One On One with Mark Murphy

Today I have the pleasure of welcoming to the podcast Mark Murphy.

Besides from being absolutely hysterical and maybe a tad bit crazy at times, Mark is a well-known name in the travel industry.

Matter of fact, you may recognize Mark from his appearances on Fox News and the Today Show.

Not to mention his best-selling books on Amazon.

I caught up with Mark while he was sitting outside of a Starbucks while vacationing in Colorado to get his take on the latest happenings in the world of travel with the coronavirus, as well as funny things like how he feels about face masks.

And we even rehashed an old story about him sending me an awesome shattered coffee mug.

So I hope you enjoy the podcast.

I did learn one thing when interviewing Mark.

You never hit the stop record button.

Because as soon as I did, he busted out with the funniest thing ever.

And I want to share it with you.

So all you have to do, go to the show notes below, follow the link, join the group on Facebook at the Lowdown on Life and Travel Insiders.

And without any further delay, let's get on to the show.

Here's Mark Murphy.

Hey guys, I am in the studio today.

Well, not technically in the studio, because we are recording remotely, but I am joined by none other than Mark Murphy.

Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me, Kevin.

Ah man, well, thank you.

Thank you.

Well, I think most of us in the uh travel industry, like myself, know you very well.

But how would some other people who maybe aren't travel advisors know who Mark Murphy is?

SPEAKER_00: Well, I do a lot of commentary uh and have done over the years for different outlets from Fox News to CNN to the Today Show.

Pretty much every network I've done commentary for local as well as national.

So they may have seen me there.

I'm very passionate about travel and travel advisors.

And so I make it a point when there's an incident, whether it's COVID, which is something that, you know, is is the gift that keeps on giving to the travel industry, or it was Zika, or it was Ebola, or, you know, terrorism attacks, you name it.

I'm always getting called and always happy to respond with the facts as opposed to emotion and people just having certain feelings.

I I like to cut to the chase and say, hey, this is what's really going on.

This is what you really have to be concerned with.

And most times you don't have anything to be concerned with other than the hype of the news media trying to make news out of something that really shouldn't be that newsworthy.

SPEAKER_02: Ah, so you're trying to tell me you don't build into the hype that we hear on the news every day?

SPEAKER_00: The clickbait, not in a million years.

You know, and it's ironic how it changes in the case of COVID, you know, most recently we saw that you get one instruction, then that instruction would change to another instruction, and that would change to another instruction, and you don't know which way is up as a traveler or as a consumer, so you hunker down, and then you realize Governor Cuomo said that two-thirds of the people that were recently infected were hunkering down the entire time.

And then you start to say, well, then why does that make sense?

But they continue to tell you to hunker down.

So you you you figure that one.

SPEAKER_02: You gotta love it, don't you?

You gotta love it.

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't think they don't know their ass from their elbow.

That's the problem.

SPEAKER_02: That's right, that's right.

Well, well, you also, in addition to appearing on different news segments and stuff, you also, I mean, your your past goes back pretty deep in the travel industry.

I mean, you've owned very successful companies that you know, most of my that I'm referring to as travel poles.

SPEAKER_00: Travelpulse.com, yeah.

Um, over the years, basically looked at the marketplace and and to be fair, I I've owned a media company that focuses on travel, right?

I've never worked for a travel supplier or a destination.

I've always been in the media communications sphere, but always always focused on travel.

And what we saw years ago was this thing called the internet, and the traditional guys that had been around in the space for years, for decades, really hadn't adapted, and that was the advent of travelpulse.com.

And then we added additional brands to meet the needs initially of travel advisors, which I hate that term, to be frank.

I know that that's sort of the new thing, American Society of Travel Advisors as opposed to travel agents.

The irony is most consumers will search for a travel agent five to ten times more than they will ever search for a travel advisor.

So it is kind of odd that that's what the uh industry uses, but at the same time, that's kind of what they're trying to go with.

So it is what it is, and uh, you know, there's there's a tangent.

That's the ADHD kicking in.

That's the ADHD.

I just kind of went off on a tangent.

SPEAKER_02: But but those tangents are why are why we love you, Mark.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a blessing and a curse in many ways.

A blessing and a curse.

SPEAKER_02: Of course, of course.

Well, you're also, in addition to that, I know some people may even know you from your uh best-selling books as well.

SPEAKER_00: One was kind of kind of just a fun book called Travel and Scripted.

I wrote that about seven, eight years ago, and it was really about these wacky experiences I had with my video crew shooting video all over the world.

That's one of the things we uh did.

And it's funny, it's irreverent, I curse in it, and you either love it and you give me five stars, or you hate it and you think I'm a narcissistic asshole and you give me one star.

Because it says if you're offended by, you know, curse words, you know, this and then the people, if you want travel advice, this book has zero travel advice in it, like zero.

It's really just telling funny stories.

It's a it's like a collection of short stories.

And then I got a little more serious with a book called Travel Forward because I felt like travel is the thing that brings us together, not divides us, and helps us understand different cultures.

And I used a lot of different examples, and one that I think is really apropos today is it doesn't matter where you come from, it matters where you're going.

And I heard that in a speech somewhere, and I was like, it just resonated with me.

So instead of victimhood, it's like uh grab the bull by the horns instead of saying, oh my, you know, oh my god, my wife got MS, multiple sclerosis, oh my god, whoa, whoa with us, what are we gonna do?

We said, F it.

How do we tackle it?

How do we make sure you're as healthy as possible?

You know, how do we live our life today?

And those are travel forward moments.

And I wrote a book that's kind of like a workbook, it's kind of like a self-help book.

And uh again, it's kind of like a half a book.

It's not like I sat down and wrote a novel, for instance.

SPEAKER_02: Of course, of course.

But that's awesome.

That's awesome.

And I really love the whole the theme behind that book.

And, you know, it definitely is kind of goes back to that kind of chintzy way of saying, you know, like travel changes us, you know, but it does through the different experiences and the people you meet.

It's just, you know, that's that's what makes traveling so amazing.

SPEAKER_00: Because you experience history and you experience it, you just don't read about it.

And I think that that's critical.

It's like, so for instance, in America, everybody wants to erase history because it's not politically correct for today's society, let's say, and people are offended by certain statues and things.

And I get that, I totally understand why that could be considered offensive.

But if you actually think back to, let's say, why did they put, you know, a statue of a Confederate general, you know, in Richmond, Virginia, they put it there because we had a civil war and it was unifying as a way to say, hey, you know what?

It was a terrible thing, but you know what, let's bring the people together as opposed to keeping them apart.

And it also teaches our kids history.

Hey, that guy led the Confederates, and it was a push to maintain slavery in its condition, and they lost.

But that was the guy who led that group.

So instead of having enemies for life, let's kind of bring the country together.

And I think it's we're doing kind of the opposite today.

You know, if you've ever been to Poland and you've been to Auschwitz, one or two, you realize they didn't get rid of those.

They they we never want to forget that happened.

I've been to Cambodia.

You've got the bones of murdered, you know, a genocidal attack, millions murdered.

You can go see literally their bones in burial pits.

They don't cover that up.

And the reason they don't is because if you don't understand history, you have a tendency to repeat it.

So I I really wish the PC world would take a breather and realize that there's a point to having this and having these debates, and that's where it comes back to travel.

If you go and travel to different places, you have different experiences, some good, some bad, some like, wow, I never want to go back there.

Hello, Moscow.

Hated that place.

You know, that's the place where it's like, hey, all my Russian friends, uh, yeah, Moscow, it sucks.

Um, other than your subways and uh some of the things that I learned culturally there, man, that's a that's a place I never want to go back to, but I am glad I experienced it.

Because now I see what information they get there, how they view the world, and how miserable they are.

But there's a reason because if your average life expectancy as a man today in Russia is 56 years old, which it is throughout Russia, then I'd be pretty miserable too, because I just turned 57.

And I think I I think I'd have a gun to my head, you know.

So I'd be pretty, I'd be like, get the hell out of here.

But that's kind of that was the welcome I felt that we received in Moscow.

Very unfortunate.

SPEAKER_02: But you know, you know, and in in talking about the people and stuff though, you know, with you know, not only do we have the you know the recent happenings in in our country with with all of these different monuments being destroyed and and all of that, but but also, you know, I was talking to another travel advisor or travel agent, Mark.

Sorry, we're gonna use travel agent on this podcast episode.

You could use whatever you want.

You know, and me and her, we were talking, and and I said, you know, I'm like, we were talking about these the the most recent things with all of the the black versus white, you know, race wars all of a sudden coming up.

And I said, and I'm like, you know, I said that too is another thing where travel it just it cures that because that's the best thing about traveling to other countries and is you learn about different cultures and as different as everyone is, in fact, we all basically we're saying we're people, you know.

And um, you know, I just think it's it's a it's another thing about travel that that it does, it gives you an opportunity to experience new cultures, new new people, and it gives you a little bit better understanding that as different as everyone is, we're still the same person, you know.

SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a great example.

So during the unrest in Egypt, we um got contracted to go film literally that year that you had all the unrest.

And so we went there, and of course, my family members were like, Are you crazy?

Look at what's going on there.

You know, you could get kidnapped, you could get, you know, a Molotov cocktail thrown at you, rocks thrown at you, whatever, whatever the heck, you know, they wanted to say, like, don't go.

And I felt very comfortable going because I realized that the lens that the CNNs of the world put on Cairo and Egypt itself revolved around Tareer Square.

Well, Cairo has 20 million people living there.

And sure, you might have 10,000, 15,000 protesting and doing crazy stuff, but you sure as heck don't have anything more than that as far as a scenario.

So we went there and no Westerners were there.

And it was me and one of my videographers, and as we explored the area around Giza and the pyramids, it was tourism was dead.

Nobody was traveling there, and we're walking, and I see this man jump up, and another man jump up off a off a blanket, and they're just having a picnic with their family, and I see the two wives, and they're Muslim, and the wives are wearing burkas, and the men are Muslim, and they don't speak any English, and I hear them going, hello, hello, hello.

And so I was with a guide, and we started to walk towards them, and they had small children there with them, and they were like waving.

So we came over, and through the guide, it was basically a discovery.

I discovered they were from Alexandria and they'd never been to the pyramids.

That was the first day they'd ever seen the pyramids personally.

That was the first day I had ever seen the pyramids personally.

I'm Christian, they're Muslim.

Oh, well.

You know, back then, think of all the tension, Christians, Muslims, holy wars, right?

Yeah.

And, you know, instead of throwing a Molotov cocktail at me, which is what everybody, you know, was telling you on TV and how dangerous things are, they tossed a six-month-old baby figuratively.

They literally handed me a six-month-old baby girl that they wanted me to hold their baby.

It was like, wow.

And we got it all on film.

It was amazing.

It was not planned, it was just serendipitous.

It just happened.

And it again, to your point, says people are exactly alike.

They want to find a partner, they want to have children, they want to raise those children, they want those children to be independent and healthy.

We all have those same goals.

Now, that's before politics and ideology and all this other crap gets thrown into the mix or victimhood, et cetera.

And, you know, there's an entire business around, you know, the grievance industry.

And it doesn't matter whether you're white, black, Hispanic, Asian, female, male, another gender, which I'm still having to figure that one out, you know, what your sexual orientation is, you know, there's always this grievance industry, and they make money on it.

And that's what people won't in the media won't call out.

It's a money-making industry.

And uh some people, including our politicians, would like it to stay in place because it basically caters to what their goals are, which is more power in some cases, or power and money.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I mean I think I think it kind of plays back to, you know, the thing I always say about it.

Seems like when you watch the news, just the news in general, even your local news, it is nothing but the doom and gloom.

And it's it's whatever's going to grab people's attention, cause people to talk, you know, is that's what gets talked about.

You never hear the good stories.

SPEAKER_00: When was the last time a cruise ship came back into port and a crew showed up and said, hey, I heard this was a wonderful cruise.

We saw some of the social media sharing.

Please, how was your vacation?

Tell us all about it.

No, it's it'll call it the poop cruise, they'll call it a petri dish, they'll because there's a hundred people that get norovirus or whatever, and then they make it this big negative.

Uh, the damage gets done.

I call it like a hit job.

And, you know, Africa's a great example.

You know, thousands of miles away from where people would go on vacation to do safaris, et cetera.

You had an Ebola outbreak years ago, six, seven years ago.

You heard about it, it scared the crap out of people.

Travel to the continent of Africa, which you could fit literally three major, like you could take like Australia, the US, all of North America, and like China, and like literally fit it into Africa and still have room for 40 more countries.

It's massive.

But they don't tell you like this is happening, like if something happened in New York, would you not go to LA?

And that literally, at a minimum, was the distance we were talking about to go down to like Cape Town.

It was actually more than that.

But it destroyed tourism.

They never came back and said, Yep, okay.

Never the outbreak never got past that village and everything's great.

No, it was damage was done, and then that was it.

Damage was done.

And then it took years to recover.

And that's the problem I have with the media because they will never go back after the protests or whatever and say, Oh, you know what?

Yeah, they broke some glass, but look at downtown, it's rocking.

And that was a great experience that I had in Nashville.

They protested the night before.

I didn't go out into downtown for that reason.

I came by the next morning, early afternoon.

I videotaped the you know, graffiti, the broken windows, et cetera, that were boarded up, but I also videotaped all these people out, live music, et cetera.

And I posted and I said, This isn't, this is, you're not gonna hear this tomorrow on the on the news.

You're not gonna hear it tonight on the news because they've already moved on.

Now, the irony is one of my cousins in Chicago who's uber liberal, and you know, basically said, You need to stop, you need to stop calling out the news.

It's not about, you know, fake news, this and that.

You need to be more positive.

And I go, well, isn't that exactly what I was doing?

I was trying to tell you that this is what's actually going on in Nashville, not this other stuff.

And so it's very, very frustrating in that sense.

But, you know, people are really embedded with uh the way things are today, and they do not want, they want just to be to be all upset about things.

And I'm just I'm kind of done with it, to be honest.

Uh, you know, cousins, no cousins, whatever, I'm good.

I don't need to talk to those people, and I'm not shutting the door on them.

But if you can't post something positive and tell people, encourage them that Nashville's open for business without somebody slamming you because you're you're calling it fake news because it is, then you know, what's next?

Just live in a bunker?

Nah, that's not my way of doing things.

I'll hit you right between the eyes.

SPEAKER_02: Yep.

I totally agree.

I totally agree with with everything you're saying, Mark.

I don't know if that's gonna get me in trouble later on to say that I agree with everything you say, but um but no, no, I mean it's true.

Now, now, like one thing like I am curious about, going back, I guess, to your past and stuff, what what was it that got you so a passion for travel, for you to to to create like the travel pulse and all of that?

What what fed that?

SPEAKER_00: So, you know, maybe it was the fact that I grew up in an Irish family with there were seven of us, and the idea of a vacation was getting in the back of a station wagon, and four of us within five years of age were there in that uh station wagon, and we would drive from Philadelphia to Chicago.

That's that was the idea of vacation.

And the coolest thing about the vacation was we could stay at the airport Marriott Hotel because it was cheaper than staying, you know, near relatives, because that's where I was born, and that's why we were going back to Chicago, and it had an indoor-outdoor pool and an outdoor pool, and it was summer in Chicago.

So it was super cool because like, you know, as a kid, like, I get to swim under the glass and like be outside and swim under and be inside.

Uh, yeah, that that was my experience of uh vacations.

I think they took us once to Disney World.

We drove down, spent a few days, and drove back.

And that was the extent of it because my father, who was a World War II vet depression era, you know, obviously uh he went and lived through that as a as a child and as a young adult.

He um he would say that the reason people go on vacation is so they can come back and tell everybody what a great time they had.

Talk about cynical.

Which I thought was funny.

So for me to be like a guy that went to 80 countries and all this other stuff is ironic.

But my passion, to be frank, really became helping, empowering a group of individuals that the media and frankly a lot of travel suppliers left for dead on, you know, numerous occasions.

Like airlines left travel agents for dead, the cruise lines at one point basically actively tried to recruit travel agent customers and say, oh, book with me directly, you'll actually save money.

And, you know, they would say in one side of their mouth, oh, you're our you're my partner, on the other side of their mouth, they'd undermine your business.

And I think that that played out, you know, every so many years, especially when the market got bad in terms of the economy, they felt like, you know, we could save money by bypassing travel agents.

And I was always like, that's insane.

These are the people that you don't even have to pay.

They will market your product, they will, you know, spend money, they will spend time, they'll secure a deposit, they'll do all the work, they'll answer all the questions.

If there's a problem, they deal with it.

If there's a, if they, you know, need to make a change, they handle it.

You get to do one or two phone calls with that individual, or they book it online directly versus a consumer calling you 30 times to your call center.

All of these factors, right?

It just economically just made sense to embrace agents in good times and bad.

And what I wanted to do was create tools that modernized the communication for these agents so they would have what they needed, because I felt that the traditional media outlets were not providing those things, whether it was online training, whether it was news as it happened, whether it was tools to build your business in an online environment and market yourself.

And everything we did revolved around meeting the needs of the user first, you, the travel agent.

And then I felt that the advertisers would follow.

But I never built a business to say, it's going to get me more advertising.

It was always, how can I help travel agents?

And then if I'm embracing travel agents and they're embracing my platforms, then naturally the dollars will follow.

And that's pretty much how it happened.

For the most part, I think there are legacy people in the travel industry, certain sectors, in particular in crews, that never ever veered from their loyalty to dinosaurs that were in the industry because I'm buddies with so-and-so.

And it didn't matter that we were doing things that were breaking through that nobody else was touching, nobody else could even compete with.

They basically would continue to give me my, you know, my little allotment to keep me happy, but I was never happy with it.

And they would give five times, ten times that amount to everybody else.

And it would frustrate me.

But, you know, some things you can't change until you have a change in the makeup of those individuals.

And when their jobs are dependent on results, not, you know, I'm buddies with Joe and Joe takes me golfing, you know, to some great golf course every year.

Who cares?

I mean, to me, at the end of the day, you got to be judged on results.

And that was our passion.

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02: No, so now I like to kind of understand.

So we we went from you growing up as a kid and stuff, you guys not really traveling.

So where did you you transition from from that mindset and like how you described like your your dad's thought on traveling to Becoming where you traveled to 80 countries and and and then also like kind of paired with that is what fueled all of a sudden your your passion to support travel advisors also.

SPEAKER_00: So I think the when when I got out of college, so ADHD, lousy, lousy student.

I was a basketball player.

That's how I got into Lee High University.

I would not have gotten in otherwise.

I still graduated in four years.

I graduated the finance degree with, you know, like a C plus average.

I was Bart Simpson, classic underachiever.

Did not like worry about, oh, I could have an A in this class.

You know, if I just study tonight and hit the uh final tomorrow, you know, great, 8 a.m.

final.

No, instead, a girl on Dayton calls me up and says, hey, we're going out to wherever you want to come.

I'm like, um, sure.

I get a D on the final and I end up with a C.

You know what I mean?

It's like just, but I was Bart Simpson.

I was like, I still passed.

I'm I'm cool.

It didn't matter.

And I had a good time that night.

So that was the mentality.

And I went from job to job from the time I got out of college till the time I hit 27.

At the age of 27, I went to a publication called Travel Agent Magazine.

I had a couple years of advertising sales before that in the yellow pages of all things back then, which is kind of like Google local today.

And then I said, man, I'm 27.

I got to work for like the next 40 years.

I can continue to be a schmuck like I've been, or I could actually, you know, really dive in.

So it was just the timing, the fact that I came to the realization that I gotta stop being a dumbass and really commit myself to working and learning, you know, a field.

And I dove into travel.

I didn't know what ARC meant.

I didn't know what IATAN meant.

I didn't I didn't know what C L I A It was like acronym central.

But I read this magazine that I had ultimately ended up running, and I became a student of the industry.

And then the more I understood it, the more passionate I got, and I applied my competitive nature to that market.

And that's when I decided after 9-11 it'd be a really good time to start a company because the market was devastated, no one was investing.

So I sold my house in Rye, New York.

I moved 110 miles south to a town called Moore's Town outside of Philadelphia, and I figured worst case scenario, we start this thing up, it doesn't work, and I can be the night cook at Burger King and probably pay my overhead because I was able to take the equity of my house and invest it in the business and buy a house for cash because it was a fraction of the cost of living up in the New York area.

And that got me started.

My wife at the time had multiple sclerosis, still does, and doesn't work.

She's on disability, and my kids at the time were three and five.

So it was just, I don't know, I mean, in hindsight, I'm like, what drug was I on when I pulled the trigger on that?

But afterwards, I mean, it was like people are like, oh, it was such a brilliant move.

I'm like, I think I was on crack or something, because I don't know what I was thinking.

Because if I really thought about it, I probably wouldn't have done it.

But it's like, you know, when you get like you're just ready for that change, that's what it was.

And I said, the hell with it, I'm going for it.

And then through good times and bad, it's the competition that fuels the drive.

You want to win.

You don't want to just win, you want to beat them big time.

And that was my mentality.

And I brought that to the to the fight, if you would.

And I remember one guy who worked for my competitor basically would go up to my salespeople and say, How do you work with that guy?

He's frickin' nuts.

And he didn't say frickin'.

And I wasn't nuts, I was just passionate because I wanted to win.

And winning meant getting the advertising dollars, delivering the products, and then coming up with the next new thing.

And that's what we kept doing.

And we kept on some of the stuff worked and, you know, some of it didn't work.

I made a lot of mistakes, but you know, I kept driving.

And that's really the thing.

I would tell any entrepreneur, most of them give up because it gets, you know, it gets tough, and there's terrible times.

And the financial crisis was a terrible time.

I racked up millions of dollars in personal debt.

I could have gone bankrupt.

I stayed with it.

It took me seven years to go back to where I was in 2008 by 2015.

It was a grind.

But we did it.

And, you know, and then four years later, I sold the company and and the rest is history.

SPEAKER_02: Wow.

I mean, that's awesome.

And I mean, so so how big was the company when when you left?

SPEAKER_00: Well, I think when I left, we probably had somewhere around, you know, uh 65, 70 contributors and full-time employees, probably full-time employees in the 45 to 47 range.

I don't know the exact count off the top of my head.

That was down from probably a high count of like 60 and change.

But, you know, that's investing in software, things evolving, that software comes out, you know, and then really figuring out what's working, what isn't, and you know, adjusting based on that.

And we never really had layoffs or furloughs even during downtimes.

We pretty much kept investing and expanding the business with personnel because it's a people-driven business, and that's our intellectual property.

But, you know, I felt that when I was getting ready to sell, there were things that I wasn't gonna invest in something that was gonna take two or three years to develop because you know I wasn't gonna be owning the company long enough to do that.

So in that case, if somebody resigned and moved on, I wouldn't replace that position because I wasn't gonna invest in that area going forward.

Decisions like that got us to that sizing.

We did well over 10 million in sales, so it was a good sized company, you know.

And I think it's a um it's typical of the small businesses today.

I I read books about the guy who founded Netflix or Steve Case who founded AOL, and they're really interesting, but they built like massive multi-billion dollar corporations.

And they went through venture capital and private equity and all these other things, raised money.

I think most people raise money from family and friends, bootstrap things, and that's where they really need.

There's there's nobody out there talking to that person about, well, yeah, you're a one-man shop, but you want to grow bigger.

Here are the things you're gonna have to do if you don't want to give up 70% of your company, 80% of your company.

And I never wanted to give away equity.

So I always said, when times got tough and I needed to raise money, by the time I got to a point where I could raise money, we were able to drive revenue to compensate and make up for any funding issues, and we self-funded by continuing to do that.

And it was probably the best thing we ever did because I ended up owning 100% of the company when I sold it, as opposed to owning 10 or 15%.

And the guys that did nothing to build a business other than to provide capital walk away with the riches.

SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.

That's awesome.

And the and the whole time I'm sitting here listening to you, I'm sitting there thinking, wow, he sounds like a pretty smart Bart Simpson to me.

SPEAKER_00: Well, Bart, I Bart's Bart's pretty conniving and pretty smart, I guess, because he's an underachiever.

He's he's like, you know, I trust me, I didn't try to underachieve, it's just the way I did it.

And uh I had, I mean, if I was on medication back then, I probably would have been okay.

But uh, yeah, they didn't they didn't know what it was.

And I remember a girl I dated in college.

She um she was up by a TV studio in Hartford, Connecticut, and I grabbed dinner with her, and I hadn't seen her in like 30 something years.

And I just said, hey, by the way, you know, it's really weird.

I got diagnosed with ADHD at like the age of 50.

And she's like, she starts laughing.

And I said, they wanted to know what I was like, you know, in high school and college, you know, and I really don't know.

I mean, like, was I like would you have said back then, like, oh my God, you definitely are ADHD all the way?

And and uh she said, well, back then we wouldn't know what it's called, but since I'm a vice principal in a high school right now, I can assure you that knowing what I know today, we would have absolutely had you medicated.

And I just started crying.

So uh so maybe I would have been a better student, maybe I would have would have gotten straight A's, but I applied my drive instead of to grades, I applied it to business after college.

And, you know, for the first four years, not so successfully.

But after that, I got I got into a groove.

Yeah.

Well, that's good.

So now we for anybody listening that there's always hope.

There's always hope.

That's right.

SPEAKER_02: Now, now when so when did you start doing all of your traveling?

Was that obviously after college?

SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.

Like I my travel got started because I was working for uh a media company focused on travel and travel agents.

That was uh travel agent magazine back in the day.

And we built that yeah, we built that business from literally a$4 million acquisition, and seven years later we sold it for the owner for$73 million, and I think he had it like$35 million in profit over the last few years on top.

So he made$100 million on a$4 million investment.

So that's a$5 to$1 return.

So he did pretty well.

I got like a token.

Here's uh a bonus, which given what I was making, it was it was a slap in the face, to be frank.

And that's when I knew the next time I did something, it was going to be on my own terms, my own company.

And if I had people that helped me get there, they wouldn't look at it as a token.

They would be very appreciative because I would take care of them in the end, which I did.

So why did I, you know, had I get traveling?

I would basically get on a plane, I go to ITV in Berlin, World Travel Market, we'd go to other foreign destinations.

I'll tell you a funny story of head of a hotel company that was in uh London at the time.

I was trying to get a meeting with them because they were running advertising in my competition.

So one of the things I did was I told him that I wanted to present an award to the CEO of the company because he had won some some award that we manufactured.

And so I got the meeting, and then I was like, okay, I got the meeting.

What the hell am I going to present to the guy?

I'm already in London.

So I went and bought a Waterford like bull and then uh presented a bowl from Waterford to him, like just a bull.

And you know, whatever it was, and we had like a certificate made up for him, you know, like best uh hotel CEO in London for a small chain or something along those lines.

And uh yeah, it was kind of comical because I think he saw right through it.

So it was a little awkward.

Yes.

Why is it why is it like where's the official thing?

Oh, it's like here's your certificate that's frame.

But uh, but at least I got the meeting, and the the bad news was I I didn't get the business.

So I think he saw through it.

But uh you try different things.

You try different things.

You do what you can to get in front of somebody, and then you know, hopefully it works out.

SPEAKER_02: Of course.

Of course.

So now at what point did the did you start to to do your books, both your first book and the second one?

SPEAKER_00: So the first one, I think I published it around end of 2012, beginning 2013, and I just felt like I wanted to uh document some of these wacko stories, you know.

Like when we went to Santorini and Nick, my uh my main guy and me, we were up there, we were filming, we were doing a little segment.

We were on one of these little uh cruises that was going to be in, you know, in port for till like 7 p.m.

or whatever.

So we didn't take, we took the gondola up, got off, we did this segment, and then we were doing a time lapse to watch the sunset with the camera, and we realized, like, okay, well it's getting close, we need to, you know, hustle and grab the gondola back down.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to the gondola, we realized that the wait to get on the gondola was 40 minutes.

The boat was leaving in 45 minutes, so that wasn't gonna work.

And so there's the path where the donkeys give people rides up and down, but it was now dark.

And outside of the first couple of switchbacks going down this path, which we decided, holy cow, we need to hustle to get to the bottom because otherwise we're gonna miss the boat.

So Nick and I are hustling down, and then the donkey guys are bringing up their donkeys for the night, and they're trying to grab our arms and tell us we owe them two Euros or five Euros for like walking.

So I almost created an international incident with my colorful language because I explained where they could put the Euros if I had given them, and it had to do with the donkey's ass.

So, um, so so yeah.

So I'm like, you can take those Euros and you can stick them in your yeah.

So uh, and they understood me pretty clearly because they were cursing at me and Greek, etc.

So we ran down, and uh poor Nick, I I was able to dodge the um the donkey drops uh that had obviously been going on all day, and there was a lot of them.

And uh Nick was not so fortunate, and Nick is a guy from Malaysia, but born in Taiwan, and he had he had like these designer sneakers that he would wear, you know, only on, you know, like when he knew it was gonna be perfect out.

And yeah, he landed in uh some donkey do and ended up leaving the shoes on the dock, and we were the last people on the tender and just got out of Dodge.

So I'll tell that story, you know, in the book and other wacky stories like that, and uh let people kind of vicariously experience what I experienced through it.

Now it was travel unscripted, and that came out, and you know, again, it was just one of those uh things.

I just said, you know what?

I one of my goals, I always wanted to write a book.

And I felt like, you know what, I just gotta do it.

And I sat down, I started it, and and I was able to knock it out in my spare time because all I did was work.

But I enjoyed it and it was a labor of love and became a bestseller on Amazon because that's where I published it.

And then a couple years later I did travel forward because I wanted something that had something that would inspire people more so than just, you know, laughing at you know, funny stories.

SPEAKER_02: Well, that's awesome.

And coming from a guy who has who said he was gonna write a book of his own, gosh, a year or so ago, I can tell you right now, I applaud anybody who actually finishes writing the book because it's definitely, you know, you sit down and you think, oh yeah, I'm gonna write a book, it's gonna be good, and then you start typing, and then yeah, it's a little bit more complicated than it may seem.

So I definitely applaud you.

SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks, man.

Yeah, it was definitely fun.

And uh travel forward, the way I got that done was I was stalled and I went down to uh a palace, uh Palace Resorts, their lovely um high-end property right there in the uh Cancun area.

Do you know the name?

Right in Cancun in the hotel zone.

It's owned by LeBlanc, brother.

LeBlanc.

Yeah, well, of course, of course.

SPEAKER_02: You can't listen, Michael, you can't make me look stupid on the on the podcast, Mark.

SPEAKER_00: It was a test, test question.

All right, you passed.

So I went down there, I think I was there for six nights, and I basically sat under the overhang looking at the infinity pool with my computer after I ate breakfast and worked out and just typed.

And I think by day three, people were like, uh, because it's couples, it's like honeymooners, and they were like, uh, so do you work here?

Like you we see you every day sitting here, and I had my bandsuit on, I would just jump in the water or whatever here and there.

But pretty much I was working.

And I ended up doing 17 chapters of travel forward sitting there in those six days.

SPEAKER_02: That was and that was huge.

That was huge.

That is so awesome.

So so that is definitely, I can imagine the the people's look.

Who's the guy?

He never moves, he's still just in that lounge chair.

SPEAKER_00: Pay money.

Pay money and sit there with a computer on his lap all day.

It doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_02: Yep.

Wow, but but I but I have to say, I mean, if if you if you're gonna pick a setting to write a book, I definitely see that you know the the best place to go.

SPEAKER_00: So Yeah, and right now I gotta tell you, sitting here in Golden, Colorado, I'm on a side street outside of Starbucks, so I could get internet.

If I was inside Starbucks, there'd be less background noises, but then this is what you would hear.

Because I would have my mask on.

So, because I can't go into Starbucks without my mask on, and if I'm not actively drinking or eating something, you have to have it on here.

And so, yeah, so I'm out on the street, and just before I connected with you today, it was like a truck caravan.

It was garbage trucks, dump trucks, you know, delivery trucks, and I was thinking this is never gonna work out, but I'm glad it did.

SPEAKER_02: It is.

This is real life, you know.

Yep.

Oh my goodness.

No.

SPEAKER_00: Without a doubt.

SPEAKER_02: So now what is what is your your take on the recent happenings and stuff, and right now with all the the different travel bands and travel getting lifted, and and we're we're all keeping up to date.

I know it's definitely in in my industry, we're all you know looking which countries can travel to.

What is your take on all of this?

Do you think do you think all of it was good?

Do you think of it was overhyped?

What's I'd I'd love to get your opinion.

SPEAKER_00: So if we go back to March, the original reason why we had a shutdown for two weeks, you remember the original reason?

They wanted to stop the spread.

No, no, no.

They wanted to flatten the curve in order to not overwhelm the hospitals.

Exactly.

Okay.

So we never had hospitals overwhelmed.

We built a lot of these field hospitals.

In some cases, not one patient ever was in those field hospitals because there was never that surge outside of a couple of key areas, in particular in the Queens area and uh and um Long Island.

That was literally like the hot spot.

And yes, some of those hospitals did get overwhelmed.

A family member has a relation to an in-law that worked in one of those wards and it was catastrophic, terrible.

But here's what we know.

We know now, if you fast forward with the data we have that of the people that get tested, 6% test positive.

We know that of those that do test positive, 99% survive it, right?

We know that those who don't survive it oftentimes have one, two, or three, meta minimum, comorbidities.

If you look at the death rate in places like Italy, where everyone was jumping up and down and telling us it's coming to New York, you guys have been arguing with me on Facebook, you know, it's coming, you know, just wait, just wait.

Well, it turns out like the average age of those folks was like at Heaven's, you know, Heaven's waiting room, basically.

These people had three comorbidities, they were in a nursing home, they were 80 plus age, and I'm not saying that that's not terrible, but if you've got heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and you're 86 and you catch a cold, you're you're not in good shape, right?

Like that that's not a good thing.

So the other thing I don't understand is how they CDC changed how they classify deaths.

So literally they said, even if you don't have a positive test, if you think it might be COVID because they had some things like fever, respiratory, et cetera, then you can classify it as that.

They also said that if somebody comes in and dies of a heart attack and but also tests positive for COVID, that that's going to be a COVID death.

Whereas any doctor on a death certificate would say the primary cause of death was heart failure, congestive heart failure that ultimately led to a heart attack.

The virus didn't kill that guy, his clogged arteries killed him.

And so people say, well, but maybe the maybe the virus made it worse.

Hey, I'll concede it could have made it worse, and it could have sped it up by a month, two months, but that dude was a chicken time bomb.

And so that's where I look at it.

And so I've I'm a cancer survivor.

So from my standpoint, I'm considered high risk.

I still go, I mean, this week I'm going to slunk kettering for my six-month follow-up, which by the way, interesting enough, was delayed two and a half months.

I'm supposed to go in every six months to stay on top of things.

It was delayed two and a half months because COVID.

So how many people didn't get screened for cancer?

Like I'm already, you know, beyond, I'm in remission.

But imagine if something popped up and now I've waited two and a half months and they could have caught it two and a half months ago and they didn't.

And how many people didn't get seen because the hospitals weren't allowed to have you come in because guess what?

They didn't want to be overwhelmed and they needed to have people freed up.

Well, I've got a sister-in-law who's a nurse.

If she wasn't on a phone bank, listen to this a phone bank answering questions about different things for the hospital she works at, they would have furloughed her.

So a bunch of nurses and doctors got furloughed during this crisis because elective surgeries all got delayed.

And that's what's kind of messed up, because at the end of the day, we're gonna find out that there's gonna be these unintended consequences that happened as a result of this, and it's gonna be an issue, I think.

And we're gonna find that people are gonna die as a result.

Now, they will never come back and tell you, yeah, you know why?

Because we shut all this stuff down, we now have more cancer deaths, more heart attacks, more this, more that, because people didn't seek out care.

And but they're never gonna tie the two together, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02: Basically, you're kind of coming back around full circle to where we started with this about the media hypes up the negative and we never hear about the positive.

SPEAKER_00: And think about it, Dr.

Fauci in January said this is not something on a news broadcast.

You guys can go look at it on video.

He said, nothing to worry about here.

Despite that, I think it was ten days later, they shut down flights from China.

That didn't stop people from being able to come here that were Chinese because they could come from different areas that may have been infected and spread it.

It in February, at the end of February, said the same thing.

In early March, including March 13th, the officials in New York were saying everything's fine, go out and go to restaurants, go to movies, etc.

Then they finally said, okay, we're going to shut things down.

But again, they said they were going to shut it down to flatten the curve.

They told us masks don't work, then they told us masks do work, then they told us they don't work.

Then the WHO lady about a week and a half prior to us doing this interview was asked at a press conference about airborne spread.

She said it's very rarely, it's almost like impossible.

But then, uh-oh, the WHO bureaucrats caught that and the next day reversed it and said, Well, that's not our policy.

Well, I will take the head of infectious disease for WHO's offhand response to a press question.

I think that's a hell of a lot more honest than the carefully crafted policy and press release that they put out a day and a half later.

And that's why I think you got two factions.

You got the people that say, no matter what, you got to wear your mask, et cetera.

And you got the people that are saying, you know what, the hell with this nonsense.

You know, which way is up?

I'm gonna live my life.

If you're vulnerable, then you should shelter and and we should make sure you're protected.

But the 35 year old man who drives 17 miles a day in Fort Lauderdale has a Massively higher opportunity to die driving his car than he does from getting COVID and dying from that.

To the tune of like 15 times more likely to die from the car and commuting that distance versus obviously even getting COVID, let alone dying from it.

So if we put the numbers and statistics together, people should be very confident, if they're healthy, that they're going to be okay.

And the other factor to consider is over 40% of the people that have died from this were in nursing homes.

And in some cases, 80% of, I think Rhode Island, Minnesota, 80% of the deaths were nursing home related.

People aren't in nursing homes because they're, you know, doing Olympic weight trials.

You know what I'm saying?

Or they're they're trying out for, you know, I don't know, bobsled teams.

They're they're there for a reason.

They need round-the-clock care, and they have massive health issues.

So that is where I think the focus should be.

And I think it's become politicized with the shutdowns, and I think it's now become a political thing as opposed to a healthcare issue.

That's my take, and people will argue with me about it, but I don't really give a shit, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, I wouldn't.

Because it's my life, and I'll go do what I want to do.

That's right, that's right.

Well, and and I mean, I even have to say, I mean, you know, I follow you on social media, and and I remember you had given the prediction.

How many days was it it was gonna last the hype?

SPEAKER_00: Well, I thought the hype would last in the news media for 60 days, and then they'd move on to something else because that's how the news media is.

I mean, I think MH370 was the longest thing I ever saw, and that was really just CNN for three freaking months talking about the missing plane with no facts, figures, or anything 24-7.

And they did it because they kept on watching the ratings and people kept tuning in.

And they tuned in like to the Russia hoax.

You know, so the people were tuning in to different things, and so they keep going at it because they're watching those ratings.

So it went about 60 days and two and a half weeks because then we had the protests.

And here's the thing, you know, to bring it all together.

If epidemiologists tell me I have to wear a mask, I have to social distance, I have to shelter in place, et cetera, up until there's protests.

And then those same epidemiologists, some of them from Johns Hopkins, sign this document that says, you know what, it's okay to protest.

Don't worry about social distancing.

Sure, go ahead and loot and burn stuff, sure, get 10,000 of you packed into this little area, because that's more important than the virus.

Then we were sold a bill of goods.

Because these are doctors and epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists saying, ah, you're gonna protest?

Don't worry about it.

If you're not protesting, uh, yeah, don't go in that store, don't open your business, doesn't matter if you go bankrupt.

That makes absolutely no sense if you have any common sense.

SPEAKER_02: It's so true.

So true.

Now, now, kind of uh kind of shifting gears slightly.

Sure.

Well, what about what what is your thought?

So right now, we know, like it or not, we're we're starting to traveling basically for right now, time being and stuff, you know, limited to kind of the U.S.

And I know that's a big push right now.

A lot of people talking about traveling within the United States and stuff.

Do you have any uh places within the U.S.

that like from your travels, your experience that you would recommend people trying to check out?

SPEAKER_00: Well, I think what people are afraid of is what's going on with these protests in urban areas.

So I think a lot of people would stay away from those areas.

The the challenge you have is all state by state.

So right now I'm in Golden, Colorado for four weeks and I'm staying and I'm traveling in an RV.

You can't get any safer than traveling in your own RV, right?

Because what are you gonna get now?

Right?

So I think there's a booming market for RV sales, booming market for people at least checking it out.

It is not for everybody, it's a different experience, but I'm doing that for the next six months.

I didn't do it because of COVID.

I've I've owned an RV for two and a half years, and I have flown over so many places.

Like I've been to Denver and I've been to Aspen and Vale, and I've been to Boulder only because my daughter goes to school in Boulder.

I'd never been to Boulder until she went to school there.

But I'd never been to Savannah, Charleston, I mean Asheville, North Carolina.

I flew over these places, over outer banks, never been.

So I had an RV.

So what I would say is for a guy who's traveled to somewhere around 80 countries over decades, now I'm seeing the U.S.

And I love the idea of taking a drive up to Lookout Mountain and seeing what I can capture on video.

Because part of this is I'm building a library of content around these experiences.

But the problem you have is you may come to a place and they may say, okay, well, all our museums are closed, our restaurants are closed, and it's state by state.

Right now, California is saying you can't be outside your house without a mask on.

Well, F California, because there's no way in hell I'm gonna be riding my bike by myself on a trail and be like, I gotta put a mask on.

That's actually less healthy than not having one on by any measure.

So to me, that makes absolutely zero sense.

And I I laugh and I I probably look like a lunatic as I'm biking here and I go past somebody on a wide trail who's walking by themselves or riding a bike with a mask.

I'm like, uh, what's the point?

What are you getting exposed to?

Fresh air?

And I laugh and I'm like, oh my God.

And I say stuff, but hopefully they think I'm talking on the phone, but I'm riding a bike.

And I mumble because I'm like, oh my God, you are so ridiculous.

That makes no sense.

But I don't say it to them.

SPEAKER_02: It's it but that that that's just like that's just like the people around here that we we will be driving down the road, and whoever I'm with, you know, because obviously I'm not looking at the people since I'm blind, but the other people in the car, they'll be like, the people next to us, it's a person in her car by herself with a mask on.

Inside the car, I'm like, take the mask off.

You don't need the mask on right now.

SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be just fine.

I don't think there's like uh, you know, a death ray that's gonna get you.

And the other crazy thing is it goes into your eyes.

Like you can get it through your eyes, you can get it through your nose, you can get it through your mouth.

So unless you're wearing a face shield and a mask and everything's perfectly in place.

Oh, and by the way, you're swapping out those masks regularly because by the way, the guys that are wearing the bandanas, eh, not stopping anything, folks.

Good luck.

It looks kind of cool because it looks like you're like an old West bank robber out here in Golden, because Golden's like, you know, the old West feel.

So God bless you.

But other than that, if I was going to a masquerade party, sweet.

Other than that, makes no sense.

Because now they're saying you could give you an idea.

I will take a beanie hat that I wear because I've got long hair now, and my hair gets crazy.

So I throw a beanie hat on.

If I have to walk into a place and they require me to wear a mask, I take my hat and stick it over my mouth.

I was like, does this work?

They're like, oh yeah, that's great.

I'm like, okay.

Yeah.

I'm glad it makes you feel better.

Now again, I'll get people saying, You're such an asshole, you know, you're so selfish, this and that.

I'm like, no, my wife has MS.

I have cancer.

F you.

Okay.

You go live your life.

I'm not being selfish.

And I wouldn't criticize you for wearing or not wearing your mask.

Do whatever it is you need to do.

If I was going through chemotherapy right now, I would have a real mask, I'd probably have a face shield, and I would be away from anybody.

I would not be anywhere near people.

So that would be super high risk.

But to make you do that, Kevin, or somebody else, because I have cancer and I'm getting treated, and I went through this, I think that's that's actually selfish.

That's unfair for the healthy people.

Because again, look at the stats.

SPEAKER_02: Yep.

That's true.

It's so true.

So yeah.

So true.

SPEAKER_00: Well, it it is what it is.

SPEAKER_02: That's right.

That's right.

I just heard I just watched for the first time the the what was it, the Jerry Seinfeld comedy skid on Netflix.

And he had a whole segment about that.

It is what it is.

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: So that's oh, I gotta watch the man.

SPEAKER_02: That's pretty ironic.

You just said that.

SPEAKER_00: So well, anyways.

You know what?

While we're talking comedy, hold on, while we're talking comedy, you gotta watch Humanity with Ricky Ricky Gervais.

And if you didn't see him at The Last Golden Globes, just go to YouTube, find Ricky Gervais for the 2000 and was, I guess it was 2020 or 2019 Golden Globes, whatever, whatever, whatever the date was, hysterical because he tells these celebrities, nobody cares about your opinion.

So if you want to get up and you get an award, say thank you and just get off the freaking stage.

And like that's how he's talking to him.

I'm like, man, what a breath of fresh air.

Because I didn't realize Brad Pitt was an epidemiologist.

And I didn't realize Brad Pitt was somebody who knew politics and was like a political analyst.

But yeah, don't figure.

SPEAKER_02: I have got to, I will definitely be you be searching YouTube as soon as we get off.

So that's awesome.

Well, well, man, listen, I want to first off go ahead and thank you so much for coming on my my podcast.

For those uh who who don't know, you used to uh host the uh Travel Pulse podcast, and I was a big fan of yours.

That's where I really got to know you.

And ironically, our friendship really bloomed when uh when I was the winner of writing review, and you sent me a shattered coffee mug.

SPEAKER_00: Well, no, it was actually a puzzle, and you didn't realize it was a puzzle, so I felt bad, so I sent you a different cup, like an actual.

I just went to the store.

I went to Starbucks, bought you a cup, and sent it to you.

So uh no, I'm just I'm just messing with you.

No, we sent we sent Kevin a cup, he's like, hey, I really appreciate it, but like it's in 27,000 pieces.

So my nephew, who was the guy in charge of fulfillment, I was like, hey, do you mind like packing it in some bubble wrap so it doesn't explode before the guy gets it?

And we sent him another one.

And that was a travel forward mug.

And I think on the on the mug, it probably said, it doesn't matter where you come from, it matters where you're going.

And I hope we get going and travel.

SPEAKER_02: Exactly.

So so he for everyone's on, he did make it right.

I do have the mug in in full.

So good man.

Well, man, listen, before we get off, is there anything else you would like to say?

The the floor is yours if there's anything left.

SPEAKER_00: Well, I think I've already said so much that uh the hate mail and the hate posts are gonna be solid.

So I think we've covered all the bases.

And nothing what what's funny is I got asked to do something in college that my fraternity, when I was pledging, was like, if any, if we see any guy doing this, you guys are butch, freaking losers is that.

So me and another guy did it, despite the like the warning, because I felt that it was okay to do it.

And I've always been a guy that no matter what the people around me will say, if I believe that that is to be the truth, I'm gonna go ahead and share that.

And what ended up happening was there was a big uproar.

They found out that we were doing this thing, they got us, you know, at a pledged dinner and started reaming the two of us.

And the guy basically said, the other guy said, you know what, I'm gonna call them up and tell them they can't run this thing that they were making and that we were in.

And then I stood up and said, you know what, it was fine before you guys got all worked up, so it's fine after because that doesn't change.

Just because you guys are giving me crap about it doesn't make the decision I made any different.

And that's how I've always lived my life.

My father was always, you know, you do the right thing.

And so I've got people, even like family members, that get all emotional about certain things that are going on right now, and you share facts with them and they don't respond to the facts.

And then, you know, one called my wife ignorant, um, and she's the last thing, uh, ignorant would be the last thing you would say about this woman, and said, basically, because of your views, I don't know if I can continue to have a relationship with you because my wife has different views than this young girl does.

And I thought, wow, how closed-minded is that?

It's your aunt, and because you disagree with her on this topic, you can't have a conversation with her.

In fact, you can't even have a relationship with her.

And I think it's really unfortunate, and I wish people would separate their politics and their emotions and basically say, hey, we can agree to disagree.

There's, you know, this is a very diverse country.

We've got the UN in this country, we're always bringing in immigrants into this country, a million a year, minimum on average, and everybody assimilates and everybody gets along for the most part.

And that's where I think back to the travel, if you opened your eyes and you traveled a little bit more, you would see that.

And I would encourage people to do that.

And if if you're not completely offended, or if you just want to hit me and give me crap, follow me on at Murphy Travels.

That's Instagram, it's facebook.com forward slash Murphy Travels.

It's Twitter, but I'm not really active on Twitter because I think Twitter's a cesspool.

But um, you know, if you want to, you know, share your thoughts, great.

And I'll be more than happy to share mine because I don't hold anything back.

SPEAKER_02: Well, I love it.

I love it.

This is Mark Murphy.

Unscripted on the streets of uh Colorado.

Listen, man, thank you so much for coming on the podcast again.

And I just really want to tell you thank you.

SPEAKER_00: You're quite welcome.

You're quite welcome.

Great chatting with you, man.

Take care.

SPEAKER_02: Good chatting with you too and everyone else.

That is the lowdown on life and travel.

Hope you have an awesome day.

SPEAKER_01: And that's the lowdown on life and travel.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and don't forget to subscribe for more.

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That's betterdaystravel.com to sign up.

And until next time, just keep living and enjoying life like it was meant to be.