Welcome To The TMD Show! (TMD 000)

Hey, what’s up, dudes and dudettes. You are listening to the TMD Show, and I am LBT on the mic. Thank you very much for taking time from your day to listen to the show, whether you’re listening to me in the gym; on a travel day; stuck on a train, plane, boat or car; or even if you’re just chillaxing. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Now, if you’re new to the show or you haven’t heard of TMD before, thatmarketingdude.com is a place for digital nomads or location-independent entrepreneurs or even those just aspiring to become either of these. It’s a place where you can learn to build your online business so that you’ll be able to focus more on travel. It’s a place where you’ll be able to meet other like-minded individuals because, let’s face it, this online journey can be a little bit lonely at times. And it’s also a place where you can talk about business and travel with people that understand you and the desire that you have to see things in the world. Your friends may not understand you, but we do.

Now, this show is going to be a little bit different to other digital nomads and location-independent shows out there. I do not have guests on that just talk about their life story; I bring guests on who have been in this world of ours or have a real passion for travel, and I bring them on to co-host an episode where we hash out a specific topic for 20 to 30 minutes. Normally we’re going to have three episodes every month talking about business and one show to talk about travel where I bring on a guest who has some incredible stories that we can all just listen to and get jealous over.

Now, seeing as this is the very, very first episode of the TMD Show, I’m just going to spend a little bit of time talking to you guys about who I am, a little bit about my story, what TMD Show is, and also what TMD or That Marketing Dude is as well. So a little bit about myself. I am LBT, or otherwise known as Luke Benjamin Thomas; that is my real name. I am originally from the UK and I have been travelling for the last four years, and I’ve lived in four different countries, five if you include a month in Thailand but that was more travelling. So depending who you talk to, you know, it could be four; could be five countries. I am also an ex-semi-professional Argentine tango dancer. I spent a year doing a lot of shows around the south of England, and I also enjoy doing a lot of adrenaline sports. One day I will be getting my skydiving licence. Now, you’re going to hear a lot of my stories as I record more and more shows, but for now that is a very quick background about myself.

Now, I first got started online creating a fitness website. I did a lot of personal training stuff online. It was very, very successful; I had 92 clients. But I ended up running that business into the ground when I went travelling. I didn’t have the right things in place to run my business and, yeah, I just ended up running it into the ground and ended up just not having any clients left, no bit of business at all left. So my goal is to make sure you guys don’t do the same thing when you go travelling yourself.

Now, I did end up spending 11 months working in Australia as a scuba diving instructor. I took over 1600 people – that’s right, 1600 people – on their first ever scuba dive. That was absolutely incredible. I loved scuba diving, eventually became an instructor, and, yeah, managed to take 1600 people on their first ever scuba dive. That’s just in Australia, and that was in about four months, actually. So even though I spent 11 months in Australia, four months managed to take 1600 people on their first ever scuba dive. Now, also in Australia I did a lot of partying. I like to say I survived a cyclone too whilst I was there, but, you know, I will bring that story up again later on. But I did manage to survive a cyclone, but I did manage to get blood poisoning. So it’s definitely going to be an interesting story which I’ll bring up in a later show.

I did spend the majority of my time in Queensland where I managed to meet some absolutely incredible people, like the senator from Argentina. Now, I ended up taking his son scuba diving; didn’t know who he was until the boat trip on the way back. And as you can probably guess, being an ex-semi-professional tango danger, Argentine tango dancer as well, you know, we talked a lot about Argentine tango. I even got an invite to go out there, but I ended up losing his email address. So lost contact, not going to happen now.

After Australia, I ended up going to Fiji. I spent six months living in a remote island in the Yasawa Islands in Fiji. Thankfully, because of all the scuba diving that I did in Australia, the company I worked for had a place out of Fiji which they had a few different resorts that they offered scuba diving in. Ended up going to one of those; ended up being a tiny remote one. It was about five hours away by boat from the mainland. So I spent six months there. I got to do some absolutely incredible things whilst I was there too. I got to handfeed – this wasn’t in a cage – I managed to handfeed bull sharks. I’ve even got a tooth hanging around my neck right now that I got from a shark I actually fed myself. Now, these things got to, like, three and a half metres as well. So they’re pretty fucking big.

So I got to feed bull sharks whilst I was there; played a hell of a lot of drinking games; I even wrote a drinking games book whilst I was there called The Holy Bible of Drinking Games. In the last three weeks I was in Fiji actually, we managed to get 68 people to sign the front of the book and got 39 different drinking games in that book. Absolutely incredible. I’ve got loads of pictures I’ll chuck in show notes as we go forward. But I also got to meet some incredible people whilst I was there, the most memorable being Joe Biden. I actually had lunch with Joe Biden, but the funniest thing of it all or the funniest part of it all is that I had no idea who it was. It wasn’t until afterwards that I started talking to this American couple who also had lunch with us, they told me who it was afterwards. So I probably should’ve eased up on the swearing whilst we had lunch, but, either way, I managed to meet Joe Biden. That was pretty cool.

Now, after that, the next place I spent a lot of time in is Canada, which is where I currently am right now. Last winter, I spent the time in a ski resort learning how to snowboard; managed to get from the top to the bottom without falling over. That was my goal for that season. First ever time snowboarding; managed to get from top to bottom; managed to do it in 18 minutes as well, which was a pretty good time, apparently. Absolutely incredible. Loads of good pictures, loads of good videos. If you’ve managed to find my vlogging channel on YouTube, I created quite a few videos during the winter. I haven’t really done much recently; it’s something I definitely need to get going again, actually. But I did manage to record a bar crawl that we did on the mountain. There were seven different places on the mountain where you could buy alcohol, so me and three other people – a few other people throughout the day, but it was four of us from start to finish – we managed to go from – spent all day snowboarding, going from the top of the mountain all the way to the bottom, having a drink in every place. Now, I will link a video – because I recorded the entire thing. I made a vlog of that day. I will put the video in the show notes for this episode which you’ll find at tmdshow.com/0. Now, in the show notes I will link that video there.

Then, in the summer, I spent the time in the town at the bottom of this mountain. By the way, the mountain was Panorama in Invermere, BC. So look it up on a map; it’s a tiny place about an hour south of Banff, about three hours west of Calgary. So, yeah, I spent the summer in the town at a golf resort. Now, this was a beautiful place to spend the summer. I only went golfing, like, two or three times, though; should’ve made more effort to go golfing. But right now and for the next around about 10 months from the time this episode is published, I am in Toronto in Ontario. I am here, like I said, for the next 10 months. I will be focused on building That Marketing Dude, recording some excellent podcasts for you guys, and trying to do as much networking as possible to try and make That Marketing Dude the best place for digital nomads and location-independent entrepreneurs to spend their time. I want this to be something that you guys will get a lot out of and meet other people just like yourselves, and hopefully build some new friendships and potentially relationships from this place.

So let me talk a little bit more about what That Marketing Dude is. Like I mentioned in the intro, it is for digital nomads and location-independent entrepreneurs or those aspiring to be either. It’s a place for you to learn how to build an online business that will allow you to focus more on travel. Now, I just want to quickly define the difference between a digital nomad and a location-independent entrepreneur, because a lot of people don’t really know the difference. So a digital nomad is someone that doesn’t really have a home base and they spend all of their time travelling from place to place; you know, they just live constantly on the road. They could spend several months or maybe even a year in each place, but they don’t have somewhere they can go to, to call home, normally living out of a suitcase or a backpack. But they’re just somebody that’s constantly on the road.

Whereas a location-independent entrepreneur is someone that has a home base but they have the freedom to travel whenever they want. So, you know, for example, if I wanted to be a location-independent entrepreneur, I could – say I want to live in Toronto but I want to spend three to six months of the year travelling around the world; I could spend three months travelling around Europe and then another three months in Asia, but then I’d come back home to Toronto where I have all of my stuff and it’s where I call home.

So that’s the difference between a digital nomad and a location-independent entrepreneur. Now, you don’t have to decide which one you want to be; you can go from being a digital nomad to a location-independent entrepreneur or vice-versa. It’s entirely up to you. But just be aware that there is a difference, and I’m here to help you become either one. You know, you decide; I will help you do that.
We also have a free Facebook group where you can talk to other like-minded people, where you can talk about business and travel, and it is probably one of the best ways to talk to me too. I am in that group every single day, talking to people. If you wanted to join the group, you can; just go find the group and you can request access to join. If you enter dudebrood.com, that will redirect you to that Facebook group. And, yeah, like I said, request access and start interacting with people in the group.

Now, in 2017, which is when this podcast has been released – it’s actually November right now – 30th of November – but this podcast is going to be launched in late January. So my goal for this year is to bring you guys some courses. I want to lay out step-by-step for you guys how to build different parts of your business so you can get your business to the point where it’s providing you a lifestyle that you want, whether or not that’s as a digital nomad or a location-independent entrepreneur. I’m going to have to learn how to say those three words together really fast; it’s a pain in the ass sometimes. Either way, I want to release courses so you can build different parts of your business so you can become a better digital nomad or a better location-independent entrepreneur, or just to become either one of those in the first place if you’re not quite there yet.

So that’s a little bit about what TMD is and sort of, like, my goals for what TMD is going to become in 2017. And now a little bit more about what this show is going to be about. So I want this show to be different than all the other shows that are out there at the moment that are geared towards digital nomads and location-independent entrepreneurs. I’m getting tired of listening to shows where, you know, people have a guest on and they just talk about their life story. Yeah, their stories are very interesting and inspiring and, you know, they do make me want to go and travel, but I want a show that’s, you know, giving you guys the nitty-gritty, juicy details that you can take away and use in your business, you know. That’s what I want in a show; that’s what I would like from a podcast. So hopefully I can bring that to you guys.

I am definitely going to change up the game when it comes to digital nomad and location-independent entrepreneur shows. I am not going to have guests come on to talk about their life story; I’m going to have them come on and be a co-host for the show instead. Just for the one episode, we’re going to be talking about a specific topic and we’re going to hash out our views on it and hopefully you guys will find it entertaining and extremely useful for you and your business. So if you guys have – if there’s a specific topic you guys want us to talk about on the show or if there’s a specific guest you want to have on the show, then just let me know in that free Facebook group or you can email me: luke@thatmarketingdude.com. Send me an email, send me a message in the Facebook group, and I will try and get those people on and I will make sure we record a podcast episode on that topic too.

Now, my idea for, like, the layout for the show is, like I said, we’re going to get the guest on, we’re going to spend just five minutes talking about their story; you know, talking about how they got to where they are now and their background. Not an entire show; just five minutes. Then we’re going to spend the next 20 to 30 minutes going back and forth on a specific topic, just hashing out our viewpoints. So hopefully we’re going to have two completely different viewpoints on the topic and, you know, we will debate on whose viewpoint is the best. So I think that could be very, very interesting. And then for the last five or six minutes, we’re going to have a quick-fire questions round. I’ve got about 10 questions that I’m going to ask every single guest on the show, and the last one is going to be their best travel story. So each episode is going to have a travel story in there, which is what we all really want to hear, you know; we want to hear some great places to go to and a good story to go along with it. So, tell me, what do you guys think about that? Shoot me an email, send me a message in the Facebook group; I’d love to hear what you think.

So this is going to be it for this first episode. So I want to quickly thank you guys for listening to me ramble on for the last 15, 20 minutes. I have got a load of episodes for you guys for the next eight weeks. We are going to be launching with three more episodes, not including this one. So we’ve got four straight off the bat. If you’re listening to this the day it was launched, then you’ve got three other episodes to go and listen to. And then for the next eight weeks, we’re going to be publishing three episodes every single week.

After the first eight weeks, we’re going to be going to one episode a week but we’re going to be having three business shows a month and then one purely based on travel. So I’m going to get a guest on who has some awesome travel stories and we are just going to sit, listen, and admire that person, and, like I said earlier on, get very jealous over them too. So three episodes a week for the next eight weeks and then we’re going to drop down to one episode a week a month. So one episode a week a month, three being business; one being travel.

And if you guys couldn’t tell already, I’m going to try and keep these episodes as raw as possible. I don’t want to heavily edit them; I think it will be a lot more interesting to hear the little mistakes that are made in a show, especially when we start getting the guests on too. You know, I think you will get to really know the person and what they’re really like, and hopefully you guys will get to know me a lot more throughout the show and hopefully you guys will like it. You know, if you don’t like all these mistakes or you do like them, again, let me know. You know, I want to build a show that you guys are absolutely going to love. So let me know, good or bad; I want to make something that you guys are going to love listening to every single week.

So until next time, guys, again, if you have any topics or guests you’d love to hear on the show, then shoot me an email: luke@thatmarketingdude.com. Or come and join the free Facebook group at dudebrood.com. That link will redirect you to the Facebook group. And then just pop them in a comment in the Facebook group and, you know, if we get a decent number of likes or people saying, “Fuck yeah, I want that person on,” or, “Fuck yeah, I want that topic to be discussed on the show,” I will make sure that happens. So until I see you guys next episode or until you hear me next episode in your ear, I want to wish you all a pleasant day and I will speak to you all next time. Fist bump.

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