that I could think about was, is this what my life is gonna be like? I know that I wanna have kids at one point. I know that I'm probably gonna get sick at one point. Like if I can't be in this career where I'm not going to be able to work even if the money is, you know, know, good enough for now. And then of course, there's the cap of the growth, which was an even bigger issue.
- [03:27]
A
Okay. And the cap of the growth is that what started you down this journey of, of realizing you can actually make more?
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B
Oh, God. I don't know what started me down this journey. To be honest. Every adult that I ever knew growing up was a lawyer, doctor, dentist, teacher and accountant. Like, my dad's an engineer, my mom's a teacher, my, my sister's a lawyer. My brother's a small business banker, My other brother is a high school math teacher.
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A
So you were around a lot of ambitious people?
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B
I was around a lot of very smart, very intelligent people who had their lives more or less set in front of them. Like they knew and how I grew up was adults knew that they were making X amount of dollars this year. In five years, if they do a good job, they're going to make Y amount of dollars. In 10 years, they're going to be at Z amount of dollars. And so they could very much plan for that. And if they save for that and if they assume, I mean, this is kind of what I understood through osmosis. Growing up, entrepreneurship wasn't a thing, so I never even considered it. To answer your question, I didn't even know that it existed really. Growing up, if I think back, it was just, I call it optimistic ignorance. I just kind of. I was personal training on the floor. I wrote down what I was doing on the back of my clipboard, or if I struggled with something, or if I was asked a question by a client, or if I had a crush on a secretary, or if I saw another training instructing an exercise wrong. I wrote it on the back of my clipboard and I went home at night. I thought about how I might be able to deal with that. Better call a friend. I'd say, how would you deal with this? And I wrote that down. It was personal development. And after about a year, I had a hundred thousand words written and I showed it to my mom and my mom said, this is really interesting, you've got something there. I think this might be a book. I don't know anybody who's written a book. How do you figure out how to make a book? This is 2009. How do you figure out how to self publish a book for an industry? I was 23 years old and so I didn't know, you know, looking back, I didn't know what all the steps were, but I knew what the next step was, which was I knew where books existed. Books existed in the bookstore. So I went to the bookstore, I looked up the names of the bestselling fitness books, I found the authors, I cold emailed them and asked them for an introduction to their editor. Wow. And one thing led to the next. I self published a book. I started a website, realized other people were writing interesting things on the Internet, but they suck at headlines and they suck at images and they suck at contextual editing and promotion and distribution of their work. Why don't I just get permission and pay them to republish their work on my website? And that's how it started.
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A
So when did this, what year did this start to really make money? When the business changed from $70,000 being a personal trainer to oh, actually there's a real business opportunity here and I should invest heavily and aggressively and growing this thing.
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B
So ignite the fire. The book that I self published came out in 2011. The website, the Personal Trainer Development center launched in 2011. It was my personal blog. Basically I called it Personal Trainer Development center and no shit, we put a building in the logo so that it looked more important than a 24 year old kid writing this from his one bedroom apartment after a full day training clients. So 2011 was kind of like my personal blog. 2012 was when it started kind of doing it. I hosted like a seminar in our gym in 2011. I messed around with a little bit of affiliate promotions, but 2012 would have been the first year where I put out a course called 1K Extra at the time, which was the first ever educational program that taught trainers how to train a client online.
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A
Very cool.
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B
And I put that out in 2012. 2012, I made about 300,000.
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A
Okay.
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B
From the PTDC.
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A
And so from 2009. 2009, sorry. To 2012, you went from 70,000 up to 300,000. Was that a steady growth?
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B
Nah, it was. It was like 70, 75,000 in the gym maybe. I did like a hundred and one hundred twenty in 2011. I don't actually really remember. I was investing a lot into the web. Like websites cost like eight to ten grand because you had to get somebody to code them at the time. I mean, I self taught myself photoshop, shop on YouTube, like HTML, the same thing. It was way harder back then, which meant that there was a costly signaling involved for people publishing content online because of the cost. So I spent a lot. Is the. Is the story.
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A
Sure.
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B
By. And then. And then it jumped in 2012.
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A
And I'd love to start unpacking that. I mean, you've described yourself since then as an eight figure founder. I'd love for you to start to kind of walk us through from $300,000 in 2012 until now. What did that growth look like year by year? Even if you can, you know, you can be high level, but year by year, if you have that available. And what is the actual revenue across some of these different. You mentioned ptdc, right? Is that the acronym? The Trainer Academy?
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B
Not. Not the Pakistani Tourism Development Center.
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A
Okay.
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B
It's the Personal Trainer Development Center. Yeah, not exactly.
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A
Personal Personal Training Development Center, Online Trainer Academy. Your books, you know, walk us through kind of where you're at now with that reven and what that looks like across all those business assets.
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B
So 2012, I realized I had something. I kept up my clients to 25 clients a week, then 15 hours a week. I kind of categorized them as like gold, silver, bronze. You know, I kept my gold. I arranged my schedule around them. All of the silver ones. I said, you know, if you can fit in these extra blocks, great. And the bronze I gave away. By 2013, I stepped away from training clients full time to work on the website because I was like, I got a shot here, right? Like, I can always go back.
- [09:08]
A
What were you making when you stepped away?
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B
It would have been about three. I mean that was. It was early 2013. So about that 300,000. Okay, okay. Right. And that was also the first winter that I did abroad. And so that was the first now of 14 consecutive winters where I've traveled a minimum of four months, which I'm sure we'll get into. 2013 would have been the first seven figure years. So 2013, I had done a couple other kind of online products. We built the first ever informational product for Facebook ads for fitness professionals. I did a postnatal one. We did all the stuff, I hosted conferences. But this online training thing kind of stuck. Right. And so I started speaking about that, I started writing about that, I started doing all the SEO on that. And 2013, 1K extra would have led to just over a million a year. I think we did like 1.1. And then, yeah, I mean, look, 2015 to basically 2022, we did pretty consistently like 3 to 5 to 7 million a year. There was never a year that was spiked. Yeah, it was just this very consistent 35, 40% profitable. 4 million, $5 million a year, 40% profitable.
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A
Is that 40% in your pocket each year or did you have. Yeah, so 40% of the, let's call it 7 million was paid to you for eight years in a row.
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B
Yeah, I've always, I bootstrapped everything. I always owned 100%. I paid people really well, but I always owned 100% of everything that I did. I'd never take an investment out of all of the businesses. We did 32 different products over those years. That's how much stuff that I tried. And probably the biggest lesson that I realized is that society forgives failure and really only one thing has to work. So I say of that, of those 32 products, a whole bunch of bloop singles, a few legged out doubles, some strikeouts, and two home runs. And so, you know, PTDC was always the parent company. It never did its own thing. It always just had all of these business assets underneath it, from courses to. I did a paid print newsletter to membership sites. If you think about online marketing, I've tried it. But the biggest thing was 1k extra. In 2016, we evolved into the online trainer academy, which was called ota, which was the first ever certification for online fitness. Wrote the textbook, created the first ever certificate, self published it. Nobody needs to give you permission. You know, you could just do things right.
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A
Yep.
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B
And OTA over those years did 30 to 35 million in revenue between OTA and 1K extra. From 2013 to 2024, when it was finally shut down, did 30 to 35 million in revenue as an online course. So that was the main thing for sure.
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A
And those two things combined with Some of the other ventures. Where does that leave your total net worth now? Both liquid and assets and illiquid funds and monies.
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B
Total net worth is just over 14 million, so.
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A
14 million. Walk me through where that money is currently invested and, or just in cash. It's in a lot of fun things that we'll get to with the way you travel and I'd love to, you know, divulge that a little bit here in a minute, but walk me through your actual personal spending. What does it look like in a given year, a given month, where does
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B
that money actually go nowadays in terms of investments? It's basically all liquid. The only one that's not liquid is a, is a 2% kind of fund. Super pre seed investment I did in this baseball card company because I love baseball cards. That's actually going really well.
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A
Great.
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B
But I mean not really beyond that. I mean we're at about, I mean I could give you the, where all of this goes within each but it's about 17% real estate, 15% Bitcoin, 65% equities, which includes some REITs. So the real estate holdings are actually a little bit bigger, but the REITs and then you know, my other investment pillar is about 3% into my network and reputation. And the reason for those allotments is I take into account asymmetric investment opportunities. Mispriced, that's.
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A
And so explain what that means.
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B
Right. So I think that if you search for long enough you can find the rare opportunity where if it works, it has an outsized impact for the amount that you invest. And if it doesn't work, you don't invest that much that it's going to really affect you. And so if something can work one out of a hundred times and pay for the 99 losses, it's probably a good bet to make. We can get into expected value equations if you want for all my poker bros out there. But it's, it's basically if you have a wildly positive expected value, then the bet makes sense to make. Even if it's a far fetched bet, you can expect it not to work because in the rare case that it does, it's going to work with an outsized impact. And so I look at investments into bitcoin and then my network and reputation both as asymmetric mispriced bets. And so my investment allotment in those is lower because I don't need as much actually invested into them because if they win, they're going to win so big. So I don't need to do. I don't need to put as much risk into them.
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A
John, it looks like you've invested quite a bit in bitcoin. Walk me through some of your thinking around putting any money in bitcoin.
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B
I'm always looking for mispriced bets or asymmetric opportunities. And what's interesting about bitcoin is that in 2017 I actually had half a million dollars that I was going to put into half Bitcoin, half Ethereum. I had like the devices, like the ledger devices to put them on and everything. And I didn't end up doing it and I sold the devices and if I did that, I'd have like $40 million or something stupid. Everybody's got a story like that with crypto, right?
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A
I have one too. Yeah, it's, it's rough.
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B
Everybody's got one like that.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But in basically from the end of 2020, all throughout 2021, I put systematically 15% of my company's investment into bitcoin. Not anything else, just bitcoin. And I also maxed out my tfsa. So in Canada, we have a tax free savings account. Basically we get $5,000 a year. That adds up. And whatever money you make in that account is tax free. You can, you can take it out whenever you want. So it's a great place to like make a big bet in because if you, if it, if it grows a ton, you get that money tax free. I probably was one of the first, if not the first Canadian to max out my TFSA in something called qbtc.
- [15:32]
A
If you're not Canadian, the tfsa, which is a tax free savings account, is basically Canada's version of a Roth ira. In the United States, you contribute after tax money, it grows completely tax free, and when you take it out, you owe nothing. So what John did was take the money from his tax free savings account, which is he started contributing the $7,000 max in 2009, probably was around $95,000, maybe a little bit more. And he put all that into bitcoin when it was around $30,000. So at that point, if it went to zero, it was a real loss, but it was somewhat contained. And John, which he's about to get into, really thinks bitcoin is going to do super well. And so it was essentially a legal tax sheltered lottery ticket. And now this is what happened, which
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B
was the first ever fund that allowed you to invest in exposure to Bitcoin in a registered investment fund. This was before the ETFs or anything. Were like. Like a couple years before they were available in the United States. And I still. I haven't touched it.
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A
Right, Good for you. What, what was the cost of bitcoin at that. At that point? How much did you put in?
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B
I mean, it. It. It went up and down, sure. Right. But my. My cost base was like 31, 32,000 U.S. good for you.
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A
How much did you put in?
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B
I won't say that. You don't. You don't. You don't tell people how much bitcoin you have.
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A
Okay, fair enough. I'm curious.
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B
Well, I'll tell you this. I sold last year. In 2025, I sold for the first time ever, And I sold seven Bitcoin for about 900,000 Canadian. And that was to rebalance the portfolio at 15% allotment in Bitcoin.
- [17:10]
A
So you put in. You put in well over seven figures.
- [17:12]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I did it. I did it, like, systematically. Right. So small buys of. Yeah, some bigger buys, but mostly. Mostly smaller buys. But the reason for that is, and why I waited until 2020, 2021, and not 2017, is it seemed like there was this very unique time where if this thing works, it's going to work really big or it's not going to work at all. Like. Like, I don't really think there's much in between. And when you study money and finance as much as I have, you pretty quickly come to the appreciation that money is a story that we all buy into. The only reason that money works, the only reason the financial system works, is because we've all agreed that this piece of paper is worth this many grains of rice. That's kind of it. That's the reason why money works in Canada and the United States. That's the reason why money doesn't work in Nicaragua, because the government in Nicaragua basically says, screw you, rest of the world. Here's what our money's worth. And so it doesn't work there. Right. What I felt was true at the end of 2020, into 2021, and continues to be true now about bitcoin is that there are so many millions of people distributed around the world that all buy into the story that it would be almost impossibly difficult for it to not work now. And so it seemed like the odds of it not working and going to0 in 2017 were too big for me. They were still pretty small, but they were too big for me. The odds of it going to zero now with so many stakeholders, seems pretty small. And if it does win. It's not just going to win by a little bit.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And so I've never looked at it as something to trade. Doesn't matter what happens in the short term. It's like if I wanted to sell it or if you held me up by gunpoint right now, I wouldn't even be able to give it to you. I'd have to go to multiple safety deposit boxes back in Canada. It's just, it's just locked away.
- [19:03]
A
Very cool. I had a ledger, have a ledger. I just, I just put my hands on it a few days ago and I was trying to buy Dogecoin at.0002 cents right on Kraken when Kraken. This was in 2020, early 2020, late 2019, when no one knew what Dogecoin was. The longer the short is. I would have made about $10 million if it would have let me buy it. But the, it wasn't working. The whole system was crashing because me and every other rando that was up at 2:45am and discovered Dogecoin was trying to buy it. So anyways, we all have a story
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B
like that, but here's my, here's my, here's my opinion about that is that if you did buy it, that would have been a dumb shit decision.
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A
Oh, so idiotic. I mean in hindsight it's like, oh, this is what could have happened and I would have netted blah blah blah. But yes, it was, it was an idiotic decision for me to have been
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B
that dumb shit decision. This is why I think percentages and expected value is so important. Because even if you make the best, the best investors in the world are only right 60 to 62% of the time with the best information, the best everything invert that they're wrong 4 out of 10 times. Now if you make the dumbest decision ever, which I would probably define putting your life savings into Dogecoin like in that bucket. Oh for sure you probably had a 98% chance of failure, but there's a 2% chance of success. And that roulette wheel hit for some people. Now the psychology of the type of person who's going to make a decision like that is the same psychology of the type of person who's going to make other aggressively stupid bets.
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A
Oh yeah, you're talking to one of those guys right now. Aggressively stupid.
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B
The difference is that when Icarus flies too close to the sun, you don't hear about it when they get burnt. You only hear about it when they win. I mean this is the same for people who chase social media trends. If they're trying to market, it's no different. We though as an onlooker, the problem is we only compare ourselves to a representative consortment of people. We don't compare ourselves to one person and we follow them for a long enough period of time to see the ups and downs, the inevitable downs. Instead, we compare ourselves to a representative group of people. And at any one point, there's always going to be one person winning doing something that objectively is probably a really bad decision. We don't see that same person making multiple bad decisions and them not working out for that person two years in the future because we've moved on to the next person and the next person and the next person. I mean, look, yeah, sure, but he told me about Solana at the same time, I'd have $180 million if I bought Solana with the amount of money I bought bitcoin with.
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A
You can, you can always, you can always look back and what, what if, you know, yeah, what if I had the winning lottery number? You know, it's, it's a lot of, a lot of things you can't control that are stupid decisions that a few people made a lot of money from. No, that's, that's great. Real quick. Today's episode is sponsored by Ocean's Talent. If you're trying to hire a great EA or Ops person right now you're looking at 80 to $100,000, sometimes more. And I know a lot of founders have tried to go the remote route before and gotten burned. Sometimes they get ghosted, the work sloppy, you end up redoing everything yourself. I've heard the stories before and I've even personally lived them. Ocean's Talent is completely different. They pre vet every single candidate with thorough skills assessments. So whoever they match you with is ready to go on day one. And it's not just EAs. They do marketing, ops, finance, HR, sales, even AI workflows. I've hired people personally through Ocean's Talent, and I'm blown away by the quality of work they produce. Sam Parr has his personal assistant through Ocean's, and he describes her like she runs my life. I couldn't live without her. I have total trust in her and I don't trust anyone. That's the bar they set. So if you're a founder drowning in stuff a great hire should be handling, check out Ocean's talent at Oceanstalent.com forward/moneywise. That's Oceanstalent. Dot com. Moneywise. I'd love to know more about the real estate you mentioned. 17% is in real estate. What does that actually mean, to have 17% in real estate?
- [23:29]
B
So that is our home in Toronto, where homes cost a lot of money.
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A
Sure.
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B
And we did actually do a fair amount of residential real estate investing a number of years back. Bought one unit, converted it into a legal duplex. We financed that eight months later. Because this is just before COVID and then into Covid, we got lucky. We financed that about eight months later and took 105% of our principal out. And then we ended up buying 11 more units in the next year. So at one point, we owned 13 different, basically rental units in Ontario. We have since. And that was all with the JV. The JV got 50% of the upside. They managed everything start to finish. It was completely hands off on our end. We put up the cash, they did everything else. Right. And we actually have since sold 11 of those units. We only own, we only own that original duplex actually, still. And we made, we made a bunch of money on them. But what we realized was that even though it was hands off for the JV and it still took up our cognitive load, it still took up our time. We don't want to play this game where we're refinancing over and over and over again getting more and more properties. You know, it's just more problems. And so we decided, along with our advisor, to sell those and we can still have exposure to real estate. Like we have a big holding in Elite that owns thousands of student houses across Ontario, for example.
- [24:55]
A
Interesting.
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B
So we still have exposure to real estate at about the same percentage allotment. It's just not in our single family homes anymore. It's more within lease and equities because then it's just in the same bucket. It's. It's easier for us.
- [25:10]
A
Yeah. Some people might say 17% in real estate is kind of risky. Is, is. I mean, is there a. Is there a reason you put that much in real estate from the total net worth, or did you kind of fall into that?
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B
The honest truth is that such a high percentage of it is our personal home.
- [25:26]
A
Yeah.
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B
That's the only reason why it's so high.
- [25:29]
A
What percentage we have, we have a
- [25:31]
B
personal home we own. We bought my wife's family cottage. Okay. From her brothers and renovated it. And so the percentage of that in the family cottage probably of the 17% is like 12, 13%. I mean, our home, I mean, Toronto real estate is just Nuts, right? Like, we bought our home for 1.55 million in 2019. It's probably wor.
- [25:54]
A
Do we know, tell me why you stayed in Canada? You had a business there. The taxes are through the roof, and you didn't leave when you obviously could have. What.
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B
What made you stay a rich person's favorite pastime? You know what that is?
- [26:08]
A
You tell me.
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B
It's to sacrifice their quality of life to get more rich and pay less tax.
- [26:13]
A
Okay, so a little additional context on this. In Canada, where John lives, the combined federal and provincial tax rate tops out at 53.5%. That means for every dollar John earns above a certain income threshold, he keeps less than 50 cents. Compare that to Florida or Texas. Zero state income tax. The federal bill is the same, but there's nothing on top of it. That's why so many wealthy founders play what John's calling the tax game. They move to Puerto Rico, Dubai, the Cayman Islands, or just across the US Border to a no income tax state in Puerto Rico. Specifically, there's an incentive called Act 60 that caps your investment income tax at 4%. So you can see why John's friends are making this move. But what John is actually saying, and he's about to get into this, is he's already done the math. There's a certain point where you're so wealthy that it just becomes a game. If you're not going to pay the taxes in this place, you're going to pay the taxes somewhere. And if the taxes aren't taxes themselves, you're going to get taxed somewhere in your life. Here's what John has to say about that.
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B
Oh, that's a rich person's favorite pastime. Yeah, you're right. I could easily have gone to. I could have basically, like, not shut down the Canadian corporation. Like, all my companies are in Ontario. I could have just, you know, started shuttling money to an overseas account. Right. Set up a new business, whatever. Look, I love Canada. I really do. I also think it's the responsibility of the young people who have the ability to own to support the people who don't, and the older generations. I think that that's important. I take a lot of pride in that. I also know that I have enough. I knew that once I had $7 million invested, I was. That's $280,000 a year.
- [27:55]
A
What John just described is called the 4% rule, and it's one of the most well known concepts in personal finance. The idea is simple. If you have a diversified investment portfolio and you only ever withdraw 4% of it per year. Historical data shows your money will Last at least 30, 30 years no matter what the market does. The rule was invented by a financial advisor named William Bengen back in 1994. He ran the numbers on every 30 year stretch of market returns going back to 1926 and found that 4% was the magic number. It was low enough that even the worst consequences of market returns wouldn't wipe you out. So at $7 million, 4% is exactly $280,000 a year. Just like John said, that number 25 times your annual spending is your freedom number. It's the point where mathematically you never have to work again if you don't want to. John hit it. And what he decided to do with that, that's the interesting part. And he's about to get into it. Yeah, I was going to say, is that the number. Then you didn't, you didn't really want more after 7?
- [28:55]
B
Not that I didn't want more. Of course I want more. You never don't want more. But I knew that I didn't need more. I knew that I was safe. I call it walking costs. You've got to keep your walking costs low. That's freedom. Yeah, you might join the bougie health club, you might go on the expensive vacations, but you don't ever let yourself get stuck by those things. And so I knew that once I had $7 million in the bank account and a home that's going to kick off $280,000 at a, at a very reasonable 4% interest rate without touching the principal, knowing that I have more than that, knowing that I've never touched the principal and continuing to earn more than we spend every single year. The very idea of moving to a place away from family and community just to get richer and avoid tax seemed like a really stupid game to play. There's somebody who I met recently from the States, moved his family to Puerto Rico and we were asking him about how living in Puerto Rico is. It's like it's miserable. It's like you don't like it. The infrastructure is terrible, the schools are not great. We don't know anybody there or either. Dude, I could pay like 2% taxes. So just to get. If, if you're at the point where you are rich enough to be able to play this game. Yeah, you're probably at the point to not have to play this game. Look, my goal is to not stop working. I think work is wonderful. And so I live a 6 minute and 49 second walk from my parents, an 8 minute walk from my sisters in Toronto. Dude, it's bliss.
- [30:31]
A
I resonate with that. Yeah, I live in Charleston. My family was in Seattle and Wisconsin and Boston. And after enough times of telling them all to move to Charleston, all of them except my poker playing brother in Vegas moved to Charleston. So Now I'm a 10 minute drive from my parents in one direction and a 10 minute drive from my brother and his wife and their kids in the other direction. And all the cousins get to grow up together. I mean, there's really, to me, there's nothing more valuable than that in the grand scheme of things. And so I certainly resonate with some of those thoughts.
- [31:03]
B
I mean, Ontario has exceptionally high taxes. It's very employee friendly. So it's very difficult to run a small business there and expensive and the cost of living is really high. But what I've realized over my years of spending a minimum of four months a year abroad, a lot of the time around people who have made this decision. Yeah, I've realized, Daniel, that everybody pays the same taxes, but they just pay it in different ways.
- [31:31]
A
Tell us more about the, the winters abroad. You started in 2013, you said so, and you've done that every year for the last 11 years, or I guess that was 13 years. So where are the places you've gone if you can list them off really quick and tell us why you've built your life in this way? Because I think this is, this is incredibly unique to take your wife and your kids to another country every winter for, you know, three, four months out of the year. And I'd love to hear more about why you do that. And then also I'd love to get into the personal spending because I think the first part of the story is interesting. You know, personal spending, very cool. This is where I spend my money. But the abroad portion, I think that's actually where your personal spending may get a little bit more unique given different currencies, different lifestyles, different renting patterns. So tell me a little bit about that.
- [32:22]
B
Yeah, I mean, I can, I can break down the, like our monthly spend and we'll do this after. I'll break down my monthly spend when we're at home and then our monthly spend when we're abroad as well. For context, I've been with my wife for 15 years. This year will be our 10th wedding anniversary.
- [32:36]
A
Congrats.
- [32:37]
B
Our kids are 8, 4 and 11 months. So I started doing this by myself. Then my girlfriend started coming, then we were engaged all of Our pregnancies, you know, she's done checkups all around the world. And one of them, one of our pregnancies, she actually had cancer at the same time. So she was doing checkups and she was doing scans for cancer at the same time while we were abroad. So, you know, every year it's just been, hey, can we do this another year? It's not. This is our lifestyle forever. It's just like, can we do this again? Yeah, sure, why not? Where have we been? Oh, I'm sure I'll forget some places.
- [33:11]
A
Yeah.
- [33:12]
B
Hawaii, twice. Costa Rica twice. Dominican, Nicaragua, Mexico, five times. This little town called Sayulita, Greece on Crete. We were in Kotor in Montenegro, Uruguay. We are currently in Kamakura, Japan. For three months we were just in Bali in Indonesia. We did Copenhagen in Thailand twice.
- [33:32]
A
Do you have someone that plans this for you or do you do all this yourself?
- [33:36]
B
Logistically, we plan it, but I love constraints. Okay. So I always look for constraints. Okay. For example, like, I don't like connecting flights. So how did we decide to go to Abu Dhabi for four days before arriving in Bali? It's like, okay, where can we fly from? Toronto, that flies direct, that also flies direct to Bali, Abu Dhabi, that also in December is warm enough that we don't have to bring jackets because we're going to be in Japan in the spring and then Bali and you know, in, in, in January. And so there's like three options. So I'm always looking for constraints. Even when we decide to go to a place like we were in Crete, for example, in Greece. How do you decide, even once you decide to go to a country, how do you decide where to go to in that country? And even when you decide what city where in that city. And so I look backwards from what's important to me. Fitness is the answer. I have discovered through a yearly, twice yearly cycle of wiping my schedule clean and building it back up from scratch via first principles, that when I schedule my fitness first, everything else falls into place. And so when we decide to go to a place, I actually research where I'm going to work out first. And I find the workout and I put that as the pin in Airbnb. And then I make sure that I can walk or bike there, whatever the mode of transportation is. You know, walk e bikes here in Japan, motorbikes in Bali, golf carts in, in, in, in Mexico, whatever the crazy mode of transportation is. But I make sure that I can get through. So that's how we decide, like what town to go to, where to be. It's this process of iteration. Daniel, like you asked why I keep doing this. Yeah, it's not a you own son, you know, that's not the purpose. What I realized is that I need to reintroduce seasonality into my life. And so I love Toronto. I love their frenetic, the go, go, go, the hustle culture. I love the societal, the social obligations in Toronto. I can be at a business dinner five nights a week in Toronto if I want to. Right. I love that. Until I don't.
- [35:48]
A
Sure.
- [35:49]
B
After about six to eight months, then I need to get the hell out and then I go somewhere else. Well, we don't know anybody where. It is a focus much more on fitness and family and it's a much more relaxed, it's a much slower pace. I love that for about three to four months until I don't. And then we return to Toronto. And the thing about renewing seasons is that you're always excited for the next season to come. Like I'm a baseball fan. Toronto Blue Jays up until last year were garbage. Whatever you, you're excited for the new season. That's how it works. And so when I started thinking about my three priorities, health, relationships, money, I realized that every season needs to have a priority focus. And I need to have a system to renew and refresh and iterate multiple times a year. So every time we leave, one place calendar gets wiped clean. We built from first principles. When I enter a new place over and over and over and over again.
- [36:45]
A
Do you still work while you're in those places or is it in your mind, like more or less vacation with your family?
- [36:50]
B
No, I work, but I don't put pressure on myself to really push forward in work. There's a time and place for that. I'm in this phase of my life at I'm 40 years old, where I have the golden triad. I have the possibility of the golden triad of time, of health and money all at the same time. There's only a short window in our life where we kind of have that. I also have young kids. I also have aging parents. I'm also probably at the highest earning potential that I'll ever be at. That's a lot of pressures kind of coalescing at the same time. And I used to find that that was very difficult to remedy to figure out how to do it, because no matter how well I was doing on one of those three priorities of, of the, of the health, of the relationships, of the money triangle, even if I was crushing it in One I'd always feel guilty for, the one that I was maybe not doing as well. A work's going really well, but like yo, my fitness isn't as good. Or like I'm crushing my fitness but like kind of should be spending more time with my parents. Right?
- [37:54]
C
Real quick pause. Because this is important. If you're running a company, you already understand leverage. You apply it everywhere in your business. Most founders, they treat health like it's a rounding, air, inconsistent training, reactive eating, good weeks, bad weeks, start, stop, repeat. That was me. I didn't need motivation because I had plenty of that. What I needed was structure. I needed systems, better energy, lower body fat, more muscle, something that actually stuck and not some 12 week sprint that I would abandon when things got busy. And so I hired a coach and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Training built around my schedule, nutrition that survives travel, clear targets, clear metrics, daily accountability, no guesswork. And so today's sponsor is brought to you by Daily Body Coach. They are premium online coaching for entrepreneurs and executives who want their body keeping up with their business. It's run by an exited software founder who's already a Hampton member. And yes, a bunch of Hampton members already use it. Everything's personalized. They're coaches, they're available seven days a week. And the habits they help you build survive board meetings, late nights and back to back travel weeks. This isn't about looking good on the beach. It's about being strong and sharp in your 40s, 50s and 60s. So if you're serious about it, go to dailybodycoach.com Hampton dailybodycoach.com Hampton and so
- [39:08]
B
I designate seasons to prioritize one arm of that triangle, one side of that triangle. The other sides of the triangle aren't ignored. But I make a checklist for them, call it like the Wheels on the Bus checklist to make sure the wheels don't fall off the bus more than anything, so that my monkey brain doesn't feel like I'm losing in those places while I'm gaining in the other. This is where I push back on consistency. Yeah, I'm consistent in the 2. I'm intense on the 1. Intensity transforms. Consistency is what maintains that.
- [39:44]
A
Sounds just like a personal trainer to me. I feel like I'm in the gym right now learning how to, how to, how to stay, how to keep the gains, bro.
- [39:52]
B
It comes from that though. It comes from that. I mean, I don't know. I don't know a single person who has ever achieved anything meaningful with their health, with their family or with their business that hasn't gone through multiple intense periods in order to achieve it. I think consistency is undoubtedly important, but you have to have those intense periods of focus. There's a lot of lip service to focus. I don't see much focus.
- [40:20]
A
That's great. Tell me more about the split. When you're at home in Toronto, what does your monthly spending look like? And then when you're abroad, right now you're in Japan, we can use that as an example. Of course the shipping is going to look different with all the different countries you listed. But walk me through the personal spending in a normal nine month period in Toronto versus a three month period abroad.
- [40:38]
B
Yeah, I mean it's usually four to six months abroad. And to be four to six months, it's probably going to be six months. Like moving forward. We're probably okay.
- [40:45]
A
So you're going to do half and
- [40:46]
B
half then probably for the next couple years. Great. Only because school is becoming more important.
- [40:52]
A
Yeah. So your kids age makes. That makes sense.
- [40:55]
B
That's right. So we did one school semester in Bali and we're doing one school semester here in Japan.
- [41:03]
A
Is it, is it easy for them to transition across the border and almost be a stranger to their, their group of friends in school?
- [41:10]
B
You know, they do. My oldest, particularly my middle guy is four. He would just be starting kindergarten next year. So he's technically actually in school earlier. He doesn't know any different. My oldest who's eight turning in next week actually he's never not known this.
- [41:25]
A
That's true.
- [41:25]
B
So he enjoys it. He's very much a part of the conversation now. And when we decided last year that we wanted to do a bigger trip, he was in a local school in Spanish in Mexico last winter and we asked him if he was down to do a longer trip and he said, he says yeah, yeah daddy, I'd love to but I want to be in school, I don't want to be homeschooled.
- [41:42]
A
Yeah.
- [41:43]
B
So he's very self aware that way. We have met other families abroad that have kids around the same age that have different lifestyle similar to ours for as long as we've been doing it, whose kids are starting to push back and if that happens, you know, part of the conversation.
- [41:59]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [42:00]
B
Total. You want to know about spend?
- [42:02]
A
Yeah. Tell me about your spend in Toronto. We'll start there.
- [42:04]
B
Yeah. I mean Toronto Call it 12 months per month. 12, 12,000amonth.
- [42:09]
A
Thousand a month. And how does that break down?
- [42:11]
B
About $8,000 a month in the mortgage.
- [42:13]
A
Okay.
- [42:14]
B
We have a low rate. Canada has five year terms, so we actually just renewed it, but we have a low rate. And so there's no point in like paying it down. We chose a variable and if the rates spike up, we'll just pay it down super aggressively.
- [42:27]
A
And this is all Canadian dollars, by the way, right?
- [42:29]
B
This is all Canadian dollars. Yeah. Cool.
- [42:31]
A
Just for the listeners to know that.
- [42:33]
B
Food prep, babysitting, groceries, about $3,000 a month. I imagine groceries as my kids get older. I'm already seeing it as I cannot even. The eight year old man, when he decides he wants to eat, that's going to get expensive real soon.
- [42:47]
A
Yes.
- [42:48]
B
And then, you know, things like entertainment and eating out. About $1,000 a month. Unless the Blue Jays make the World
- [42:53]
A
Series, in which case we can cross our fingers. I'll cross my fingers for you.
- [42:59]
B
Many more. Well, it was, it was cool last year. I mean, this is one of the really cool reasons. Can I, can I share a story that was really fun last year? So I grew up, huge baseball guy, baseball fan. Watching the Blue Jays, they've been shit for so long. My brother and I, he's a year and a half older, but my brother lives in Nova Scotia, which is a three hour flight away from Toronto. So the Blue Jays are in the ALCS. They win game six against the Seattle Mariners. It's 11:19pm at night. Game seven is the next day. I text my brother and I say, I just bought you a flight and I have tickets. Tomorrow, get your ass on a plane.
- [43:35]
A
Nice.
- [43:35]
B
9am he shows up at my house. We go to game seven of the ALCS together, my brother and I. Jays win, make the World Series. Game 7 of the World Series now against the Dodgers. I text him at night after game six. You know you're getting your ass on a plane again, right?
- [43:50]
A
Yeah. The plane's at your door right now. You're getting a chauffeur this time.
- [43:54]
B
He comes in for game seven of the World Series and we go together again.
- [44:01]
A
Wow.
- [44:01]
B
Spent about 15,000 bucks on tickets and flights.
- [44:04]
A
Yeah, why not?
- [44:06]
B
That's a memory.
- [44:07]
A
So great.
- [44:08]
B
The absolute best. So, yeah, about a thousand dollars a month.
- [44:12]
A
Yeah, sure.
- [44:12]
B
Sures. Make the World Series?
- [44:14]
A
Yeah.
- [44:15]
B
Honestly, man, expenses beyond the mortgage are pretty inconsequential and small. Our favorite things are free and close to it. I don't want to get in a car. I want to ride my bike. Alison. And my favorite date is to take our paddle board down to the river with a sandwich and we just paddle and float and eat a picnic on the paddle board. And that's the same thing. As I get into the conversation about spending money, traveling. We spend a tremendous amount of money on things like nannies when we travel so that Allison and I can do like what we did last night where we take the train to Fujikoma and go up the second floor and have. I shit, you notice, horse sashimi for like 20 bucks.
- [45:04]
C
Wow.
- [45:04]
B
In this little place where there's no English and sit on the floor on like little pillows, like, like the best experiences to me don't cost much money. The put that costs money, especially when you have young children, are things like babysitting, childcare, that type of stuff. So what do we, what do we spend when we're abroad? First of all, friends stay at our home. We don't rent it. To me, a home is a home. It's special. It is memories. I can make money in other places. I choose to view my home as a sacred spot. The people staying there this year is a nanny who lives down the street working for a family for eight years, finally was able to get her husband residency in Canada. And so they're staying in our house while they're set up their lives together.
- [45:49]
A
Cool. So you're still paying the mortgage then?
- [45:51]
B
And we're still paying all the expenses in the mortgage. They take great care of our house, but also they're making memories in our home. That makes our home more special.
- [46:00]
A
Yeah.
- [46:01]
B
All other costs are about the same regardless of where we're living. You know, like entertainment, eating out, food prep, babysitting, groceries. They were both the same, so I kind of just ballped them. Both the same. There was an additional about $150,000 a year that we spend.
- [46:16]
A
Yeah.
- [46:17]
B
When we like six months abroad.
- [46:19]
A
Yeah.
- [46:20]
B
The school for the three kids, $11,000 a month. So.
- [46:24]
A
And that's. Is that just across wherever, whatever country, or is that with current schooling in Japan?
- [46:30]
B
With current schooling. So we're in a program called Boundless. It's Boundless Life. They operate in, I think, seven different cities. We were with them in Bali, we're with them in Japan. So that's according to them, I imagine, you know, if you were to source like different private schools, it could be more, it could be less, depending on where you are. So for the three kids, over the course of two semesters, you know, six months, 66,000 bucks, right?
- [46:52]
A
Yeah.
- [46:53]
B
On average, the homes that we rent wherever we're at is about $6,000 a month. We need a three bedroom. My mother in law, Alison's mom often travels and lives with us. She's here with us in Japan. So, you know, we have six humans, right? So we rent a three bedroom. So it's about 6,000amonth. It's about 25,000 bucks. I figure for six month period on flights and vehicles. Vehicles change wherever we're at. Like I said, it was motorbikes in Bali. It's, it's, it's e bikes here, plus trains in Japan. Flights are a lot, but you only really fly there, basically. And then you fly out and then a ballpark. Another about $25,000 or so over those six months for sightseeing. Like next week is golden week here in Japan. We're going to go down to Osaka and we're spending five days in Osaka. We'd be doing some of that kind of thing if we were at home in Toronto. But yeah, figure it's about 20, so. So if you add all of that up, it's about $150,000 a year on top of what we would otherwise spend. So the way that I did the math for you, here is base of $12,000 a month. And then I took that extra 150,000 over six months and I just spread it across 12 months, you're looking at about 22 to $25,000 a month spent is where we're at. Okay.
- [48:04]
A
In our conversation ahead of time last week you mentioned that one of your goals is to be able to disappear for a month and have no one notice. And I'm curious, it's a very specific metric. Where did that come from and what happened in life for that to become your definition of freedom?
- [48:23]
B
Not that I want to disappear, but I think the fewer people who rely on you, the more machines that you can build around you, the better. Like if I have a project that I want to focus on or if something happens that's unexpected where people need me, like, I don't know, my wife getting cancer, which happened, or my wife getting pregnant and being bedridden ill for two and a half months. And I take on a lot more of the household responsibilities. The only thing that I think you can expect with any degree of expectancy in this life is that at one point the unexpected is going to come and kick you in the teeth. I think it's very important to keep your cup half full because at one point something's going to come and you're going to be really happy that you have that extra space. It's very common to fill our cups to the brim. These days there's a lot of pressure to do that. Well, that's fine until something unexpected happens and you never know when that's going to happen, how it's going to be, right? But that's when life gets miserable. So look, I always work backwards. I find that my brain is really good at identifying an end state and then working backwards and building a plan to move forwards. So I identify my lifestyle properties, right? What do I, what do I want to be in place? Basically, I want to be able to spend a ton of time with my family, I want to lift weights and I want to write books. Like, like that's what I want to do. So let's work backwards and figure out how to make that happen. So I just, I just onboarded a five person team, cost $13,000 a month to basically produce and publish my content for me. And so I was able to finally delete all social media off of my phone. Now this isn't me saying that social media isn't important, this is me saying it's really important. But I don't, I don't buy into the fact that I need to be connected all of the time. And so we have an AI layer on the bottom of it. We have two content writers, we have a project manager, and we have two VAs. And I get one email a week that's in my inbox on Thursday morning. That email has all of the content for me to review, has any questions for me and FYIs. And I commit a half day to a day a week where I'm the last touch on every single piece of content that goes out. But I get one email a week and I go through it. I put on old school hip hop, going to see Wu Tang Clan here in Japan actually next week and just rip through it and edit it and then they take it and they schedule it. If there are questions personal for me in the DMs and stuff like that, they get screenshot, they get sent to me through telegram, because Telegram I only use for work, there's no notifications and
- [51:02]
A
it works wherever you are.
- [51:03]
B
So it works wherever you are. And I respond to the dm, to the VA who's sending it to me in Telegram and they copy and paste it Back to the DMs. My Stories is wherever I'm at. I take a picture and a caption and I text it to a va. I buy in that this stuff is important, but I don't accept that it's something that needs to diminish my quality of Life or ability to focus or presence with people I love.
- [51:31]
A
So that's a good segue to something I thought about with something you've written and I've been wrestling with.
- [51:37]
B
What's that?
- [51:38]
A
The idea of retirement. When I think of my threshold number, let's call it $10 million, I'm not there yet, but when I get there, I think of what I will do, not having to make money. And it looks a lot like whatever I want. And it doesn't look that much like work. But something you wrote. It's a calculation actually, and you kind of divulged this to me in our last conversation. It's in one of your books. Working 10 years longer reduces the required savings by something to the effect of 96%.
- [52:08]
B
It's insane.
- [52:09]
A
I think is obviously a very provocative claim. And I'm curious, is there something emotionally uncomfortable to you or even to the philosophy that you've built your framework around money about retirement? Or is retirement something entirely different to you than not working?
- [52:29]
B
Well, first, first, where that number and calculation comes from. All the credit to Derek Coburn wrote a fantastic book called let's Retire Retirement. Financial advisor, great guy. But the numbers of course change a little bit. But the calculation that he did is he said if you expect to work at 60 until you're 65 years old and then your income goes to zero and you're just pulling from your income, you need to save. And again, all the numbers change depending on how old you are. But the calculation that he gave is he said you have to save $4,000 a month, right? Which means that maybe you won't go out to as nice dinners, you're not going to take unpaid time off, et cetera. If you expect to work in some capacity until you're 75 years old, that generates even $1,000 a month in income, that number decreases by 96%. You only need to save $200 a month. And what that means is yo go out for that nice meal. Do what we do. We rent a huge cottage or house multiple times a year and we just invite our friends. We have a number of rules. One of them is book it and then invite them. Instead of saying, hey, do you want to do this? Do you want to do this? Do you want to do this? We have booked a six bedroom cottage on the water in the summer for this weekend. First come, first serve. You want it or not, right? You can book that you could spend the $12,000 and book that you can take that unpaid time off. You can maybe not Take that promotion that would take you away from your kids while they're young, whatever, Right? It's a very provocative calculation. Look, the odds that any of us that are listening to this, that are by our very nature entrepreneurial or thinking this way, that we're going to find a podcast like this, you're not going to stop making money, man. You might not be as aggressive or financially ambitious. You're going to make something when you're older. I mean, it's just going to happen. And so what I've done myself, my philosophy is this, is that we need a better definition of terms similar to, like, every guy. A friend is somebody that you met once at like, a colleague dinner, and a friend is somebody like, like, yo, we need. Like, like, we need a different term for buddy. Like, like, as it's, it's kind of the same. Your job is what you do for money. Your work is what you do for you. It is very important to understand the differences between these two things. Once you've made enough money in your job, it's important to stop that goal line from moving. When it comes to your work, though, you should never stop that goal line from moving. You'll never hit it. Continue to push that down the road as much as you possibly can. We're told growing up in North America that we should follow our passion. And I think that we should. But I think our passion should be our work, not our job. Because very often when our passion becomes our job and we rely on the money made from our work, it tends to diminish the love that we have for our passion. That's one of the benefits of living in all these other countries that I've had. Go to South Central America and live there and get to know the people there. They have deep rooted family values, they're physically ambitious, they're healthy for the most part. They don't really care about their job that much. They're proud of it. They do it. They show up every day. It's important. But their job is what they do for money. And then they have their hobby, the thing that they love on the other side of it, and their job feeds that, not the other way around. There's something about that. And I, and I, I'm not saying one way or the other is better, but I do think that it's a challenging conversation to have. And if you've reached the point where you've made enough money, yeah, you got to get that goal line to start moving. It doesn't mean you're not working you should absolutely work.
- [56:16]
A
That's great advice. I'd love to bring the ship in here for a landing by asking you if someone's listening to this podcast and they're wrestling with the tax game you mentioned. You know, people move into other countries to save, you know, oh, it's only 2% tax. You even said earlier, if you're not getting taxed here, you're getting taxed somewhere. What do you tell the person that, let's say they're in Canada right now and they feel the tax pressure and they're looking at Miami. What's your advice to that person?
- [56:46]
B
I mean, work backwards from your lifestyle properties. What do you want your day to look like? That's what we do in fitness. What do you want your body to look like? What you want your health to look like? Cool. Imagine that is the reality. Now work backwards. What needs to be in place in order for you to get there? Okay. Are you willing to do that or not? Be realistic. If you're not, we need to adjust the end state. If you are, then there's only one question left. Are you gonna do the fucking reps or are you not gonna do the fucking reps? That's, that's the first law of fitness. Figure out your goal. Figure out the reps to accomplish that goal. And it's a binary decision. You can do them or you're not. So it's not me saying, don't move to a tax free state. Instead it's me saying, what do you ultimately wanna be? What do you wanna be doing every day? What's the pace of your life? Who do you wanna be around? Okay, we're backwards.
- [57:35]
A
Yeah.
- [57:35]
B
What does that look like?
- [57:37]
A
Seems like you've figured that out more than a lot of people. A lot of people are still chasing for what's next. What's more, are not satisfied. When I hear you talk about your life, it sounds like you, you're satisfied. Like you, you have a full, rich life. What would you say to people who are can ever be satisfied? They can't ever get enough.
- [57:58]
B
Just find the right thing to chase. I decided that I wanted to build a profile in the authorship space and that's been really difficult. It's been really challenging, but it's been something to chase and it's been fun. What is it that you consume an unlimited amount of content around and you're never bored? That's probably the right thing for you to chase with your work. Not necessarily for your job, but that's a pretty good indicator of what I mean, I can listen and read an unlimited amount of books about. Books about writing about how other authors live about their. I owned a B2B SaaS platform called Quick Coach. It's the biggest professional loss I've ever had. I lost 1.4 million bucks on it. Well, it was stupid that I even did it. I couldn't even make it through a five minute YouTube video on SaaS. It bored out of my goddamn mind. Shouldn't have done that. Even though it was a good opportunity, the people who bought it from me, I mean, at a huge loss, are going to make millions on that thing, and I hope they do. So I'll say is it's not any different advice. It's know thyself. What do you naturally. What naturally appeals to you? What can you listen to? What do you read when nobody's looking? How can you figure out a way to challenge yourself with that and pursue that as much as possible and remove the money equation from it? Make your money elsewhere.
- [59:20]
A
That's great. It's great advice, John. This has been incredible. I appreciate your time. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, your frameworks, your philosophy on life. I think it's incredibly interesting that you travel like you do. People travel. Right. Travel is a novel concept. But what you're doing with your family every year, almost clockwork, and you're thinking thoughtfully about where your kids are going to go to school and even involving the older kids in the equation. I mean, I think it's just a very intentional way to build your life. I really appreciate you sharing that with us today.
- [59:51]
B
Yeah. This is stuff I never get to talk about, so this is fun. Thank you.
- [59:54]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, John.