TOPIC – KEYNOTE
Lessons from a Decade of Being an Itinerant Digital Nomad and Interviewing 300 World Travelers
After slow-traveling the world for over 10 years with no base, running his business from 6 continents, and conducting over 300 in-depth interviews with long-term world travelers on The Maverick Show podcast (@maverickshowpod), Matt Bowles will distill down his most life-changing lessons. Every week for the last 6 years, Matt has conducted long-form interviews with today’s most interesting digital nomads and world travelers to unpack the skills, tactics, and strategies they use to build thriving remote businesses, design epic lifestyles, and leave the world a little better than they found it. What are the keys to building and running a remote business while traveling? How can you deepen connections quickly and build richer relationships in a lifestyle of long-term travel? What types of travel decisions accelerate your personal growth the most? How can you start to have more immersive local experiences? How can you pay better attention to the unequal power dynamics that shape our world, and make more meaningful contributions towards justice and human rights? In this talk, Matt will present his most transformative lessons and takeaways that you can implement in your own life today.
BIO
Matt Bowles is your typical Irish-American hip hop DJ turned human rights activist turned location-independent entrepreneur turned minimalist world-traveler and podcaster.
He has a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a Master’s Degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution. Over the last 25 years, Matt has led activist delegations to monitor human rights abuses in the north of Ireland and helped to organize alternative political education projects led by political ex-prisoners in the occupied 6 counties. He also co-founded an organization to stop U.S. aid to Israel, organized solidarity delegations to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and did solidarity work with the indigenous Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. After working as a labor organizer in the U.S., he spent much of his professional career doing grassroots organizing against post-9-11 civil liberties abuses, such as torture, rendition, and the racial targeting of Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities in the U.S.
In 2007 he left his job and co-founded Maverick Investor Group as a fully remote real estate brokerage that helps people buy turnkey rental properties in the best U.S. markets from anywhere. Since 2013 he has been a full time digital nomad, traveling the world with no base, and has run his business remotely from 6 continents. He is also the host of The Maverick Show podcast where he interviews today’s most interesting world travelers and digital nomads from every continent. His guests share their personal journey to location independence, their most epic travel stories, as well as their reflections on identity, the power dynamics that shape our world, and how we can be more thoughtful, conscious travelers as we move through it. With listeners in 193 countries, The Maverick Show was ranked the #1 Digital Nomad Podcast by Web Work Travel, and the Top 1% of all Podcasts by Listen Notes. In 2024 The Maverick Show hit the Top 100 on Apple Podcasts, and was ranked the #1 “Places and Travel” podcast on Apple.