Introducing Life Nomading Podcast 2.0

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Kicking off 2019 with a bang, we’d like to introduce the new and improved Life Nomading podcast! No longer a dormant trove of audio files, instead we’re back and we’re excited to be bringing you fresh travel episodes every single Monday morning. So tune in and spend some time every week with Caroline and me as we explore the world and share it with you.

In this episode, we give a rundown of what all has happened and what is currently going on at Life Nomading since the last episode 3 years ago. Buckle up, because we have plenty of exciting news to share.

Show Notes

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Show Transcript

Ian Hoyt: And she’s not kidding, we’re literally sitting on the floor. We have two microphones, different microphone, cardboard boxes, cardboard boxes. We have one glass of whiskey to offset the frustration of setting up technology. Just so we can record semi decent audio. So wherever you’re at, you can hear us

Ian Hoyt: Hey there, fellow nomads. This is Ian and Caroline, and this is the Life Nomading podcast,

Ian Hoyt: Hey there, fellow listeners. Welcome back to the Life Nomading podcast. It’s been awhile. It’s been about three years, two years since the last substantial episode has hit your podcast feed, so I’m pumped if you’re listening from the past life, but I’m even more excited if you’re a new listener. Excited to go in this 2019 journey with us as we reboot Life Nomading and bring some travel content and I’m not alone this time. I have a cohost and her name is Caroline. Caroline, how’s it going?

Caroline Lloyd: It’s going well. I’m excited to be here.

Ian Hoyt: Is it weird having microphones in your face?

Caroline Lloyd: Yeah, I’ve pretty much tried to avoid that at all costs in my life. Um, There’s a reason that I’m not a singer like everyone else in my family, so this is a step of bravery for me.

Ian Hoyt: And we are sitting on the floor of our New York apartment in Harlem because we can’t afford anything else

Caroline Lloyd: with mics propped up by cardboard boxes.

Ian Hoyt: Literally cardboard boxes. We had to throw the cat out because it was pawing at all the chords. But anyway, we’re here. Uh, we’re happy to have you. Thanks for listening. Uh, we’re going to make this quick. This is a quick little intro episode. Life Nomading podcast has existed before, but we’re new. We’re improved and we’re ready.

Caroline Lloyd: We’re going to be consistent.

Ian Hoyt: Consistency is key. Anyone that has gotten anywhere has been consistent in life. So we are going to be doing this podcast every single week.

Caroline Lloyd: New episodes dropping on Mondays for your morning commute to make them a little bit less miserable and you can dream about traveling the world on your way to work.

Ian Hoyt: And to that point Life Nomading has been in an evolution the last two or three years since I last graced you with a podcast episode.

Caroline Lloyd: Graced you with that lovely voice.

Ian Hoyt: It was still deep back then. I was still old enough to have a deep voice.

Caroline Lloyd: I feel like you were up playing it a little bit more like you’re. You’re not like going full radio host right now,

Ian Hoyt: Which is good. I hope not. I’m not. I’m trying to be authentic Yo, but here we are so we have this podcast, but Life Nomading is so much more than a podcast now. So Life Nomading started in like 2014 for context for me to write about my feelings about travel and life in general and people actually started to read it. People actually started to connect over it, not just with me but with other readers. We created a facebook group and then all of a sudden this community started to form out of thin air and I was pretty excited. People were connecting over this travel thing, this, you know, doing something different than the regular normal thing and so from 2014 to now it has evolved from being just a blog and a podcast to now we’re doing so much more and for example, this year actually, or sorry last year in 2018, we launched our first group trip to Iceland, a Life Nomading group trip is where we take about 10 people and we just, we plan it all and people arrive into this awesome foreign country they’ve never been to before and we do incredible things that are authentic to the culture in the country,

Caroline Lloyd: but it’s not your typical group travel, right? So it’s not just everyone piling onto a coach bus and you sit there all day and look out the window. You’re really truly experiencing things. You’re getting to know your fellow travelers. You are exploring on your own and you are testing the boundaries of who you are in this new area. This new country, so it’s really different than, you know, walking around with a tour guide with the flag on. So we want the group trip to be really authentic.

Ian Hoyt: Absolutely. And uh, I’m not going to ruin the itinerary or like what do we do in Iceland? You’re either going to have to go on that trip or b. Listen to future episodes to learn more about that. Uh, but what I can say is of all the people on that trip, uh, we got so many responses, hey, this actually changed my life, like this made me want to travel more or made me want to do x, y, z after this trip we can’t stop talking about this trip. And that was exciting to us because our whole mission at Life Nomading is to make group travel authentic. And so group trips have been great and we’re expanding those trips and we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a second. Actually, maybe we should backtrack even more. Let’s Caroline, who are you?

Caroline Lloyd: I have always wanted to travel. Um, but I’ve also been a very tight planner in life in my day to day activities. I walk around with a paper planner is still, I know that most people don’t even know this existed anymore. Um, but I had very clear cut timelines for my life and traveling, unfortunately, did not fit into that timeline. So, you know, I was following my life timeline pretty perfectly if I do say so myself. Um, and I found myself in a job that I had pretty much dreamed of my entire life. Um, and then I realized that I had accomplished it pretty quickly. I was pretty curious to travel again. So I quit my job in summer 2018 to take a two month trip with Ian.

Ian Hoyt: So also for context, we gotta we gotta set the stage for this pinnacle change that happened. Do you remember the night vividly?

Caroline Lloyd: We’re cooking dinner in your apartment.

Ian Hoyt: My sublet apartment watching Netflix and we’re watching some random.

Caroline Lloyd: You know, one of those like, like millennial generation, quit your job, travel the world, live in a bus, take your dog, live your best life, really inspirational indie music.

Ian Hoyt: Mogli, right? Yeah. Awesome music. We Love Mogli. If, if, if you’re listening, can we use your music in our podcast anyway…

Caroline Lloyd: So like I still, I can’t take off without playing that album because it just reminds me that I am off to a new adventure and that is just a pinnacle moment. Anyway.

Ian Hoyt: Music has so much deployed with adventure for some reason it’s Cliche, but we’re sitting there watching this documentary now mind you, obviously I have context, I’ve traveled, blah, blah, blah, blah. You on the other hand, you know you’ve stayed domestic. You haven’t really gone many places.

Caroline Lloyd: For context. I was looking for other jobs at the time, so I got to this crossroads where I could either continue applying and I think I was on like a second interview for a new job

Ian Hoyt: And you’re just hating it. You’re just not into it.

Caroline Lloyd: I didn’t realize it that I knew I wanted out of my job, but I didn’t realize that I was applying for jobs that would put me back in that exact situation two years down the road. And I think when I realized that that gave me the courage to, you know, make a drastic change in my life.

Ian Hoyt: And so we were watching that thing and did we book the tickets that day? Was it that day?

Caroline Lloyd: No, we were going to go to South America first and then we’re looking at South America for a really long time and we had grand plans of going for a full year.

Ian Hoyt: So we sat on the concept of dropping the grand vision was dropped everything and travel indefinitely, like a true, true, true, true, true nomad.

Caroline Lloyd: And I’m like there’s absolutely no way that we’re going to be able to do this. And I’m the type that’s just like, it works itself out, which we need to get back to you. We met in the middle, we met in the middle and things worked out a lot easier that way anyways, so we’re trying to figure out where to go, how to do this. And so Ian pulls in his expertise, friends Mitko and Sarah.

Ian Hoyt: Shout out to them. They’re also on the team.

Caroline Lloyd: So originally we were just asking them for advice or like, you know what, what to do, how to get started.

Ian Hoyt: Sarah was and they travel extensively together, which traveling as a couple, as much different than traveling solo. We sat on the idea and we realized that they were going to be in eastern Europe in the summer like they always are because Mitko, he is originally from Bulgaria and we’re like, why don’t we just go hang out with them? I think that’s Kinda just how I happened.

Caroline Lloyd: Well we didn’t ask. We politely were invited first and then we weighed our options and we accepted.

Ian Hoyt: So she drops her job. We have a logistical nightmare of finding like four sublets.

Ian Hoyt: We should do a whole episode of sub-leasing in New York. We don’t want to get sidetracked too much, but long story short, my biggest phrase in life is it’ll all just work out, which is cliche and really simplistic. But what happened?

Caroline Lloyd: So three subleasers later. We put our stuff in storage and we left for Europe for two months.

Ian Hoyt: We found three subletters at all different levels of subletting.

Caroline Lloyd: I had attempted to find a job that I could work remotely during the trip and ended up applying for jobs while I was on the trip, which still works out.

Ian Hoyt: It’s going to be another episode for sure on how to work and travel and just all that crazy stuff. But long story short is we spent the summer in eastern Europe, um, a majority of it in Bulgaria. And um, that’s actually where our next group trip is going to be for 2019. Uh, so that’s a long-winded way of explaining how we got from a blog, podcast to Iceland to Bulgaria to a new podcast and welcome. We’re excited to be here.

Caroline Lloyd: So we spent the summer in Europe and it was great and we’ll have episodes about that later. But one of the things that kind of came to us in a miraculous moment of realization was when we get to a new destination, new city or new country, the first thing that we would do on the morning that we woke up we went on a walking tour.

Caroline Lloyd: Now in Europe, a lot of the walking tours are free. They happen every day and there are just crowds of people that come to them and it gives so much context for the rest of your stay in whatever destination that you’re in, you know, the landscape where things are, you know, best areas for restaurants, history, culture. It was just so informative and changed the way that we interpreted what that city had to offer that we had to take a step back and realize that we live in a city that is, you know, a pinnacle city of the US. So after going on all of these walking tours in Europe, we wanted to start our own in New York. Now New York is not short of any tours or tourist attractions.

Ian Hoyt: I think they have like five, I think.

Caroline Lloyd: Yeah, I mean you can like to cover your basis. Uh, but we wanted to offer something different.

Caroline Lloyd: You know, we wanted to offer your things from a local’s perspective with the history and the context that you need, but really giving a true, authentic experience which aligns with what we do on our group trips. Yeah. So one of the ways that we made it really stand out and be authentic is that we started doing tours in our favorite area of the city, which is the Upper West Side. And after doing a little bit of research we realized that there weren’t any tours of this area, which is a shame because it’s very historical and it’s beautiful in a lot of people. Never even make it outside of Times Square. Right. So we launched our upper west side tour and then we also launched a midtown tour, which does cover a lot of the touristy sites, but from an experiential standpoint that is a little bit more authentic.

Caroline Lloyd: So we have two tours going on in New York right now and it’s really been eyeopening. I’m kind of relating back to where Life Nomading started with the blog. We’ve really started to see a community start to build. So within this community, we’re starting to, you know, make connections all over the world and it feels really great to share our city with international travelers just as we learn about their city when we’re traveling. Um, so it’s kind of reciprocal feedback there.

Ian Hoyt: We just want to be the vessel to be able to meet other travelers and we’re hoping that we can do that with this podcast, with the blog and with our trips and tours, we’re extremely excited to be back at it podcasting and above all else consistently every single week. On what day?

Caroline Lloyd: Mondays.

Ian Hoyt: Every single Monday we’re going to be here with new travel content, whether it’s interviews with industry experts, uh, whether it’s a new travel guide or hacking guide of some sort or other, or whether it’s just kind of a chronicle of our experiences in different countries and cities. We’re going to be bringing something new to you every week for your commute or for your walking the dog time and we hope that maybe it helps you push over the ledge that we pushed over ourselves and begin traveling more.

Ian Hoyt: So if you’re down for some travel content, you’re down for learning a little bit more about how to travel more in your life. Maybe this is the podcast to subscribe to. We’d love to have you. So until next time I’m Ian.

Caroline Lloyd: I’m Caroline

Ian Hoyt: And if you have any suggestions for us for future episodes, please email us at podcast[@]www.lifenomading.com. That’s podcast[@]www.lifenomading.com.