CNX Podcast
The Chiang Mai Community Podcast, where businesses, brands and interesting people get heard. Hosted by Ash Pemberton.
CNX Podcast
Beyond Borders: Jesse's Journey to Location Independence S01/E07
Dive into the latest CNX Podcast where we kick back with Jesse Schoberg, a seasoned digital nomad, and get a front-row seat to the truly free world of remote living. Picture a laid-back conversation filled with laughs and tales of Chiang Mai's buzzing expat scene.
Jesse, the brains behind Dropinblog, spills the beans on his unconventional journey from the confines of a traditional workspace to the liberating embrace of a location-independent lifestyle. Follow his footsteps through the fascinating universe of SaaS, witness the birth of his brainchild, and get a backstage pass to the inner workings of a SaaS business. Monthly recurring revenue becomes the unsung hero in this narrative, and you'll soon be nodding along to the complex yet intriguing dance of running a business in the digital nomad realm.
But wait, there's more than just business talk. Jesse unravels the chapters of his life in Thailand, inviting you into a world where cultural immersion, personal growth, and a touch of luxury seamlessly coexist. From the vibrant streets of Bangkok to the serene vibes of Chiang Mai, you'll stroll through Jesse's expat journey, encountering impactful connections and absorbing the richness of unique experiences.
This episode isn't just a podcast; it's an ode to living life by design, not default. Get ready for an intimate exploration of a life less ordinary, where choices are deliberate, diversity is celebrated, and the digital nomad lifestyle takes center stage.
Tune in and join the ride!
https://linktr.ee/cnxpodcast
Yo, hello everyone. Welcome back and a massive welcome to Mr. Jesse Schoberg.
Jesse:Hey guys, what's up?
Ash:Can I give you a little introduction? You to me are like an ambassador for living your best life in Thailand. I know that's both in Bangkok and in Chiang Mai you live a pretty luxurious and high serviced life and I love that. I admire that and I enjoy that myself. So we've definitely got that in common. For me, you're like a next generation of digital nomad. you truly work remotely. Being location independent and business owner.
Jesse:Sounds about right. Yeah,
Ash:Yeah, and of course we're both members of the DC. I've talked about that on previous podcasts. That's the Dynamite Circle, which is an entrepreneur's network and just a great way to meet good people. You are the CEO and the co founder of Dropinblog. That is the fastest and easiest way to add a blog to your website, to any website and a true alternative to WordPress. But there's two other things as well. When I think of you, I actually think of your wedding, thank you for inviting me and my family to your amazing, beautiful wedding, which was on the Beachfront Hotel in Phuket. And I have three memories of that, that just stick with me. Number one is you and your swagger when you walk down the aisle. You dance down the aisle, it was the look on your face, it was good moves, good bit of swagger in your step and I absolutely love that. Number two was Janine, you're a beautiful bride and she cut her long flowing white gown. She got the scissors out and literally cut it into a mini
Jesse:you gotta know when the party starts, Right.
Ash:I thought that was just super cool and she had two dresses for the price of one. That's right. Yeah, it was an awesome little touch. I thought that was a really beautiful thing and very memorable for me. And third was your dad.
Jesse:dad. Oh,
Ash:He's a dude. And when he started jamming on the harmonica at your wedding, I could just see that was just like a really beautiful family moment. And I was there with my family and I had a good chat with him and just really enjoyed his music too. And then finally, you will always be remembered by me for being the person that introduced me to credit card roulette. So I don't know if you knew you were the person that
Jesse:so maybe chat through all
Ash:Yeah, so maybe we can chat through all of these things that I use as your intro.
Jesse:well, one thing that's interesting is you brought up about the uh, being a digital nomad it's about having a location independent business. But it also means, utilizing that. So the difference between just having a location independent business but then actually leaning into that and living around the world and living remotely is what makes that differentiation. you're not really a nomad if you just live in one place, right? it's an art to get that done correctly. it's a lot of fun. And a lot of versions of that. And I've lived a few different versions of that. it's an exciting way to live. Not without its challenges, and It's just a different set of challenges. and a different set of experiences,
Ash:sure. Being nomadic allows you to live wherever you want. Where do you choose to
Jesse:I would say that Thailand is definitely my favorite place to live? I've spent time in I think 42 countries or so. But the last maybe six or eight years I've been more based in Asia. once I discovered and got to know the culture and some of the language and the community and lifestyle in Thailand, it became my favorite place.
Ash:Yeah, sure. I think we both share that passion for Thailand and people ask me all the time. Oh, how long have you been in Thailand? do you still love it? for me, I just say well, it's unbeatable. I can't actually get better than what I have here, but we have different setups. I am very much rooted in Chiang Mai because of my
Jesse:of
Ash:You have the choice to go everywhere and anywhere. And I see your schedule and I consider one month away, definitely living. In a different place. and you tend to do one month trips.
Jesse:you're there for a you tend to do one month, trips. Then you don't really have time to have a routine. then you're kind of on vacation obviously part of the beauty of living around the world is that you get to see stuff, right? You want to go to different tourist things. You want to experience the culture and the food so you are doing a bit of touristing, but if you're there for two and a half weeks. You don't really have time to have a normal life. You're just touristing on vacation. So, the sweet spot that we've been doing the last couple years is we stay in a base for one to three months, and then if we want to see somewhere new, we'll do a four or five nights, vacation we found that's a really cool amount of time we can just tourist. and we can unplug from the work, we can make it a long weekend and not feel bad that we're not getting into routine. And then, it's interesting, you can do as much touristy stuff in five days of doing that full time Then you would if you were there for a month living as a nomad and living and working and having a routine. that's really exciting. But also it's a cool way for the five day thing to be like, Oh, okay. I could spend time here. This is a spot that I think is interesting that I could spend a few months in versus if you go somewhere for five days and you're like, Oh, that was fun as a tourist, but I don't really need to, spend three months here next year or something like that. So that's kind of what was a cool way to test the waters. one to three months is the ideal. because then you can rent stuff long term I generally live on Airbnb. In Asia here, I'll do service departments, which can be done month to month, which are amazing, but in most of the world, you've got to be living in Airbnb, and there's a substantial price decrease once you hit a month. Otherwise you're on the tourist pricing. You still are paying a premium over having a lease, but the one month is where you hit the breaking point of having like quote, better deal. And then that gives you time to, set up your work get your gym routine set up, get your food routine set up, whatever those things are and really dig into a place and get to know it and live like normal people instead of just being a tourist.
Ash:And presumably you did this four day recce to Chiang Mai a while ago, because you've, repeatedly come back to Chiang Mai, is that right?
Jesse:when I was living in Latin America, I kind of was living as an expat instead of a nomad, the expat is more like what you're living as far as having the base with the house and more normal setup. And I had that when I lived in Panama. So, a lot of people go in reverse. They start working online, they start nomading around, and then they find someone where they like, and then they settle down. I did the opposite. I moved to Panama from the States. just straight bought an apartment, moved in, set up a normal expat life. And then I started meeting some nomad people. And I learned about how the other version of this life could work. So around 2015 or 16, when I was getting done with the Latin America chapter I had learned that Chiang Mai was the digital nomad hub. And so I wanted to go to ground zero and see what was going on. And so I actually moved here for a year around 2016. since then I come back usually at this time of year during November. Post the DCBKK conference with the Dynamite Circle, as you'd mentioned. Many people come up here as well as it's the perfect time of year, and then I like to have Thanksgiving up here, and then go to Yiping Festival as well in November. It's always really nice. So I'm usually here for November, sometimes more depending on the year.
Ash:Sure. Why Thanksgiving in Chiang Mai? Is there something special about that, or is that just something for you?
Jesse:To throw a shameless plug. Actually, it's not shameless. It's just a thing that I like. I like getting Thanksgiving at the Duke's. It's Just I always joke that that was the thing that, that could pull me back to the States, With the Duke's, you don't have to miss Thanksgiving. anymore. It's all actually probably better quality because since they don't have all the access to all the made stuff, it's all from scratch. solid. I actually have
Ash:I've actually had one of their they sell the Thanksgiving, Turkey meal in a box. It's delivered in a box. Oh, eat. All ready to eat. And I know that's good. And in fact, nicely for me to ask you what is it about Chiang Mai that you love the most? it do for you? I
Jesse:it's the perfect size small city. it's the best quality of life in the world. extremely safe, it has amazing selection of food, it has great access to goods, everyone is extra friendly, and it's just easy to get around, it's a city that's very manageable, it's not this size where you're constantly dealing with traffic problems and this kind of stuff, there's enough people that have found this place special, which means that there's enough good restaurants, which to me is important, There's like a really quality version, at least one, usually more, of every type of food that you could want. So a lot of times when you go to smaller towns, that's something that you lose out on, maybe they don't really have great ramen, or maybe they don't really have great Korean barbecue, or tacos, whatever, here in Chiang Mai, I guess magically because it is this magnet for people that like living here, it's also a lot of those people show up and open a restaurant, you just have all the logistical things that make Thailand good and everything that Bangkok has, you can get here, right? It's pretty interesting to see that Combination of things happening. Chiang Mai is a special
Ash:happening. So, uh, those of the reasons why I think Chiang Mai is a special place. Yeah,
Jesse:it's definitely not. for me. I can spend time here. I like spending a weekend or a month here. But, just a major city person, so I prefer to live in Bangkok, Mexico City, New York, like major metropolitan areas. both me and my wife really thrive on the access to kind of unique, interesting people that are doing a huge variety of things, as well as just the endless list of activities, restaurants, culture, whatever, that comes with a major metropolitan city that you just logistically can't have in a small city. And, obviously that comes with the troubles of larger cities, there's some logistical problems that make them a little bit less desirable than living in smaller cities. But, larger metros are more my personal go to.
Ash:Totally with you. Yeah, people that are listening to this know about digital nomads and maybe have a bit of a preconception. But, like I said in your introduction, you're kind of like a high performing digital nomad. And that's not just me making that up. That was a piece of PR that I read from CNBC that featured you definitely went viral, didn't
Jesse:It? definitely viral, didn't it So, um,
Ash:um, one thing that made you different in that article. to other digital nomads, is you actually put some numbers on things. Can I repeat the numbers? Well, It's public domain, right? I thought it was quite interesting. You went outright and you said, listen, I'm earning 230K a year. That's American US dollars, which to everyone in Thailand is about 8 million baht. And that you're spending, this is a bit I like, you're living on and you're spending. 8k a month, which is US dollars. So that's 280, 000 a month living in Bangkok.
Jesse:Yes,
Ash:Nice life.
Jesse:Yeah, definitely got a lot of interesting feedback on those numbers, And people, Especially in the digital nomad community, their leading selling point about Thailand is that it's cheap. it can be very cheap. Obviously, the value here is, almost unmatched in the world. But, the thing is, I would always argue that well, that also scales. once I make enough money, go back to the life that I had somewhere else. there are, higher quality of life here. It's not just about baselining. And so that was the take of the piece was like, Hey, look, there's a version of life in Thailand that looks like if you live in Manhattan most people don't think about that. there's a million YouTube videos on how you can live in Chiang Mai for 200 a month or something, and this was the opposite of that. what if you wanted your 30, 000 a month life that you would live in? Lower Manhattan, what would that look like in Bangkok? So it's Still a good value. but I also like to live, life that aligns with level that I've finally reached by working online for 20 years.
Ash:And just for people at home, we are not talking about like absolute extravagance, we're just talking about a nice Bangkok condo in somewhere. Like to law. We're talking about eating out twice, three times a day, in nice restaurants.
Jesse:Yeah, I mean, pretty much eating out all the time, not necessarily out in restaurants, I'd say we eat Thai food probably like half the time, you know, you can just have whatever you want and eat healthy and quality and go out for nice cocktails on a rooftop somewhere and enjoy that and, Bangkok's the city that really offers that in a good way. yeah,
Ash:article that they wrote about you. How did that come about? Did you instigate it?
Jesse:we were actually doing some outreach for PR for the company, that year actually got pieces in Forbes, Entrepreneur, a bunch of tier one media. actually the original thought process was with our company, we're kind of like the first, in the space. And so we're trying to like build a moat with the product. And so. When competitors come in that will clearly be the original and the market leader. So, this sounds like a roundabout way of getting a piece talking about my lifestyle in Bangkok. that's the pitch that's interesting. Not my internet company, right? No one wants to hear about that. So, more of like a roundabout way of getting press for the company. And then, when you would Google our company company and me as one of the founders has press in all these top tier. Places, this must be something important. This must be the true leader in the category, etc.
Ash:the true leader the category, et cetera. Oh, definitely. we've got
Jesse:Oh, definitely. Obviously we got backlinks and this kind of stuff from it. But more, importantly, it just, it's about just getting on the radar. So obviously this wasn't like. Since this was broad, tier one media, it wasn't exactly targeted traffic. or whatever, but things kind of snowball, right? Then somebody learns about it, and they tell their guy, and So, yeah, it definitely uh, was something that moved the needle a little bit. especially the CNBC piece. So they did the article, and there's also, like, an accompanying video, and they, like, sent out the full professional team to, like, basically video a day in the life, and It went super viral in Thailand as well. And it was really interesting watching there's like three different responses. There's the Thai response. There's the Farang expats who live in Thailand response. And then there's the, Western people who don't live in Thailand's And They were all completely all over the board. So The people who don't live here basically are just like, Oh, that's insane, you could live anywhere, why would you live there if you're spending that much money? that's like kind of the default response. And of course, any of the people that say that have never actually lived in a major city center It's not the same, right? Like I said, the way that we live there, it costs 25, 000 a month in New York. It's just not the same, But that was kind of the default gut, like you idiot, why would you live there? And then the local expat community here, you can guess response there. Which is basically just you idiot, why are you spending so much? I could live that way here for, a fifth of that price, blah, blah, blah. He must've just got off the boat, When I first came here, I wasn't doing as good as I'm doing now. And I wasn't living on 200 a month, but I wasn't spending 8k, that's for sure. There was a lot of that kind of pushback I ended up doing a big Twitter thread going through all these objections. Because, of course, in the article, some things are missed. they took some creative liberties and blah, blah, blah. So, I did a big Twitter thread that kind of goes through a bunch of the details. but then the Thai response was the most interesting. Because I was like, did live on the local nightly news in Bangkok, they like came to my house interviewed me it was totally
Ash:Yeah, because
Jesse:because this article went viral, in Thailand, and went like Thai bloggers, it was like the news cycle for two days.
Ash:how did they respond to you?
Jesse:it's interesting because Thai people they're not covered by this branding of that Thailand is this cheap country. place that people can go to. Like, they know that there's wealthy people here that have nice things. but the main thing that was interesting about the response is essentially it was extremely positive. And basically everyone was like, wow, that's amazing. I hope someday that I can achieve what you've achieved. We have a great country and if you can afford to live like that here, it's amazing. I had actually a lot of people reach out to me, Thai people, like asking for like tips on like how to get started on the internet, and then the other thing I think that kind of was, there was like a point of pride, where it was like, this guy could live in New York, but he chooses to live here. We're not some junky country we're just as good as those other tier one cities, and people really got behind that in the comments, which was just really interesting, because they're kind of sick of seeing the video that, anyone can live here for 200 bucks a month and so that's been the branding forever, and so then when this comes from the other side of it, and they're like, yeah, see, we are, we're like, legit you don't have to live in London, you can live here, we have all the real stuff.
Ash:I wonder if we could, discuss some of the ways that you could be what I call a high performing nomad here in Thailand. Sure. I run a graphic design agency. standing in my studio now. It's very much bricks and mortars. It's very much an old fashioned model. It very much ties me to this city. That's not really digital nomad life, but it works well for me. I started as a freelancer and then built an agency. You, however, have a SAS.
Jesse:Correct. Not
Ash:Not everyone knows what a SAS is. Please can you spell it out for us?
Jesse:You bet. So SaaS means Software as a service, and it essentially means something that you would pay a monthly fee for that the software would be hosted on the internet instead of hosted on your computer. So, normally in the old days, say you would have Microsoft Word or Office, right? And then You would pay for it once and it would be on your computer, but then it wouldn't update, right? Then there'd be like a new version and you don't get it And then you would have a couple years Maybe you would pay again and you would download a new version and this kind of thing And if there was bugs in the meantime You would just deal with them for two years SAS model is google docs, it's all on the internet their case, it's a free product, but they're, actually the new Office Suite is paid as a SaaS. and then that means that every time that there's updates, you just get them every day. So it's like the product is constantly progressing instead of the product being stagnant. And then as a consumer, you get the new thing all the time, and it's always being fixed and updated and a lot of these Sass products would also include some sort of storage in the cloud these days, it's a little bit different a model but you've seen it all across the board now. Canva versus the Photoshop kind of concept of paying the monthly fee but then getting the new stuff every single minute that it comes out
Ash:how long have SAS businesses been around?
Jesse:it's been Around forever, I think, But they just snowballed as internet access got better. some of the early SASSs would be like a form processing SASS. So it's like, you have a website and then you put a contact form on it and then that would process and it would maybe send to your email or it would maybe store in a database somewhere And now it's progressed to million things are SASS products now.
Ash:what really appeals to me about a SAS business, Is something that everyone just refers to as monthly reoccurring revenue. They are sweet words.
Jesse:They are very sweet words, yes. chased them for probably about 15 years. I used to have an agency as well. I had a development agency and we built websites for people. I had a small team, but they were all remote, so I didn't have an office And I had obtained the clients from the city that I used to live in the States. And then I just trained them that I'm never going to have face to face meetings with you anymore, but I'm still going to deliver the work. And then I started living around the world. But the point here is that when I actually when I had first moved to Panama, is when I had met a couple of people that were running SAS products. And I was like, oh, this is scaling a lot different than the agency is scaling. Every time I want to double my income I have to double my seat count and I have to double my sales count when you go up to X, it's twice as hard. Everything's twice as much. Like it's very hard to scale an agency especially to really big numbers and do it without killing yourself. I actually I had two close friends And when I lived in Panama. One that was running a SAS company and one that was running a very large agency. and I said, you know what, I definitely want to be the sass guy. So then started trying to make products and made many and then it was the drop in blog that was finally the one that, took off.
Ash:So It's all about subscriptions, right? Right. And I have quite a number of subscriptions and I go through them and try and cull them, because they're easy to sign up for and then they're easy to forget about and they just keep running. And that's what really appeals to me about. Being a high performing digital nomad with a SaaS company where you can just sign up more and more clients and focus on building and scaling your business.
Jesse:that value is added to everyone. So it's like the same amount of work for me to add a feature if I have 10 customers or if I have a thousand. in the early years, it's very tough because you're building this product for no one or very few people, and then as you scale though, then it's the same product, and so then eventually that starts to compound, the revenue continues to compound, Obviously, there's more complications as you get bigger, of course, but it's nothing like the agency. It's not a one to one kind of a thing, like once you start going up upstream there's a lot more scalability that's a little bit easier, and yes, in theory, it's just printing money every month and you don't quote have to do anything, but, the goal is always to continue to create something that people actually get value from. hopefully tons of value, so that the amount that they're spending with you is nothing compared to the value that they're receiving. not going to quit Spotify or Apple Music if you love music, right? Like, the amount of value that you're getting for 10 bucks a month or whatever it is just like unbelievable, because you get to listen to all this music that you love forever. That's going to be pretty far down the list to go.
Ash:You picked a great example, have a Spotify subscription. I use it every day. It's a family plan, but everyone in my family uses it. Tremendous value for money. Definitely not cancelling that one. YouTube premium. I also, for my business, I have a Dropbox. For my LinkedIn outreach, I have all these automation tools. I have a collection of subscriptions. ones do you have? Which ones are your favourites? And which ones give you most value?
Jesse:it's interesting too, to talk about the, you know, you kind of have these personal side ones, and then you have the business side ones. anything that's personal, which we call B2C, which is business to consumer, versus B2B, which is business to business you definitely do not want to start a B2C, don't do that. You want to come up with something to sell to businesses, because businesses have problems. we're talking about joy of listening to music. That's not a need. if you look at now, these days, everyone has 25, video subscriptions so you've got Netflix, and you've got Disney plus, and you've got Hulu, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those are cancelable, right? and harder to get to where if I solve some business problem in your agency for, 10, a hundred, 300 a month, whatever if I solve something for 300 a month that was costing you 2, 000 a month in headache, you're never going to cancel that, right?
Ash:And to be a SASS founder, do you need to be a coder? Are you a coder?
Jesse:but I'm more of the front end coder, so that means the interface can do a little bit of back end coder, but I have two co founders and one of them is the one who does the heavy lifting on the back end coding So, not required. know a lot of non technical SaaS founders, but it's definitely harder. Knowing how to code is helpful, because especially in those early days, if you don't have a lot of runway from some other business or something you're gonna need to code out a product, and it's going to be a lot of work, and if you have to hire someone for that, it's gonna be probably expensive if you want it done
Ash:it done
Jesse:There are ways to do that these days with some no code tools like, there's a product called Bubble, that allows you to build SaaS like Products just with a drag and drop style editor. I wouldn't build my whole business on that, but I wouldn't be opposed to starting it like that. And then once I tested the product and got a few customers and saw, Oh, this concept works, then I would have validated it then maybe hire in a coder. if I wasn't. But knowing how to code in any level is always great and useful and
Ash:Fun. Really?
Jesse:Oh, I absolutely love it. I'm more of a front end kind of guy,
Ash:uh, like, just, yeah, learning about technology stuff. Yeah, yeah, just to give a quick example. so
Jesse:Yeah, just to give a quick example. So, right now, one of the things that we're working to roll out on our product as you mentioned briefly, it's a blogging product. So It basically allows you to put a blog on your website. And one of the things that we're working to roll out is, this click to listen to the article. So, you may have seen this like on Forbes only the big guys have it. It's not really something you see on smaller blogs these days. But it's basically like, there's an article there and you can just hit play, and it listens like a podcast. And so we're going to be rolling that out for our users. And so when we started building that, the backend is, how do we, use AI to convert the text into voice, so it sounds natural, and then creating a file for that and whatever, but that, so that's the backend. the front end is the interface, right? It's what does the play button look like? What does the loading look like? What is the scrubbing thing look like? Can you speed it up and slow it down? What does the buttons for that look like? How does that feel? Does it work right on mobile? all of this kind of stuff. That was something that I personally built was the interface for the player for that, in this example,
Ash:And with your SaaS drop in blog where did the inspiration come from that? Were you solving your own problem? Definetely
Jesse:inspiration were own eventually these people wanted to do content marketing. writing blog posts that are going to rank in Google and drive you some business. They wanted to add a blog to their existing site. the solution was you put WordPress on a and now we're back to where we started, which is why they didn't want to have WordPress in the first place, and now you have to run WordPress and your website, and now you need a theme for WordPress to match your other site, and you're running two things, and now you've got all the problems of WordPress again. So we were like, what if there was a blog that you could just drop into the existing site? we actually had this idea for a long time, and then we finally coded it out in 2015, And then we just started using it for our own customers. it wasn't really making a lot of money. And then we were had started a few other SAS products as well. And trying to figure out how to get out of the agency. And then it was around 2019 that Dropinblog started taking off. Specifically because of these no code builders. So we thought it was going to be for people that had made custom websites. Which is what we were trying to solve it for. But then we saw this rise and things like Shopify, and Teachable, and Thinkific, Webflow. And all these do it yourself, drag and drop things. And most of them either didn't have a blog platform at all, or it was crappy. And we started seeing signups from these guys. And then we thought, oh wait, bing there's a market. Now all of those audiences our target market. So then we started building official integrations with a bunch of them. And now we've integrated with like 25 different Builder platforms then that gave us a bit more of a product market fit. that's when we saw light bulb moment. And then we sold our other projects unbundled the agency and went all in
Ash:2019. Awesome. So how many customers does Dropinblog have?
Jesse:A few thousand.
Ash:And how do you get new customers?
Jesse:Mostly through SEO. we actually use our own product. have a blog, Create articles and drive traffic. from Google for people Looking for terms related to adding a blog to their website. that's where most of our customers come from.
Ash:have quite a lean team, don't you? Is that three or four of you?
Jesse:we have three co founders and then we do have a team of about 10 under that. a lot of them are contractors and I like to hire people hourly. so then I can get really focused, skill sets I'd rather hire three people that are really good at the one thing that they're good at and then pay them by the hour.
Ash:Yeah, that makes sense. Jesse, that's been a fascinating insight into your business and into SaaS. I appreciate that. because one thing that is unique you, is that you're pretty open about money. Can we talk about money? Yeah, so I would like to ask you, how do you like to spend money? Like what gives you the best satisfaction when you're spending money?
Jesse:me it's probably, aesthetic, as in starting with like apartment. I like just being in a nice space. It just makes me feel good all the time. I probably tend to overspend on, apartment, car, transfer, because I just feel like being in a nice space puts me in a mental space that feels good all the time. That's where I'm definitely spending more than a normal person would in their balance sheet.
Ash:In their balance sheet. and I do work at home the majority of the time. Um, I, I, that's
Jesse:and I do work at home the majority of the time. While a lot of people working in co working spaces and coffee shops, and you see this kind of in the marketing of digital nomading. you look at the stats Peter Levels who's someone in the nomad space, LevelsIO on Twitter, he did a survey of where do nomads work. And the majority of them do actually work at home. Because you can set up a better space, basically. I definitely do work out occasionally, but it's almost for a change of pace. adds to creating a nice aesthetic at home and a nice space and this kind of stuff.
Ash:so I'm guessing you can combine your home budget and your office budget and get somewhere great.
Jesse:Yeah that's part of it.
Ash:So where would you choose to live in Chiang Mai when you're here?
Jesse:Chiang Mai is a tough one especially short term. we like the being right in everything. everywhere that we stay, we like to stay all the way in the center of the universe, and that's usually comes at a massive premium. But we love that being able to just walk out your door, and like everything's right there, so. That's the goal for us, and then, what else is getting rid of as much personal admin as possible. Everyone just loves to waste tons of time on that, and when you're not living in the West, there's endless services that can pull these things out of your life. I'm talking about laundry cleaning your house. delivery of stuff there's just endless services that you can just get everything handled for you no problem. So here in Chiang Mai. There's a great laundry delivery service They deliver in two days and it's very cheap and very high quality definitely never doing laundry
Ash:You just mentioned that there's an awesome laundry service. There's, for me, I see laundry services everywhere. Is there one in particular?
Jesse:Yeah, I use wash drop.
Ash:Wash drop. Okay. Little shout out to wash drop for the people of Chiang Mai. If you're not using it, have a look at
Jesse:Yeah, the founder is foreigner who I think used to be a digital nomad as well and kind of saw the opportunity of building an app around all these great laundry concepts that was already here. And so then it saves everyone that step of, walking down the street and going, finding a shop that you trust they've expanded over the last few years and they now have presence in Bangkok and I think that they're rolling out in Phuket too.
Ash:Out very
Jesse:Great service. I've been using them for five years.
Ash:I'm going to look into that. Yeah. Nice. stay money. We've talked about We've talked a little bit about how to make it and what you enjoy about it. Do you also invest it?
Jesse:what Do you also invest in it? Trying to invest in the business, because we've got to this point where we've found this market fit as I was explaining, I think that it's, smart to lean into that so we've been pushing more back into the business to try to, get to big numbers and maybe an exit someday is kind of the thought process. as far as investing, think people overcomplicate it. If you're looking for a long term investment, S& P cheap, like Vanguard, low cost, like that method. Do it yourself and just put it in there, because it seems to beat everything else. And then I do think that there's something to be said for Bitcoin and crypto. I think that there's something there that, could still turn out to be something really important. I tend to keep a few chips in that direction as well.
Ash:direction as well. I discovered it Yeah, it was
Jesse:The first time that I discovered it was around
Ash:an article about
Jesse:Yeah, it was. like 15
Ash:I wish it
Jesse:But I didn't buy any. I remember like seeing an article about it and talking to my business partner and being like, Yo, should we throw five grand into this? Just Seems interesting, and we didn't but then the bull run in 2017 started to get into understanding it a bit more. And I just find it really fascinating. and at the end of the day, like, the tech is really good and really interesting And I think that once the world figures out how it's gonna deal with it there's going to be lot of special things to offer. all these things take time to work out,
Ash:so I have a couple more questions relating to money I asked my dad this question and got a really insightful answer from him that we still talk about. So I'm going to try it on you. What's the thing that you've indulged in the most by spending a large amount of money on one thing?
Jesse:that's a good one. That's a good one. a lot of times with my business partners. or with just a couple of friends that also have location independent businesses will rent like a really fancy villa for co living, co working month. maybe that's in South Thailand or Bali or who knows where. those can be pretty expensive especially when they come well appointed, but, man, it's cool.
Ash:man,
Jesse:being a nomad don't really need a car. Especially because I love to live in city centers, so you just take Grab or Uber all the time or whatever, and there's no point in having a car. basically. So coming from the States, the car culture is something that I grew up with and that I do enjoy. And I do like cars a lot, but I don't have access to them. So that's actually when I do go back to the States, which isn't that often, we'll go back like a month here and there and spend a month in California or New York a lot of times when we go back I'll use that as my excuse to, get a fun car. And now that they have Turo, turo is like a peer to peer car rental app.
Ash:Oh, I like that.
Jesse:It's cool because you can get anything you want. couple of years ago my wife, Janine, she hadn't been done like the full, California thing. So we went to California for a month and drove up the famous coastal highway 1 and spent some time in Bay area and a bunch of time in L. A. and and we rented like a Boxster convertible for that ride, and it's was awesome. I would probably never buy a Boxster, but Being able to rent one for a month is, huge indulgence and, like awesome. yeah, then another time when we went to visit my family, I got a Tesla for a few weeks, and that was the first time that I was able to drive a Tesla, and amazing, by the way, if you've never driven a Tesla, they're the best thing
Ash:never driven a Tesla,
Jesse:They're so fast, It's just
Ash:it's just unbelievable.
Jesse:Yeah, they just kill everything else. you feel the g force when you come off of the stop sign. they're unbelievable. Yeah. And also the tech in the inside of the car, they have this gigantic screen and everything's on the screen. And it feels like a big iPhone or whatever. but It's just hilarious because you get into that and then you get into any other car and you're just like, everyone's screwed. It's just so far ahead. And it's funny because the tech it's not that different But for some reason you get into cars and they still have all these old buttons and knobs and our whole rest of our life is a touch screen, but somehow that didn't get to the car yet, but in the tesla it did and they did a very nice job
Ash:Yeah. Okay. So biggest indulgences fitting in with your lifestyle, really. There's the beautiful accommodation. And then when you go home, you like to rent a good car. So let's leave the money one there I've got some questions for you, and you probably heard the first one there. What's your favorite restaurant in Chiang Mai?
Jesse:There's a ramen spot on the middle street in Neman on the south side of it. I can't think of the name. That's my favorite restaurant right
Ash:yeah, And you actually said that you liked jukes
Jesse:Definitely like Dukes. Yeah.
Ash:Some sushi?
Jesse:There's a new one on that street on Niemann that's between 2 and 4. It's the word for happiness in Thai. I don't know Anyways, there's a little new sushi spot there that's very
Ash:sushi spot there that's
Jesse:You got why not as a standby. Always very solid. But I've had a couple other ones that were pretty good too.
Ash:Cool I've got to say you were the first and only guest to actually turn up with coffee today So he brought coffee into the studio for me, was went down incredibly. What's your favorite coffee shop?
Jesse:Fulhide. you can look it up, it's got a nice view too. Also here in Niemann, you might be sensing a theme.
Ash:Definitely picking up there's a few favorite spots. Okay, next question. Where's your favorite place to just take a walk in nature? in Chiang Mai.
Jesse:there's a little reservoir the one that's, uh, kind of by the university here. slightly west of Niemann.
Ash:Is that Hoi Giao Waterfalls?
Jesse:Nope.
Ash:near up by the zoo.
Jesse:it's near that, but it's not that. Yeah. you can find it on the map.
Ash:will. After work, what's your favorite activity in Chiang Mai?
Jesse:probably meet up with some friends, grab some food, grab a cocktail. that's, a nice thing that's progressed here in, Chiang Mai the last few years.
Ash:Cool. give you some random That's Oh,
Jesse:don't know if I have
Ash:do I
Jesse:Amor.
Ash:I When you were young, did you have a nickname at school?
Jesse:I used to go by Jess instead of Jesse. Big divergence here.
Ash:Massive change. Describe your style in one word. Sleek. Jess. Love that. Who's your best friend?
Jesse:feel like I got a lot of good people in my life I don't think I could narrow it down to just one.
Ash:I thought you were gonna say Janine. Is that fair to say?
Jesse:Obviously, Janine's one of my best friends,
Ash:It's not fair to one. I
Jesse:I have a few of those, actually a couple of them made it out to the wedding that I hadn't seen in quite a while. And then there's one in New York that I keep in touch with.
Ash:Let's talk about mentors, because I asked you about friends, but also mentors. Do you have a mentor?
Jesse:probably a few people from the D. C., some few people from different chapters in my life, Keep in touch with a lot of people that I've met around the world. And, a lot of people have different life experiences, right? So I feel like if oh, one person can maybe help me a lot with business. One person can maybe help me a lot with personal stuff or That's how I like to do it.
Ash:Okay. Couple more. What's the kindest thing you've ever done for someone else?
Jesse:I do like to try to help people out with the resources I have. pretty regularly I try to connect people that I think could benefit from each other. there's a lot of scenarios where 1 plus 1 equals 3, and if you don't know those connections, then that doesn't happen. And, not that I'm the most connected person in the world, but I do come across a lot of people that have interesting things to offer in their life, and when you can put those together and see something Whether it be business or personal or whatever, that's pretty cool. And I feel like I do that pretty
Ash:regularly. seem to be very well balanced. You always seem to be quite chipper and in a good mood. Is there anything that you see in your life or in other people's lives and that makes you sad?
Jesse:Life admin. number one.
Ash:admin. Okay. But you've managed to get rid of
Jesse:Yeah usually, But it's still depressing when you have to get a, on the call with the airline for an hour and a half to solve something and they can only be you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's soul crushing. really bad traffic can make me
Ash:Yeah, but I live in the
Jesse:Yeah, but I live in the center of the center and try to live on the BTS, so I try to avoid traffic like the
Ash:think that can
Jesse:the other thing that can make me sad is seeing people in the world that are closed minded Something that happens if when you travel is you naturally meet a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds, and you learn a lot about the human experience, people that haven't left the 10 mile radius where they were born since you haven't encountered a bunch of other people with a bunch of other mindsets it's hard to understand where they're coming from, and so it's sad when you see these people essentially usually fighting on the internet, or if you have a dinner with them, and they have all these very closed minded views is usually because they haven't really spent a lot of time with other people or those people that they're, talking about. And Yeah, not the happiest thing to see that and not the easiest thing to solve either.
Ash:very true. And then the flip side of that what is it that brightens up your day on a daily basis? What is it that keeps you ticking along nice and happy?
Jesse:being connected to friends and, People around the world access that we have to, new ideas and what's going on and I think it's something that's keeps me excited, what's going on with AI right now or what's happening with different changes in the world and experiments that people are doing and I think that's really interesting, and because where we're at with the internet, I think that's the exciting side of what can be a dark, social media experience that a lot of people have, and I think that there, is a positive space out there, and there's a lot of good things happening, we're fortunate to have access to that people are more educated than they were before. And they have learned about things that they wouldn't have learned about before. And that's pretty
Ash:pretty Thank you, Jesse. This has been a great chat. I've enjoyed it a great deal. We're lucky enough, I think, fortunate enough to be part of a very positive community that we call the DC, but that extends further than that. It's about people who do have a growth mindset and do want to help and share. Their knowledge their information and help others. And you've done that for me. of a year and a half ago, we were in a mastermind together. And I greatly appreciated the wisdom and the time that you took to help me with my business. So public, thank you for that.
Jesse:My pleasure. I always love brainstorming on other people's businesses because then I don't have to do the work.
Ash:that sounds about right. That sounds great. Yeah, just to find one. Thank you so much, Jesse. And if people want to get in touch with you, how can they do
Jesse:I'm on most of the socials, so whatever you're into again, my name is Jesse Schoberg. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, that? kind of stuff. Or I blog a little bit on my personal site at schoberg. net. Or if you're in the business of adding a blog to your company, you can check out dropinblog. com.
Ash:Dropinblog. com. Super. Jesse, been a pleasure. Thanks so
Jesse:Thanks for having me on, man.
