From Young and Healthy to Heart Surgery and then Living a Full Life as a Digital Nomad

Amy Stone [00:00:02]:
Joel Oliver, welcome to the Art of Imperfect Adulting.

Joel Oliver [00:00:06]:
Hey, Amy, thank you for having me. I’m excited that this is something a little out of the ordinary in terms of types of podcasts that I do. So it’s nice.

Amy Stone [00:00:14]:
That’s good. That’s going to be fun. I’m going to try and shake it up for you and make it an interesting afternoon. Are you ready for a fun chat?

Joel Oliver [00:00:22]:
Yes.

Amy Stone [00:00:23]:
Let’s do it. All right. I begin every interview asking people what part of the world they’re in. And that’s kind of a funny question to ask you, but we’ll get into that later. But where are you now? Where do you call home?

Joel Oliver [00:00:35]:
Well, those are two different questions because I’m not really in a home. I don’t know if I. I guess technically I have a home, but I am in Bangkok, Thailand, right now, which I don’t consider my home, but for this period of months, it is my home, so.

Amy Stone [00:00:49]:
Oh, wow. That is. That is very exciting. All right, so what’s the time in Miami, Florida? What’s the time difference from between the east coast of the United States and Thailand? Do you know off the top of your head?

Joel Oliver [00:00:59]:
It’s 12 hours. I know it’s very well, because it’s so simple. It’s 12 hours exactly for Eastern time. So it’s 4am right now for me.

Amy Stone [00:01:07]:
Holy moly. Wow. Thank you for being up at 4am to chat with me. Is this the start of your day or the end of your day?

Joel Oliver [00:01:15]:
Well, I would love to tell you that I set an alarm and got out of bed just to do this conversation. But it’s funny because I have a bunch of clients. I mean, all of my business is focused in North America. I’ve had to just adjust my schedule living here. So I get up every afternoon around 3pm and go to bed around 7am so I’m about three hours from bedtime right now for me, but the sun will be rising when that happens.

Amy Stone [00:01:39]:
So you’ve turned into a night shift worker to be in that area. Okay, that’s very interesting. All right, so we’re off traffic already, but I’d love to learn a little bit about you as a person and your personal background before we dig into the topics we’re gonna talk about. So what I mean by that is tell us a little bit about yourself outside of work. Like, do you know, is the family, pets, anything that you want to share just to make a connection with the audience?

Joel Oliver [00:02:08]:
I wish I was more of a human and I could do that. I guess I work a lot. I just like working, but not always just on my own business, but going to the gym, working on some various skills. I started trying to do yoga recently, so I have very little time in my life for hobbies. I like doing karaoke a bit, but.

Amy Stone [00:02:30]:
Yeah, okay.

Joel Oliver [00:02:32]:
Yeah. I don’t have any family like that at this point. No kids or anything, so I’m kind of free to do whatever I feel like, and that usually comes back to work. I just. I’m not at the point in my life yet where I feel like I want to take a break or I haven’t. I’ve achieved enough that I can just chill. So very rarely do I just do nothing or do a hobby. I’m just always doing something productive.

Amy Stone [00:02:57]:
Got it. All right, so single? Single. No.

Joel Oliver [00:03:00]:
Yeah.

Amy Stone [00:03:00]:
Okay. Very good. All right, so now we’ll get to the topics that you proposed. I like to talk to people about choices they make, changes in their life, how it changes the path of their life. You pitched two things which we’re gonna talk about. Heart surgery and going full. Full digital Nomad. Do those sound like two fun things to talk about?

Joel Oliver [00:03:18]:
Absolutely.

Amy Stone [00:03:19]:
All right.

Joel Oliver [00:03:20]:
I always. People say, like, whatever the case, I always think of saying something as a joke or pranking a friend, but I don’t have the heart to do it. Like, when you just said that, I thought I should say, no, I don’t even. I think you mixed up our. My. My sheet with someone else, but I just can’t. I’m not even that, like, even for two seconds, I couldn’t do that. So I spoke today that I had that thought.

Amy Stone [00:03:40]:
I think you can lean into that sometimes. Depends on the person. If the person is an extemporaneous responder, I think I would have probably laughed and had a good time with it, but that is in line with my personality. I love sort of slapstick, off the cuff kind of things when they happen. And so I would have thought, especially because behind the scenes, you and I double checked the topics before we started, it would have been hilarious. Two minutes ago, it would have been hilarious. Like when you’re in a restaurant in the States and you place the order, they read it back to you, and then, you know, if it. If they messed it up, even after that, you’re like, wait a minute, we did this. You read it back. You should get it right. All right, so we’re gonna jump right in to the. The heavy stuff. Tell me and the listeners and the watchers about your heart surgery. What. What was the story there well, it.

Joel Oliver [00:04:31]:
Was a fairly big deal. And it’s something that sounds from the outside. If you hear that someone else has to have a heart surgery, you think, well, glad it’s not me. That sounds terrible. And, you know, for all my life up until that point, it was always someone else. Until it wasn’t. So it was. First, I’ll start with what it was. It was a mechanical valve. Well, it was a replacement of my existing valve with the mechanical one, a mitral valve. So the problem with the heart was as it pumps, one of the valves is not working properly. Meaning as it’s working, it’s not efficiently pumping blood around your body. It’s. It’s not supposed to do that. And it gets tired and worn out. So when that happens, they have several options. For me, they decided to put a mechanical one in. And this came after, I don’t know, seven or eight years of monitoring me. After a couple of minor episodes, I just go for a checkup every year just to make sure it’s not progressing. And I was actually right before this one. It was. I was 27 years old at this appointment. I felt great. I was hiking, I was doing all kinds of stuff. I said, this is not going to be a thing at all. Like, I feel fine. You know, it’s probably the best shape I’ve ever been in in my life. And I go to this appointment and the doctor says, yeah, we’re going to give you heart surgery. And I think I just turned, like, so pale trying to, you know, be brave and realize that, oh, this is going to be a really, like, this is real, and I have to do this. An interesting part about the whole process, though, is that this was a genetic thing. Mom had the same issue, and she had the surgery about a year before I got that news or something like that with the timeline. So I had already seen what it’s like to go through it. I knew about it. So it was just another person in the family going through this process. But thankfully, it turned out fine. And once I got recovered from that, I went on and lived my life. That was six years ago. And things are. Are quite good.

Amy Stone [00:06:31]:
All right, so that is. That is very interesting. So one of the questions I had about that was whether or not I did not know what the story behind the heart surgery was. And there’s a bunch of different kinds of heart surgery, and I. But one of the things that I wondered was whether or not it was something that you had a hereditary component and therefore some warning to be on the lookout for it.

Joel Oliver [00:06:58]:
Well, yeah, so the interesting thing there is that I did have that brief bit of warning, but otherwise, no, because they only discovered it so in my mother’s life a lot later than they found it in me. So it’s not like for all these years we knew it was a potential issue. It was only the six to eight years before I got the news. Like, that’s when I first got a couple of episodes where they figured out, okay, we gotta watch you.

Amy Stone [00:07:24]:
Okay?

Joel Oliver [00:07:24]:
And then it wasn’t even until years after that that my mom started having issues. So. Yeah, it wasn’t a long term thing. No, not really, no.

Amy Stone [00:07:33]:
So my dad had heart disease and as soon when he. So when that happened to him, his doctor, I will always remember, said, you know, you have just moved from the lowest risk because I was young to the highest risk because of the heredity. And it’s a terrible bit of news to get at that time, but it was also incredibly helpful because I was able to factor it into some. Not all of the choices I should make, but some of the choices I made about how I live my life. But in your case, you. So what did the. What did the episodes. What were they like? Were you like, out of energy, dizzy?

Joel Oliver [00:08:07]:
They. It was what they call atrial fibrillation, where your heart rhythm gets all messed up. So I was. It was. It was quite scary at that point when those first ones happened. And it’s like you can feel your heart. It’s kind of just gibberish. It’s not beating in a proper rhythm. Like, whoa, this is crazy. So I’d go to the hospital twice for that over the years, and then that’s when they realized something was not right. But low energy is one of the symptoms. It was difficult for me to tell because it’s just how you feel. So I don’t really have any comparison to what low energy is. I just felt normal and went to the gym and some workouts. I didn’t feel anything severe. My mom kind of did. But yeah, for me it was, like I said, kind of a surprise when they gave me that news.

Amy Stone [00:08:54]:
The. Yeah, because you were young, so you were 20 in the 20s when you started having things pop up.

Joel Oliver [00:09:00]:
Yeah, early 20s when we first got wind of it.

Amy Stone [00:09:03]:
And you don’t really know. I don’t know what you were like when you’re in your early 20s, but I don’t know that there was a normal state for my, like, body in my 20s. Like, you’re sort of pushing, you know, burning the candle at both ends. You Know, doing all kind of things, not a lot of sleep. I don’t know that a 20 year old is the best at, you know, reporting an unusual symptom. I don’t even know if I had a doctor actually when I was 20. I was still in college when I was 20. So it would have been like the school clinic.

Joel Oliver [00:09:28]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that’s why it takes something like that to put you in the hospital and go, oh, all right, something’s wrong.

Amy Stone [00:09:36]:
Yeah, I didn’t know anything.

Joel Oliver [00:09:37]:
I ignore it.

Amy Stone [00:09:38]:
Yeah, I didn’t know anything. I remember, like, I think back to all the things that I, you know, just all the radio illnesses I had when I was that age. I didn’t know what any of them were, like a strep throat, you know, they. Nothing. I learned all of that through going to the doctor and having them tell me. And those are all so low key. Versus you were going through something that was a major life change. So scary day. Is this a heart surgery where they can go through magically with very small implements or did they open you all the way up?

Joel Oliver [00:10:08]:
I had the full one. In some places you can get it done less invasive. So I didn’t have that. But at the same time, the surgeon told me he wanted to have the most options possible. So for that reason, it’s like, you’re young, we want to just get this done once, get it over with. So I have the most options. This is what we’re going to do. So, yeah, it’s full scar and everything.

Amy Stone [00:10:32]:
27 and full, full open heart. That is. That is a massive, massive, massive change. What support? So you were young. What support did you have when you were going through this?

Joel Oliver [00:10:46]:
My family, thankfully. And you know, another thing too, like some people, I’m so grateful because although, as I mentioned up front, it can seem scary if you hear someone else going through it. I wouldn’t want that to be me. They told me this is a 99% chance of success. So it was, you know, essentially no risk, let’s call it. There was really nothing to worry about. The guy does these all the time. It’s not a big deal. But that doesn’t make you really feel a whole lot better when you’re lying down, ready to go in there.

Amy Stone [00:11:19]:
No, it’s terrifying.

Joel Oliver [00:11:21]:
Yeah, it’s a big thing.

Amy Stone [00:11:22]:
So 99. Even with the anesthesia. Anesthesia. Because like every, like it’s like, like just the anesthesia. They send it to you, they show you, they’re like, there’s, you know, this risk and it’s like, that’s what the.

Joel Oliver [00:11:34]:
Number he told me. Maybe I don’t know about that doctor, but my part, I’m going to do perfectly.

Amy Stone [00:11:40]:
No, that’s very good. That’s very, very good. My. My dad actually had a thing called beating heart bypass, and which they operate while the heart is still moving, which is a really crazy thing to think about. And it was 50%. I had to sign the paperwork for him as his medical proxy. And it’s one of the. It was like a. I. It was not a good day to be Amy signing that paperwork. But so that. So 99%. I would absolutely do it. That’s like no risk. But even when I had Lasik, I feel like there were more. It was. It was higher than that. It was like, you know, that 99. That’s a very confident surgeon. And that’s exactly what I want in my surgeon. I want, like, a surgeon who has the biggest God complex that can possibly. I want them totally confident when they walk in.

Joel Oliver [00:12:25]:
Yes, yes. And I will. I’ll circle back to the answer of your question about the support, but the point I was making on that was I was so grateful that it all went so well because I, you know, I talked to another, a woman that hosts a heart surgery podcast, actually, and she had this just terrible journey of doctors and fighting to get checked properly and a lot of, like, multiple surgeries. So although my situation can sound bad to someone who didn’t have a heart surgery, I’m so grateful that it actually went well. Like, I came out fine. I did the. Especially at a younger age. My recovery was relatively fine, and I bounced back, and it’s. Everything’s good. You know, thankfully, it’s been good for the past six years, but support system was my family. I had a dog who I had to put outside repeatedly. Well, I didn’t have to because of them, but a lot of just lying on the couch, I was still running my business from my hospital bed, from my couch at home. My brother is my business partner, so he was taking a lot of extra work and that kind of thing. But, yeah, just having your family around to help you with some meals and make sure you’re all right. That’s it. I would have been lost without them.

Amy Stone [00:13:39]:
So with hindsight. Right. There’s a second part of the support question which is designed exactly for people who are listening and making plans about their life. And you don’t know when you’re going to be making these decisions, like, in the future. But with the benefit of hindsight, Is there any kind of support or information or research or any of those things that you can look back and say, oh, you know what? I wish I had had that, or that would have been good.

Joel Oliver [00:14:04]:
One thing I never even thought of to look up until after the fact is, with the Internet these days, I gotta stop saying that. Cause it’s. You know, it makes me sound old now. It’s been around for a long time. But what we have, the World Wide Web. Yeah. It’s this crazy thing. Facebook groups, like the communities that are out there online. And like, I just mentioned this other PODC that was a heart surgery podcast where people are sharing their stories. So whereas once upon a time, you didn’t really have much knowledge except to go to your doctor and see what they said, now there’s a Facebook group and you can post. There’s all these people posting. I’m afraid I’m going in on this date. What do you guys think? Can you share your story or having this question? So there’s groups on Facebook with thousands of members, all with the specific problem that I had. So I didn’t actually know that beforehand, or I would have looked in there and maybe made myself feel a bit better. But I. I’ve joined them since. And I always make a point to post in there when other people are going through the same situation. But, yeah, I guess my. My point is having that knowledge that you can actually look this up because it’s a simple concept, but I didn’t even think to look it up.

Amy Stone [00:15:15]:
No, that’s actually a really good suggestion. And it applies, like, across a bunch of different things. That’s a. A very, very good suggestion because that is both the best and the worst use of social media groups, specifically Facebook. Right. So, like, it’s fantastic when you go in, you’re like, you know, I want to join a group of people who only kayak in purple kayaks. And you find other people who share that with you. Right. And then the. The worst is when you go into a group of let’s Huge. And you’re like, hey, I tried this thing, and it doesn’t work. And the 10 people immediately come back, and you’re like, you should know, and you should read first. And that’s a dumb question.

Joel Oliver [00:15:52]:
Like, oh, this is why I don’t go on here.

Amy Stone [00:15:56]:
Yeah, exactly. I don’t like oranges. Well, pineapples are great. And you’re like, that’s not helpful. So, yeah, the best and the worst. All right, so very good. So that is the story, which that had to have been a pretty over. You know, the. It’s like a total of 13 years from when you were having symptoms. You have the jarring experience of being told, hey, you need. It’s time to have this procedure. Watching your mom go through it, all of those things, how did, how did that shift, like, the way you live your life?

Joel Oliver [00:16:31]:
I thought it might give me a big epiphany like, oh, you have a second chance. You know, go do everything you’ve always wanted. But I kind of try to already live my life that way. I’m not perfect at it, but things just. The days blend together. You kind of just get back to normal. So there wasn’t like a big thing where I came out of that surgery and said, I gotta make some changes. I’ve gotta make amends with past friendly. I just, I try to live healthy. That definitely. Even though it wasn’t a health related thing, it was something that came in my head more as I aged and learned more. Just the importance of eating well and keeping active, that sort of thing that’s in my head. But I’m grateful. I definitely have the mindset of being grateful to be alive. You know, there’s things that could be better in life and I just have to remind myself, at least you’re here. One of the limitations with the surgery is I have to take a medication every day and there’s certain foods that affect it. So I have to be careful what I eat. And I can’t just eat whatever I want. I’ve got to keep that in mind. There’s some supplements I can’t take, procedures I can’t have. So, you know, I start losing my hair as I get to the end of my 20s, and I’m thinking, I wish, I wish I could have that thing to put the hair back on my head. But I can’t because of the heart surgery. But, you know, you could not be here, Joel, so who cares? Move on. You don’t even need to worry about that. Most of this stuff, like that example, like the hair, who cares? I just shave my head now I look cooler. I should, you know, like, if I could have got the procedure or didn’t have this stopping me, maybe I’d be thinking about that all the time. And it just forced me to move on and like, face what actually matters in life and prioritize, which I guess is a great thing, I think so.

Amy Stone [00:18:11]:
So in Even though you had a good recovery, this was a major operation and you were in the hospital, is there any piece of you that you Said, because you talked about the health and the nutrition, is there any piece of you that is generally like, all right, you know, that was really great and I’m thankful for it, but I’d rather not do that again. So let’s see if we can stay out of the hospital for major operations.

Joel Oliver [00:18:34]:
I hope so. There’s things that are just out of your hands, right? Like, I’m as healthy as I can be. I hope that this holds up and it’s fine. But, yeah, I prefer to stay out of there at the same time. Everything happens for a reason is kind of cliche, but at the very least, you take everything that happens to you in life and learn from it, and it just shapes the character, the person that you are today. So even things that have been bad in life, I rarely will ever say I wish they never happened because otherwise I wouldn’t even be who I am now. So that’s just what my journey was. It made me into this person and I, you know, I can’t wish it away. There’s no it. There’s no taking it away. It happened. I hope it doesn’t happen again, but I’m just enjoying every day that I have at this point.

Amy Stone [00:19:19]:
All right, so did you want to be a nomad before this all started or what is the. What Is there any connection at all between Joel the heart surgery survivor and Joel the nomad?

Joel Oliver [00:19:36]:
Not really. There was just some things I had to discover as I aged. And, you know, I was still relatively young when this was all happening, but I started making some money online at one point doing voiceover work. And I realized that’s, wow, like how that’s great. What else could I do online? And so that’s where my existing business came from. I started doing that, built up my income to a point where I could do work fully online. It was amazing. And at this point I was just sitting home because I never had a dream of having a business. Although I was kind of crafty and I liked that entrepreneur mindset. It just, I was like, you could just go get a job. I guess one, I don’t know, just never crossed my mind that that could be a reality. So I started making full time money online. I’m in Canada in a house that I bought, thinking that I was going to live this life as well. Oh, I don’t really want to live here, but I’m here. I guess that’s okay. I’ll buy a house, you know, like, not really intentional about anything. So that’s happening. And I start, I’ve been doing a little bit of travel here and there, and I just realized one day it’s winter in Canada. You can fly somewhere. Why don’t I just fly somewhere warm? What am I doing? And then I. So over the years, I went for a short time, then a longer time than a longer time, and then evolved into being a nomad. But no, there was no real connection there in those two things. It was just something I realized over time and then started to embrace.

Amy Stone [00:21:07]:
Very interesting. All right, so there’s like a million. I want to. I want to dig now more into the. Your Nomad style. You’re in Thailand now, which is very far away from me. I made the discovery by totally back to the topic of cold and warm. I made that discovery when I was in, like, college. Like, I moved from cold place to a very warm place. And my joke used to be, it’s like, I know that 250 years ago, we didn’t know that if you drove south, if you walked south, it would get warmer. But now we do know, and it is a question why people don’t do that all the time. Turns out not everybody likes hot weather, but. All right, so the Nomad. There’s a million different ways to nomad. How often are you moving around?

Joel Oliver [00:21:47]:
Well, that’s. And you said you’re in Florida. Is that where you are?

Amy Stone [00:21:50]:
Yeah.

Joel Oliver [00:21:50]:
Okay. My very first warm winter trip was Fort Lauderdale, and then I did Miami on that same trip. So I love Florida. Obviously, the US Was close. Let me get.

Amy Stone [00:22:00]:
We are like, you’re out of. You’re probably not watching the US Weather. We’re having, like, a cold snap this week. And it’s. They put the map out of the United States and it’s a joke. It’s like. And they circle. They circle Florida and it’s like Florida is opting out. But there, there were a couple inches of snow. A couple inches of snow in Pensacola this morning. So I don’t know how long that’ll last, but that doesn’t happen all the time. But we’re not cold. We’re gray here today, and I think it’s 60, which is pretty much as cold as we get these days. Used to get down in the 40s, but we don’t. We don’t get that cold anymore. But yeah, Miami, Florida, where I call home. So. Yeah. So how, how often do you move around? I mean, it might change, but one.

Joel Oliver [00:22:41]:
Thing I learned is I don’t want to move too frequently because although I like the lifestyle, there are, there’s logistics Involved. So you move to a new place, especially countries is a whole other thing because you got to deal with currency and languages. But even in just if it’s all the same language that you speak, you got to find out where’s the nearest grocery store. You’ve got to research your Airbnb, the transit. There’s a whole bunch of things you’ve got to learn and you can learn those for say, a handful of cities and then just repeat those cities and then that takes away from that extra work as well. But I made it a minimum of a month anywhere I went. And then I would sometimes I do two or three months every now and then I might have a quick week stop or two weeks, something like that. But that’s where I landed. I had some time in the last. However long I’ve been doing this, five or six years as well. Where I settled for a bit longer. I bought a rental property in Canada. So I lived there for a year to deal with that. Tried to get some roots down to some extent. So I kind of have half a home. Because the nomad life is fun, but it’s also a contrast the non nomad life. So when you’re just sitting in one place, you might find it adventurous to nomad. But after you do that for a while, not everybody but me, I think, you know what? I wish I just had one house and a car and a normal life. So go back and forth. But this. Right now I’m in Thailand for about four months. Probably do six after that in Canada. But yeah, that was just my experience. Some people are bouncing around all the time. Just like I said, I don’t find that efficient. Especially if you’re trying to really work. Depends on your work schedule. I just have a heavy workload. I don’t want to be sitting in airports drinking wine all the time. Like once every few months is. Is enough.

Amy Stone [00:24:28]:
Yeah. No, because you’re running a business and doing all of those things. So how did you. Let’s. When you. So you owned a house, you were living in Canada. And then walk me through like the highlights of making this decision and what. Where did your stuff go?

Joel Oliver [00:24:46]:
Well, I was always the type of person that didn’t own too much stuff. I just don’t feel connection with it. I’d rather experiences than stuff. So I’m not really into consumerism. I don’t buy a whole lot of stuff. I don’t care about brand names. So I did obviously have a house. So I had some things in there, but it was very minimal. I Sold everything that wasn’t really special to me. The stuff that was my mom. Well, my, my parents were there, so I just put it all at their house, so that wasn’t a big deal. I actually Airbnb my house for a while because there was a transition between where I was staying in it less and less. I saw an opportunity for money, but yeah, stuff wise, that was it. And I was eventually just living out of a suitcase. You forego some of the conveniences and luxuries of home when you do that. You know, One of the first things I got when I settled down again was a nice adjustable desk, standing desk, nice chair so I could adjust my work position when you’re traveling all the time. Like I’m at a, I don’t know, $20 Ikea kitchen table right now or something that the chairs hurt. So it’s, it depends where you stay, but there are some bonuses to living in one place. But, yeah, stuff wise, I just, I didn’t really have that much stuff to begin with and I just pared it down into a suitcase. And you’d be surprised what you can get by living with.

Amy Stone [00:26:08]:
Well, I remember there was a phase of my life where everything I owned fit in my car, you know, like, and I would move like every six months, like, you know, or a year. However, well, when leases ran out, roommates change roommates and just move from place to place. So I do have a memory of that, but now, like, I have a house full of stuff and all the stuff that goes with it. So you’re sitting in your house in Canada and you think to yourself, self, what I’m going to do is I’m going to become a nomad. How did this conversation happen in your head? Like, how did, how did you make the decision? What was the first? I mean, it sounds, sounds like what it actually was was you started with a trip and the trip grew into longer stuff. But how did you make the decision?

Joel Oliver [00:26:44]:
Or did you realize I started just going on very short trips just because I could. Then I extended it. Well, I’ll stay a month. Oh, that was cool. And then every time I would end up back home, I would be saying to myself, why are you home? Especially in the winter? So it wasn’t this big decision. It was just that gradual. Longer, longer and longer trips. And like I said, where it finally hit the point where I thought, I’m not even living in my house anymore, so let’s just get rid of that. At this point, I was well on the road. But yeah, it was, it was just something that gradually happened.

Amy Stone [00:27:20]:
All right. And then how often do you go, you still have family in Canada? Or, like, is your brother traveling with you? Or. He’s back in Canada.

Joel Oliver [00:27:27]:
He actually lives in Thailand. And that’s why I came here, because I’m hanging out with him all the time. Now. I do have family in Canada in my original home, which is not what my kind of current Canadian home is. So even when I’m in Canada, I’m not always with my family, but I try to get home to them at least once a year, which I really value family time. So I’m glad to be here with my brother. But that’s one downside of this, is I wish I was around my family more because life’s short. But at the same time, I can’t just. This is the reason why I left my hometown. Like, I can’t just stay here forever. I got a life to live. So as much as I’d love to be with them, just, I gotta go do something else.

Amy Stone [00:28:08]:
So I think that is the choice, right? The choice for you was two sides, right? You were choosing to Nomad, but there was also another thing that was pushing you, which is that you were not feeling fulfilled where you were in Canada.

Joel Oliver [00:28:19]:
Absolutely.

Amy Stone [00:28:20]:
Yeah. Just.

Joel Oliver [00:28:21]:
And that excitement when you just realize that you could do this on the road, you can be visiting new places, meeting new people. It’s just a whole other word, literally a whole other world out there that you couldn’t explore versus just having your. Your home, your friends, your life, which is. There’s nothing wrong with that. But especially as, you know, early 20s guy, when you realize, what the heck am I doing here? I could be in Las Vegas. Yeah, I’m gonna go there. You know, it’s just. It’s the obvious choice for. For me, it was.

Amy Stone [00:28:51]:
Very obvious choice. All right, that’s very good. Okay, so I am working on wrapping this up, and I’m going to do the. One of the most ungraceful segues into a new topic. So you’re actually in the podcasting business. So tell us, tell the audience what you do, how people can find you. That kind of stuff.

Joel Oliver [00:29:12]:
Yeah. So we have a podcast production company. I call it. We help podcasters, specifically in the health and wellness space, produce their podcasts. So they’re typically busy entrepreneurs. They’ve got stuff to do, but they’re using podcasts to generate leads and revenue for their business. So we come in, we take all that workflow of the podcast off their hands. They’re still doing the Recordings, the interviews. We do everything else. So if people that are not familiar with podcasts, there’s a lot to do behind the scenes, like write up the show notes and do the audio editing, that kind of thing. There’s a lot of steps. So we do all that for them. Just a nice one stop, shop, easy solution so they can focus on the recording and we do all the tech stuff. So that’s what our company does. It’s called East Coast Studio, and I’ve been doing that for almost 10 years at this point. I started as a freelancer, but, yeah, it’s scary how time flies.

Amy Stone [00:30:03]:
That’s amazing. That’s fantastic. I love that.

Joel Oliver [00:30:06]:
You mean to derail into a sad, sad thought about life there. You asked me to talk about the company.

Amy Stone [00:30:13]:
No. Yeah. So I said it was an ungraceful segue. It’s like, all right, we’ve talked about being a nomad, we’ve talked about heart surgery. Now we’re going to loop back and pull it all together because your story is different from what you do. Who we are is different than what we do most of the time, even when they look like they’re the same. So I appreciate you sharing the stories of those things you actually have for anybody who’s listening. I tried to look this up recently for somebody else that I was interviewing. There’s a really well known statistic that 8 out of 10 adults want to write a book. And I was trying to look that up for podcasting because, you know, the barriers to entry are gone. Right? Like, anybody can pull it out and do these things for writing a book, for starting a podcast. But I did not find a statistic for how many people want to start a podcast. The statistics are all like, there’s millions and millions of podcasts. I don’t know if you have any idea or if you’ve seen it, but anyway, you do have a trial offer. If anybody listening is saying to themselves, amy does it. It can’t be that hard. I’ll do it too.

Joel Oliver [00:31:17]:
Yeah, yeah, they can say. I mean, I’m always happy to chat anyway. I’m not. I’m not even here to. I don’t want to sell anything. That’s questions. They’re just curious about. Feel free to connect through the show notes and let me know. But yeah, we have a service where you can essentially try everything that we offer on a single episode, which just makes it nice and easy. You can get a feel for how it is to work with us. So we have a 50 offer off offer on that which we’ll have the link in the show notes. If anyone is interested in trying it, thanks to you, they will get that $50 discount off giving that a try.

Amy Stone [00:31:51]:
Yeah, and I put it in the show notes. But the easiest way to redeem this and all of the offers is to make sure you’re signed up as part of the fabulous imperfect adulting email community. Because then it’s just in your inbox and you click on it and easy peasy, there you go. So we’re going to wrap up and I’m going to ask you three questions, all right? Rapid fire, just for fun, not intense.

Joel Oliver [00:32:13]:
You might have to give me five minutes to think of an answer for each of these.

Amy Stone [00:32:16]:
You know, everybody always says, these are not that hard. These are not that hard. All right, which do you enjoy more, books or movies? And what is the last thing that you watched, listened to, or read?

Joel Oliver [00:32:29]:
That’s a good question. Well, I don’t really ever watch movies. I have like three or four movies that I’ve seen in my life that I like. Maybe every 10 years, I’ll give them a watch. I don’t have any need for any new movies. I’m just busy. I don’t know, it’s. I know. I just kind of got out of anything fiction. Now I know that not all movies are fiction, but I don’t know, I just don’t feel that it’s time well spent, so I just never really get into it. Books, I’ve read quite a bit. I don’t even do that much these days. I just find YouTube videos more efficient. I’ll do audiobooks sometimes.

Amy Stone [00:33:02]:
Yeah.

Joel Oliver [00:33:03]:
But yeah, I still love to learn. I just don’t find that I am engaged by books that much. But to answer the question of what, this is going to make you laugh because I told you how serious I am about work. The last thing that I watched was actually some Fail army videos, which is very rare for me. If I have a guest over or something, I just like to put it on the TV and laugh. So, yes, a guilty pleasure of mine. On occasion, I will indulge in a little Fail Army.

Amy Stone [00:33:32]:
Okay. All right. Very good. So when you’re watching the how to stuff and the learning stuff on YouTube, what speed do you play back?

Joel Oliver [00:33:39]:
That’s a good question. Every now and then, I will speed it up. But you know what? I don’t know if you notice this or not, but I talk relatively quickly and it’s just if I get excited, my. This is how quickly my brain moves. I talk fast But I’ve been working and I can sometimes talk slower. Like, I probably just started doing. I. I’ve been working to talk slower. It’s an ongoing challenge. So I thought when I’m watching videos on increased speed, this is not helping me talk any slower. So I made a point to not watch them on increased speed. Although, yes, arguably it. It’s more efficient. But if a person in the video is talking very slow, then I’ll speed it up.

Amy Stone [00:34:21]:
I’ll speed it up. Yeah, I have, I have. I am. I’m absolutely, like, depend. If the person is a rapid talker, I’m also a rapid talker. So if they’re a rapid talker, it might not be too much. But so much of what is on video, like, I will skim when I read to try and find where I’m going. And then I’ll go back and pay attention. And I do the same thing with video. So I’ll have it like, sort of zipping along and then I. Oh, stop and go back and find what I’m looking for. So I am an absolute speed up type person. All right, so as a nomad, here we go. What is something? And I’m cheating on my own rules that I made for myself. Cause I’m not supposed to be related to the interview. But what is something, a travel thing that you don’t want to be without? What’s something that you always make sure you have?

Joel Oliver [00:35:07]:
There’s got to be a better answer to this than my laptop or a whole bunch of chargers. But that is. I have so many chargers that I carry with me. It’s charging cables. You. Yeah, that’s actually a good one, is I have a million chargers with me because they can get lost. You can have a situation pop up where your battery’s dead. I try, especially after so much experience traveling, try to plan for and avoid any potential problems that may arise. So you prepare as much as you can. And that’s a big one. Don’t be showing up at the airport with your phone on 2%. And then you lost the cable or it’s in your suitcase. You know that that doesn’t work. So I have charging cables poked everywhere. I have mints poked everywhere. That’s my insight.

Amy Stone [00:35:58]:
No, that’s a good one. Better than, like the travel pillow, which.

Joel Oliver [00:36:02]:
Is also no travel pillow. I don’t go a travel pillow. I sit there with my sore neck and show everybody how tough I am.

Amy Stone [00:36:09]:
All right, very good. All right. What. So you’re more of an international traveler, but like, when you were doing like a road trip. What’s your favorite road trip? So neck.

Joel Oliver [00:36:18]:
Good question. First, let me give you this first. I have only been to two countries. Well yeah, let’s say two countries outside of Canada and North America. Most of my travel was in North America because I don’t like to fly 17 hour flight to get over here. I really don’t want to face that ever again. You know, part of me wants to just stay here. But yeah, I’m not that international favorite snack. Depends what day you get me on. Because I really am health minded. But sometimes I’ll just cave. Like if I’m in the 711 here and there’s a pastry with a discount sticker like oh well it’s, it doesn’t count. It’s got a discount on it, you know. So fruit or nuts is my go to on a road trip.

Amy Stone [00:36:59]:
Fruit or nuts?

Joel Oliver [00:37:00]:
Fruit that’s you can eat with one hand.

Amy Stone [00:37:02]:
Yes. Fruit on a road trip is a, is a bold move because the, the shrink wrapped apple from Owawa or you know, a truck stop can go either way. Right. Could be great. Could be. Really could be very, very old.

Joel Oliver [00:37:18]:
Yeah. I prefer a fruit with no remnants. Like well, banana is okay but like apple has a core or anything with a pit. Grape. Well, the grape. If you prepare the grapes, you just eat them and there’s nothing left. I don’t want to have like decomposing rotting fruit in my car until there’s a place again to stop. So I’m an overthinker, but this is what goes on inside my head.

Amy Stone [00:37:41]:
No, but that’s the reason I said the road trip. Because people sometimes are very, very particular. Like so when we road trip in my family, every person in the family has their go to snack and the longer the road trip. Right. The rules, you know, kick in because no road trip snacks are usually not very healthy. So like you’ll start the road trip and you’ll be like, oh yeah, we’re gonna not have any unhealthy things in day three. It’s like Twizzler.

Joel Oliver [00:38:07]:
Yeah, well, and it’s good to have a variety too. So this may help because if you think I’m just going to bring a couple things, then you get bored with that. You pull into a store and end up with some candy maybe, I don’t know.

Amy Stone [00:38:18]:
That’s the other thing with the road trip. The snack bag that comes from home and the placement of the cooler in the car.

Joel Oliver [00:38:24]:
Yeah. I’ve started road trips with say a bag of cashews like a big bag, and I think that’s good. But you cannot eat a whole bag of those. You just. It’s too much. Oh, man, what was I thinking? I thought this was a good idea, but now I need some other nuts or some fruits. And, yes, bring a variety as well.

Amy Stone [00:38:41]:
Bring a variety. There we go. Road trip advice. That’s it. Joel, Oliver, thank you for being a wonderful guest today.

Joel Oliver [00:38:49]:
Thank you, Amy.