Russell Max Simon is a 42-year-old climber, marketer, and “post-nomad” who splits his time between a derelict house in Spain and an old farmhouse in New Hampshire. (russellmaxsimon.com)
After living many years as a digital nomad, Russell settled down in New Hampshire during the pandemic and rediscovered the virtues of place and community. Now he owns (and constantly renovates) two old properties, each strategically located next to prime climbing areas, where he plays host to the dirtbag climbers who reliably arrive each season.
We discuss Russell’s early career in Washington, D.C., his work in politics and environmental advocacy, and his gradual loss of community and purpose. Now his days consist of reading and writing in the mornings, climbing and building in the afternoons, and spending time with friends and family in the evenings. To pay the bills, Russell does 5-10 hours of content marketing per week.
Although he no longer seeks meaning from his paid work, Russell appreciates the clarity and honesty of his freelance gigs and how they empower him to do what he loves, be close to his people, and support the climbing community. He explains why he’s careful to not earn too much, how he says “no” to his clients, and why he doesn’t try to expand his business.
Russell emphasizes how digital nomads consistently “over-index on freedom” and neglect the importance of deeper friendships and relationships. He shares how the climbing and kitesurfing communities offer such depth to him, and how merging one’s love life with an activity group presents both threats and delights. Russell is also the father of a 14-year-old son, and we discuss how his dual-continent, climbing-focused life intersects with his role as a co-parent.
Finally, Russell shares one of the big reasons he adores southern Europe: sitting outside with friends at a cafe or bar for multiple hours is completely normal.
Russell’s excellent newsletter is Post-Nomad.
Full transcript: dirtbagrich.com/russell
Recorded in November 2024.
AI Notes
This is an AI-generated summary and transcript. Typos and mistakes exist!
Summary
This transcript is an interview between Blake Boles and Russell Max Simon. Russell, a 42-year-old writer and marketing consultant, discusses his lifestyle as a ‘post-nomad’ who has chosen to settle in Catalunya, Spain. He bought a fixer-upper property near a famous climbing area and spends his time between work, climbing, and renovating his house. Russell explains his transition from being a digital nomad to valuing staying in place, emphasizing the importance of social connections and community over constant travel. He discusses his work-life balance, his approach to money and freedom, his co-parenting arrangement, and his views on living in Southern Europe. Throughout the interview, Russell highlights the benefits of prioritizing quality of life, social connections, and personal passions over career advancement and wealth accumulation.
Chapters
Introduction and Russell’s current lifestyle
Blake introduces Russell Max Simon and asks him to read an excerpt from his publication ‘Post Nomad’. Russell describes his current living situation in Spain, where he has a small house with basic amenities near a climbing area. Despite initial assumptions, Russell clarifies that he’s 42 years old and feels he has more creature comforts than the average ‘dirtbag’ climber.
00:03:12 Russell’s journey to Spain and property purchase
Russell explains how he ended up in Corna de Mont-Sainte, Catalunya, Spain. He had been exploring various European climbing towns for years before falling in love with the area two years ago. He decided to buy a fixer-upper property in the town, aligning with his preference for renovation projects.
00:05:14 Transition from digital nomad to ‘somewhere’
Russell discusses his shift from prioritizing freedom and constant travel to valuing staying in place. He describes his experience during the pandemic in New Hampshire, where he realized the benefits of being rooted in a community and investing in social connections.
00:12:43 Building community and relationships
Russell talks about the challenges and benefits of building a community as someone who chooses to stay in one place. He discusses his experiences in the climbing community and how it helps him maintain connections even with friends who are more nomadic.
00:29:43 Russell’s approach to work and money
Russell explains his work as a marketing consultant and his approach to balancing work and life. He discusses how he transitioned from full-time employment to consulting work, and how he prioritizes having control over his time rather than maximizing income.
00:48:53 Co-parenting and family life
Russell shares his experience co-parenting his 14-year-old son, including how they’ve managed international moves and education. He discusses the challenges of explaining his lifestyle choices to his son, who has grown up in a wealthy area with different values.
01:02:52 Living in Southern Europe
Russell explains his preference for Southern Europe, particularly Spain. He appreciates the cultural emphasis on quality of life, social connections, and work-life balance. He contrasts this with the work-centric culture in the United States.
Transcript
Blake Boles 00:00
Russell Max Simon, welcome to Dirtbag Rich.
Russell Max Simon 00:04
Thank you for having me, Blake.
Blake Boles 00:06
Instead of starting with the question, I actually wanted to ask you to read an excerpt from one of your most recent posts on your wonderful publication, which is called Post Nomad. Would you do me the honor?
Russell Max Simon 00:18
Sure.
Russell Max Simon 00:23
I am typing from the Renaissance Cafe in the center of town, a hot tea and a carrot cake on my table. A dozen old men play cards at the tables next to me. A climber sits at the bar. Cheesy Spanish music videos play on the flat screen TV on the wall.
Russell Max Simon 00:42
Outside, a light drizzle casts the town in a gray light. The reservoir that feeds the town water is filling. The cliffs where I climb are wet. This is now my home in Spain. There’s a bed tucked into a tiny room where I can sleep well at the end of long work days.
Russell Max Simon 01:00
There is hot water in the shower, a toilet and a two-burner camp stove on a countertop in the next room. A hammock hangs next to the stove and a butane space heater fires up if I need to take the edge off the cold.
Russell Max Simon 01:15
Aside from these few spare comforts, my property here is down to the bones, crumbling concrete and plaster on four levels and a pile of rubble in the back terrace, open floor plans waiting to be filled by my labor and dreams.
Blake Boles 01:35
You’re a wonderful writer and based on what I read here, it sounds like you’re approximately 24 years old. You’re a total dirt bag. You’re camping out in a cafe in Spain and you’re sleeping, you know, in a room, in a ramshackle house with almost no utilities or, or comforts.
Blake Boles 01:57
And you’re waiting for the, the cliffs to dry out so you can go climbing. Is that essentially your life? Did I get it right?
Russell Max Simon 02:05
I’m 42, but to be honest, I actually feel like I have way more creature comforts than your average dirtbag climber. So in Corne de Mont Saint, there’s all these van life people parked in the parking lot with no bathroom, no toilet, no hot water, also waiting for the cliffs to dry out.
Russell Max Simon 02:32
So from where I sit, I actually feel like I stepped it up a level. I actually bought a property in this town and, you know, I’ve got a nice, comfortable queen-sized bed to sleep in at the end of the day.
Russell Max Simon 02:48
So yeah, I guess it depends what your definition of dirtbag is, of course. I actually feel pretty luxurious most of the time, and the hammock’s really nice.
Blake Boles 03:02
Russell, how did you end up here? Like where specifically in Spain are you? How do you have this house? Like just give me the recent history.
Russell Max Simon 03:12
Sure, Kona de Mont-Sainte is in Catalunya, the northeast part of Spain. It is directly next to a massive climbing mecca, pretty world famous as far as the climbing community goes. And for many, many years, I had been traveling to Europe, not just to climb, but also to kind of explore the possibility of moving here and explore different towns, usually climbing towns.
Russell Max Simon 03:46
And, you know, I went to Greece, I went to Italy, I went to Spain a few times. Two years ago, I took a trip to this climbing mecca near Kona de Mont-Sainte called Sirana, and I really fell in love with the area and the town and with Catalunya.
Russell Max Simon 04:05
I already had a soft spot for Spain and most of southern Europe, but when I arrived here two years ago, I really felt like, oh, this is a town I could see myself spending a lot of time in. And after that, I started looking for properties and particularly wanted to fix her upper, because that’s just how I roll.
Russell Max Simon 04:30
I wasn’t going to spend a ton of money on some luxurious penthouse or anything. And I bought it a few months later and ended up moving here. So that’s kind of the short story in recent history.
Blake Boles 04:46
And I want to go back a little bit farther now and one of the posts that you wrote that really endeared me was called, why you should stay in place. And the subtitle was digital nomads, overemphasize freedom and misunderstand the trade-offs.
Blake Boles 05:03
And I was hoping you could tell me a bit about the analogy of the some wares and the any wares and what happened to you during the pandemic.
Russell Max Simon 05:14
Yeah, I had always put freedom very high on my list of desires and values and if not the highest place. I thought that having as much freedom as possible was really the thing that I should be optimizing my life for.
Russell Max Simon 05:33
And I thought that through most of my 20s and into my 30s. And I traveled a lot, you know, I’ve been to something like 45 countries in my life, many of them going back multiple times. And in 2020, I was in Mexico with my partner at the time traveling, trying to improve my Spanish and the pandemic hit.
Russell Max Simon 06:02
And like many people, I decided to go home. And at that time, I had just bought a house in the mountains of central New Hampshire. And yeah, like everyone, I was kind of stuck there for quite a long time.
Russell Max Simon 06:15
I didn’t get on another airplane for a year. And a really strange thing happened, which is I had one of the best years of my life. First of all, everyone else who had bought homes in this small mountain town in New Hampshire was also stuck at home.
Russell Max Simon 06:34
And a lot of the more climbers like me, and we all decided to hang out with each other outside at campfires all through the year. You know, we were taking relative precautions, like we were bringing our own beer and bringing our own food and stuff like that.
Russell Max Simon 06:51
But we were socializing often. And meanwhile, I was climbing almost every day at the cliffs nearby. And it wasn’t even a question of, well, where should I go next? Or how should I, what’s the best place to live or anything like that, because I was just stuck.
Russell Max Simon 07:14
And at that time, I heard a podcast that raised it in terms of somewhere’s and anywhere’s. And anywhere is what I had been, which is to say I had remote income, I had been working remotely for years and years at that point, and I could go anywhere.
Russell Max Simon 07:33
And in contrast, somewhere’s were people who stayed in place. And I realized that being a somewhere actually was giving me all these things I had been missing. And probably the first one was social connection.
Russell Max Simon 07:49
Just being able to see my friends and my family and the people I love just all the time throughout the week was such a stark contrast to A, either traveling all the time, or B, living in Washington, DC, where a lot of people have been focused on work.
Russell Max Simon 08:08
And you know, just making a coffee date with someone was kind of like a six weeks out type of thing. Oh my gosh, the thread is real. Yes. Yeah. A lot of people in big cities experienced that. So I had a big transformation in 2020 towards realizing that staying in place and investing in place was actually the thing that I wanted to do more of in my life and that I had been over indexing on freedom.
Russell Max Simon 08:34
I had been assigning too much importance to freedom in my life and not enough importance to social connection. And from then on, I decided, look, I need to kind of shift the priorities and the values a little bit, stay in these places, invest in these places, which allows you to invest in relationships. And I think that’s the thing that has been so wonderful since then.
Blake Boles 09:00
Yeah. And we’re going to talk about how you’ve made that investment. And I think you’re doing it in a really special way and gratifying for both you and the other people around you. But first I want to just question this idea that, that the pandemic, you know, revealed some, some truth of, of being rooted in place.
Blake Boles 09:21
It was a very special one time of hopefully one time event in which everyone was forced by these huge external circumstances to, to stay. But then come, you know, sometime in 2021 and definitely in 2022, the world opens up again and it feels normal.
Blake Boles 09:40
You can travel everywhere. And in my mind, you know, we, we kind of rebounded back into modernity, back into let’s be, we can be anywhere again. And, and so you don’t have everyone else forced to stay in one place.
Blake Boles 09:55
Everyone else can then move and leave and do their own thing. And so what has your experience been of trying to be more rooted in place based when the world opened up again and other people are free to leave and not be around to hang out at the campfire.
Russell Max Simon 10:11
Yeah, I mean, well, the experience is that I’m just in the minority now, whereas during the pandemic, everyone was on the same page and in the same boat. And now here I am espousing these values of staying in place when there are a lot of digital nomads and increasingly work-from-home people who have this kind of new independence in terms of where they can choose to live, who are really trying to explore that.
Russell Max Simon 10:39
And that’s fine. I did that for many years. But obviously I see some common threads in what they miss when they choose to move places every few months. And it always comes back to social connections and relationships, romantic or not.
Russell Max Simon 11:03
And I just like to encourage those people to think in the long term, well, what are they really trying to pursue at the end of the day? So yeah, I mean, on one level after the pandemic, and there was kind of a fracturing of that group that I had spent so much time with in New Hampshire, because some of them did go back to jobs.
Russell Max Simon 11:23
Some of them did move back to the cities where their primary home had been beforehand. And it was a bit sad. And in some ways I’m somewhat nostalgic for that time. But I guess the main thing that’s changed is that I’m just in the minority here again, in terms of being someone who is completely location dependent, who at the same time prefers to stay in communities where I can build deeper friendships and deeper, more meaningful relationships.
Blake Boles 12:00
When we spoke earlier, you told me that when you were, uh, based in Barcelona last year and people would ask you, uh, Hey, I’m coming through. Are you going to be here this time or, or that weekend? You just responded, yes, I’m here.
Blake Boles 12:14
I’m in Barcelona. I’m pretty much always here. So even though you are still location independent in terms of your, your work, your, the marketing work that you do, you are choosing to be location dependent and you’re choosing to take on these projects like renovate in an old house that keep you in one place. And, and can you please now tie this into the climbing community and the role you’ve, you’ve taken on.
Russell Max Simon 12:43
The climbing community, oh, it gives me so much. And I’m sure that it’s the original dirt bags for all these climbers. So it’s lovely to be some part of the community that originated this term. But the climbing community is an interesting thing.
Russell Max Simon 13:01
It’s both international and completely tied to place, in that you have to climb cliffs that exist in a fixed location. So on the one hand, you can show up to any climbing area. And as a climber, I immediately feel that I’m a member of that community.
Russell Max Simon 13:25
I know the language. I know how to do it. We all need climbing partners to do what we love. So there’s a natural cohesion that forms very quickly. But at the same time, we have to go to a certain place to climb.
Russell Max Simon 13:46
So it’s a very rooted activity. And I think it’s been wonderful for me to not just choose a random place to go live in the world, but to choose a climbing mecca to go live in the world. Because every climber that I’ve known in my 25 years of being a climber, many of them may be spread out all over the world.
Russell Max Simon 14:11
But I can tell them the same thing that I was telling friends when I was in Barcelona, which is, hey, just come visit me here. I’m here. You can come here and do what you love, which is climbing. I’m here.
Russell Max Simon 14:24
We’ll climb together. It’s just an amazing way to knit together friendships that even among friends who are international and who are living in other places or traveling.
Blake Boles 14:39
And tell me about your life in New Hampshire and the hub that you’ve created there too. You’ve done some beautiful writing on this. I hope you can capture a bit of that evocative nature in spoken format. What is what is so special about New Hampshire?
Russell Max Simon 14:54
I mean, when I was living in Washington, D.C., for a long time, I started originally looking for just kind of a second home near a climbing town. And the the mountains of New Hampshire, the White Mountains were kind of nostalgic for me.
Russell Max Simon 15:11
I was a camp counselor there when I was younger. I grew up in part in New England in September and October when the leaves change. And all the mountains covered in forest turn orange and yellow. I honestly believe that if you are a climber who loves the outdoors, there is absolutely no better place to be in the world, in the entire world than New England in the month of October.
Russell Max Simon 15:40
And where I bought the house in Romney, New Hampshire is the climbing mecca of of New England. And what I thought was originally just going to be a second home to travel to and climb for a while really became my my primary residence starting in the pandemic up until I moved to Spain.
Russell Max Simon 16:01
And yeah, what I found there, again, was just like an unexpected community that I didn’t I didn’t realize would give me so much. I also bought an old like a really old farmhouse from I think it was 1855 or something that it was built.
Russell Max Simon 16:18
And right when I moved in, stuff was breaking and it forced me to to learn how to fix everything. Everything from plumbing and electrical to to the well that was feeding the water to the house. We started a garden.
Russell Max Simon 16:37
I built a little climbing bouldering hut in the garage. I renovated the apartment into basically like a rental for climbers. Right now, there’s a full time climber friend living there. And this house for me actually.
Russell Max Simon 16:55
It became something that made me feel extremely wealthy and because it was big and I I was able to do the same thing, which is to say, if you want to climb and hang out, come visit. I’ve got spare bedrooms, bring some beer, bring your climbing stuff and and stay here.
Russell Max Simon 17:21
And for me, that became one of the main ways in which I really felt wealthy was to be able to host people like that. I should say this house cost me two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars, which felt ridiculously cheap in two thousand nineteen, considering that’s about what a studio apartment.
Russell Max Simon 17:44
It’s less than what a studio apartment in Washington, D.C. cost it at the time. And for that, I have this four bedroom farmhouse with a detached renovated apartment in the center of a of a climbing town.
Russell Max Simon 18:00
So, yeah, owning that property just gave me a lot of things that were unexpected and that really, really tied me there and and helped build my community and made me feel extremely wealthy at the same time.
Blake Boles 18:15
You and I are the same age and I feel that we have an extremely high number of overlaps in experience and perspective and and what you just said about feeling rich because you can host your friends. I have definitely felt that.
Blake Boles 18:29
There’s a number of summers in South Lake Tahoe, California when I rented a small cabin and definitely paid more money than I’m used to paying for rent but I could just ask six people to come over and crash or host a dinner party, throw people in the tent in the backyard.
Blake Boles 18:46
Where I’m recording right now in Vienna, I got a larger than necessary apartment so that I can host dance friends who come to dance events in Vienna and I had five or six of them in the apartment over the weekend as well.
Blake Boles 18:59
It’s extremely gratifying and and it’s also a symbiotic relationship, right? You need to have these friends who are able and willing and desiring to come and travel and crash with you. Can you just tell me a bit about your experience building up a meaningful community because it seems like that is really a huge value for you and maybe tie this into your your earlier phase in life when you were in DC and living more of a traditional life.
Russell Max Simon 19:31
Yeah, I mean, I first moved to DC in my 20s, I think mid 20s, or as 24, 25 or something. And I did it, you know, for my career, which is pretty much why everyone moves to DC. And DC was really good for my career.
Russell Max Simon 19:49
I moved up organizations, I was working at important prestigious think tanks, I was working on political campaigns. But I just think like most really big cities, especially one where people are so focused on their careers, like like a place like DC, it just becomes so hard to, I think maintain really deep, meaningful relationships with people outside of work.
Russell Max Simon 20:24
And two things happened when I was living in DC. One was I stopped working in politics and activism, and so therefore, didn’t really have a connection to that aspect of DC anymore. And the second thing that happened was, most of the so they would go someplace cheaper where they could have a bigger house and a yard and do that American dream sort of thing.
Russell Max Simon 20:59
But the point is bit by bit, I felt a real disconnect from Washington, DC, because I was no longer interested in pursuing that kind of career, I was much more interested in being my own boss, and making my own hours and having more control over my time.
Russell Max Simon 21:17
And second, just people moved away because of the high cost of living. And on top of that, you have to drive five hours from Washington, DC to get to any cliff to climb that is even remotely worth spending time and energy on.
Russell Max Simon 21:40
And I secondly to climbing, I also love to go to the beach and hike surf once or twice a year, that was a three hour drive away. So the things that I really love to do that I wanted to start orienting my life around, which was these outdoor activities, and spending time with people I love my friends and my family, I just could no longer do there in DC, it just did not feel like a place that was conducive to that at all. Through the culture, because of the physical environment, because of all that stuff. And yeah, go ahead.
Blake Boles 22:17
Yeah. Tell me how you make friends because you described how in cities, everyone’s super busy. It’s hard to even have coffee and then people have families or their partners and they maybe move away for lower costs.
Blake Boles 22:32
And I just feel like loneliness and isolation is, becomes the default and the norm and having people spontaneously show up and crash at your place is, is relegated to a long ago memory. And so how, how did you transition into having a very fulfilling community, which it seems like you do have now.
Russell Max Simon 22:53
Yeah, honestly, moving places was how that happened, and moving places specifically to a climbing town. Whenever I see location-independent people kind of talking about their loneliness, their disconnection from people, this is just my first most basic one-on-one question, is like, what is the activity that you’re doing that you’re passionate about?
Russell Max Simon 23:17
And they’re like, well, I’m trying to go to co-workspaces and meet people there, or I’m on the dating apps, I’m trying to meet people there. And I’m thinking to myself, all right, you work in a laptop, and you want to go sit in a coffee shop with 20 other people with their faces in a laptop.
Russell Max Simon 23:33
And that’s how you expect to build friendships and community. It just doesn’t make that much sense to me. People need to find a community. For me, it’s rock climbing. It’s really easy to show up at a climbing area, including in New Hampshire, and find climbing partners.
Russell Max Simon 23:50
And after you climb together, you have a beer together, and you have a potluck together, and the community grows from there. And if they’re not around, you say, hey, do you know anyone who needs a climbing partner?
Russell Max Simon 24:08
And the group builds and the community builds. So for me, it’s climbing, but I think for anyone, it just needs to be like, find that passion activity and go do it. And not do it here and do it there, but really commit to it.
Russell Max Simon 24:25
Go to a place where everyone who loves that thing is also doing that thing. And if you can’t make friends in that environment, I mean, I don’t know what to tell you. Yeah, therapy.
Blake Boles 24:34
I get the feeling, I’m sure someone else has written very extensively about this, that climbing is unique in its community aspects. I mean, just the fact that you need someone to belay you, the fact that there’s a limited number of high quality places to climb, and so people tend to cluster.
Blake Boles 24:55
Yeah, I’m not sure if it’s quite the same for trail running, for backpacking. What about kite surfing? Do you find a similar level of community through that activity?
Russell Max Simon 25:08
Yeah, there’s interesting things that kite surfing and rock climbing share. One of them, the obvious one is you have to go to a place to do it, and people do cluster in those places. So for kite surfing, it’s windy, sheltered coves around the world.
Russell Max Simon 25:26
Anywhere that used to be a wind surfing place is now a kite surfing place. So you have to go to a place, you’re going to find other kite surfers there. It’s windy, there’s always going to be kite surfers on the beach.
Russell Max Simon 25:36
Another thing that it shares with climbing is you kind of do need another person to, in kite surfing, you need them to launch and land your kite. It’s not really something you can do by yourself on the beach.
Russell Max Simon 25:52
So you need to talk to people when you get to that beach, and that kind of naturally lends itself to other conversations. You’re always talking about the conditions, how does the wind look, how do the waves look, what size kite are you flying?
Russell Max Simon 26:07
And then usually when people are done kite surfing, they’re pretty spent and they want to go for a drink or a pizza or whatever it is. So I get that not every passion like trail running, for example, naturally lends itself to this, but many do.
Russell Max Simon 26:24
You’re a dancer, that community certainly lends itself to this. For many people, it’s food or cooking, and obviously you can meet people that way in cooking classes, going to different spots in cities where you can learn about that in markets and stuff.
Russell Max Simon 26:43
So yeah, I mean, if your passion is a completely solitary pursuit, you’re going to need other strategies. But I would advise someone that if you are a digital nomad and you’re a location independent, then please experiment. Try to go find a passion that you do with other people.
Blake Boles 27:06
I want to start a spin-off podcast now about like dodging loneliness and building community through appropriate shared activities. Uh, okay. That’s, that’s for a later time in place. We’ll note that.
Blake Boles 27:18
We’ll come back pin in that. I want to ask about how you fund this life, but before that, I want to ask, like, how do you actually spend your time on a day-to-day basis? Uh, maybe you can give like the, the Spain prototypical example.
Blake Boles 27:33
You can give me the New Hampshire prototypical example, but how is your time distributed among work and play and community and family?
Russell Max Simon 27:44
Yeah, well, the Spain and New Hampshire are pretty similar. In both places, I have a house next to a climbing crag. And in both places, I spend a lot of time working on the property. Like I said, the New Hampshire farmhouse has things that are going wrong all the time.
Russell Max Simon 28:02
There’s building projects. So a pretty typical day for me is doing some reading and writing in the morning. I have my sub-stack newsletter, so sometimes I’m writing that. Sometimes I’m working on a book manuscript that’s been ongoing for several years.
Russell Max Simon 28:21
In the afternoons, I am either climbing or building something that’s a pretty good bet. So in the case of Spain, I would be working on the renovation project. And evenings, you know, spend time with family, spend time with friends.
Russell Max Simon 28:42
I have a 14-year-old kid, so he’s with me half the time when he’s with me. Obviously, I’m spending a lot of time with him when he’s not in school. In terms of work, it really is the case that my answer about work keeps going down in terms of how much time I spend on it.
Russell Max Simon 29:01
I used to say 20 hours, but that was maybe five years ago. I think at this point, it’s honest to say I’m spending about five to 10 hours a week on paid work that’s earning me money. And I try to confine that to, you know, a few days here and there.
Russell Max Simon 29:22
I try to get most of the client work that I have to do in a given month done early in the month. So ideally, I have maybe a week or 10 days at the end of the month where there’s almost no work to do, no paid work. Yeah, that’s basically the time.
Blake Boles 29:43
That sounds pretty darn ideal, Russell. Like when you start it, you’re like, I would do some writing in the morning and I’d work on the house. I climb, I hang out with nice people. It’s like, where’s the paid work in this equation?
Blake Boles 29:57
Yeah, what is your work and how, I mean, I’m assuming it must be quite well paid on an hourly basis in order for you to just do five or 10 hours a week and to be able to maintain properties and travel and.
Russell Max Simon 30:11
Yeah. I mean, I had a pretty normal career from age 22 to maybe age 34-ish. Although when I was 30, I got laid off. I’m just giving this sort of brief background about how I got to being able to do this.
Russell Max Simon 30:30
It didn’t come out of thin air. But when I was 30, I got laid off in this think tank and started marketing consulting just because it was the easiest way to quickly make money. My son had just been born.
Russell Max Simon 30:44
I definitely needed to make money. Since 30, 31 years old, I have not been to an office full-time. At one point, one of my marketing clients hired me. I became a full-time employee of quite a big physicians group company in the US.
Russell Max Simon 31:08
I was their director of marketing. But I still did not go into the office. First of all, there were a lot of doctors, so they were never in the office either. I had already been working remotely since they were a client before, so I just continued working remotely only that time as an employee.
Russell Max Simon 31:27
That company did a big restructuring a long time ago, and I went back to marketing consulting full-time, except that I essentially had a network, a professional network from the years previous and from this company that I had worked at.
Russell Max Simon 31:45
Now I have various clients, most of them in healthcare in the US. I do content marketing contracts for all my clients, so it is a set amount of money per month, for a set amount of deliverables per month.
Russell Max Simon 32:09
That is really important to me because it disconnects income from time. I do not want to be in the position of trading my time for money, because that would just incentivize me to work more hours. I do not want to work more hours, I want to work fewer hours.
Russell Max Simon 32:28
The flat fee retainer contracts are really important to me. I do those deliverables. I have client calls maybe once or twice a month with each client, but they are pretty efficient. They go pretty quickly.
Russell Max Simon 32:47
I have just become quite good at the job. Marketing and content marketing is something I have been doing for a long time at this point. Combined with the professional network, I am able to charge pretty well for it.
Russell Max Simon 33:02
Since I am my own boss, I can control my meetings and control the hours. I must add that AI tools have made me way more efficient in the past three years. I am able to do a lot more in less time.
Blake Boles 33:20
Thank you for standing up for AI.
Blake Boles 33:22
Thank you. Thank you.
Russell Max Simon 33:24
I mean, it’s going to change stuff, whether we like it or not. And I embraced it pretty early and saw that it could help me. And at the same time, started giving my clients advice on how it could help them.
Blake Boles 33:38
Yeah, you’re riding the wave and for those who are kind of curious about your mysterious background in your twenties, like what maybe don’t give me the full history, but just tell me like what skills did you build and, and how were you able to develop this network of potential clients, um, that lead you to the, the state that you ended up in, in your thirties, like what really made a difference in you being able to land where you are now, working five to ten hours a week and getting paid quite well.
Russell Max Simon 34:12
That’s a good question, Blake. I often, if someone asks me that, I tend to mention my graduate degree, which is from a somewhat unique college in the US called St. John’s College. And it’s unique in that they do this great books, classics, Western philosophy program.
Russell Max Simon 34:33
So I have a master’s in philosophy from that, from St. John’s College. And I think the real value that I got out of that education was this weirdly insane self-confidence that I can learn anything that needs to be learned.
Russell Max Simon 34:55
Because basically, you’re reading from the most difficult philosophical texts of the last 2,000 years and making them accessible. In some ways, the skill translates to doing marketing and journalism.
Russell Max Simon 35:11
And so that was actually my first job, was as a reporter. And the local newspaper hired me while I was in this program. And it was basically the same set of skills, which is interviewing experts about things and then translating them into just the written word and making it accessible and telling the story.
Russell Max Simon 35:31
But I think I knew from that education that I could fake it till I make it in a lot of different realms. And when I moved to Washington, DC, I stopped being a journalist and started doing marketing and communications and press.
Russell Max Simon 35:51
And like I said, I worked in politics for a while. To be honest, a lot of that professional network from politics has completely gone and lost to me now. I severed ties and almost burned some bridges.
Russell Max Simon 36:06
I got so disillusioned with that world that I actually burned some bridges on purpose because I didn’t want to do it anymore. And when I started doing marketing work at Iran, like I said around when I turned 30, 31 or so, I was marketing in business, not in politics, not in advocacy.
Russell Max Simon 36:29
And I just found doing business to be, in some ways, more straightforward. I’m going to do work for you. You’re going to give me money. That’s the agreement. And what was that?
Blake Boles 36:43
What was the agreement when you were doing political marketing?
Russell Max Simon 36:47
Well, the problem with politics and advocacy and nonprofits, which is the business that dominates a lot of Washington, D.C., is that the like metrics for success are like very unclear. And I was I was especially working in climate politics and that kind of advocacy where like the metric for success was we want to save the world from climate change.
Russell Max Simon 37:12
Well, how do you measure that? And and we were never and everyone in the organization kind of thinks their job is the most important job. But since it’s a nonprofit and you’re not earning money, you’re only asking for donations, you don’t actually have like a like a feedback loop that makes that everyone is on the same page with, whereas like in a business, I mean, I have a mixed relationship with capitalism,
Russell Max Simon 37:42
right? Like I want to escape it essentially, but I want to like use it to escape it. And I think it was more comfortable for me to just be in a place where everyone understands the point of this organization is to turn profit.
Russell Max Simon 37:59
And if you can contribute to that happening, great. And if you can’t, you know, I’m sorry, but like you need to find something else to do. And that just like doesn’t exist at nonprofit organizations and with an advocacy campaigns, you’re judged much more on like how many hours you’re spending in the office, frankly.
Russell Max Simon 38:20
And at the the think tank in DC where I was working, it was like, well, if you spend 12 hours sitting at your desk, you must somehow be contributing to this organization. And I was looking at around and thinking to myself, are they contributing to the organization?
Russell Max Simon 38:35
Like I read their white paper. It’s nothing special, you know. And why did it take them four months to write this thing in the first place? You know, and so I just I became quite disillusioned with organizations that function like that.
Russell Max Simon 38:53
And and was just much happier when I could work directly with businesses where, you know, like if a client fires me because I’m not helping them make money, I’m like, totally, that’s fine. You know, nothing personal.
Blake Boles 39:08
Yeah. Yeah. I failed. I deserve to be fired. Yeah. So on the, on the scale of purpose or meaning, did you start out, um, hoping that you would derive meaning by working in for advocacy, um, type organizations?
Blake Boles 39:24
Yeah. And then I’m getting the feeling that, that transitioned into, I’d rather just have a very clear relationship with the people who are paying me money. And, and do you feel less, do you drive less meaning from your paid work now?
Russell Max Simon 39:41
Yeah, I mean, my paid work is not helping to save the world in any way, shape or form. I’m pretty sure it’s helping mostly doctors who started their own companies to, you know, either get more contracts to provide more health care or to get more patients in the door.
Russell Max Simon 40:03
I don’t know if that’s, you know, fix health care in America or not, but but yeah, I definitely use business and profit and capitalism to free my time to find a meeting in other places. And you’re right, I did originally, when I was in my 20s, enter the workforce thinking to myself, like a lot of young people, I need to find my life’s passion, and it needs to be my job.
Russell Max Simon 40:37
And as long as my job is purposeful and meaningful to me, it won’t feel like work. The problem with that is just, I just, like I already detailed, I started feeling a real disconnect from the words that these organizations were using to describe their mission and the actual efficacy of the work itself, not to mention the efficacy of all the people working in those organizations.
Russell Max Simon 41:04
It just struck me that we hadn’t yet solved climate change. We weren’t going to solve climate change. The only really thing that we needed to do in order to do that was to win a bunch more of elections.
Russell Max Simon 41:17
So if you wanted to go work on those elections, I think that was purposeful and useful. But the whole nonprofit advocacy complex in the US felt to me like mostly producing auto reports to convince donors to give us more money to pay our salaries so that we could produce more reports to convince donors, you know, it was a circular thing and it started feeling not good to me.
Russell Max Simon 41:47
So when I left that, you’re right, I started finding meaning in other places and investing in the communities, buying and renovating properties, developing meaningful relationships, hopefully maybe giving back to the climbing community in some way, helping to support that.
Blake Boles 42:07
And you feel at peace with this balance, like finding meaning in community and shared activities and places rather than your paid work.
Russell Max Simon 42:18
I do. I really do. For me, it’s just my version of being able to sit in a truth that feels like the most honest to me. The most honest thing for me to do is to have a business relationship. It’s just a business relationship and not pretend that we’re family, not pretend that we’re saving the world through this business, not do any of those pretend things that sometimes you see, and instead to spend as much of my personal time as I can doing the things I love with the people I love.
Russell Max Simon 43:00
I think it took a few years for me to recognize that there was a use to the world in that lifestyle. I’m not just selfishly climbing all the time. I am at the end of the day taking properties that were basically sitting there derelict, unlivable, and turning them into livable properties for the climbing community.
Russell Max Simon 43:23
Each time I do that, at least I think to myself, yeah, I’ve contributed to my community. I’m providing housing. I have fixed something that was broken. There’s a housing crisis. I’m piece by piece, helping to create more places for people to live.
Russell Max Simon 43:43
It so happens that these people are my friends, that they’re climbers, and that feels really, really good. I want to keep doing more of that.
Blake Boles 43:55
Tell me how this all connects to, you mentioned the people you love. And so whether these are romantic partners, whether this is your child, I know you co-parent with someone, an ex partner and moving into this post nomad phase, the New Hampshire house, the Spain house, what is life like for you?
Blake Boles 44:21
Maybe just start with romantic relation. Tell me about your love life, Russell.
Russell Max Simon 44:26
Yeah, I mean, the love life is always the thing that suffers if you move around so much. And you know, just like the posts that you see on Facebook and digital nomad forums everywhere are just like, well, how do you date?
Russell Max Simon 44:39
Why do I feel so disconnected? You know, how do I fix this? And it’s just like incredibly difficult to expect someone to follow you around the world doing exactly the things you want to do, especially if you just met the person.
Russell Max Simon 44:57
So anyway, to answer your question, I met a climber two months after I moved to Barcelona and we became friends. And a few months after we had been friends and climbing together, we started dating. So we’ve been together about a year at this point.
Russell Max Simon 45:19
That’s that’s the romantic story. I think it could only happen by committing to living here. Otherwise, you know, maybe you can have some short term casual relationships and that’s fine. But yeah, my preference is a meaningful partnership, someone you can you can share life with.
Russell Max Simon 45:43
That’s the answer to the romantic question.
Blake Boles 45:45
What happens when you go back to New Hampshire?
Russell Max Simon 45:49
When I went back to New Hampshire, I begged her to come visit me for as long as she could and she did, she came because she promised her amazing climbing in New Hampshire and so she came and climbed for a while and thankfully was able to work remotely from her job for a while doing that.
Russell Max Simon 46:08
So we were apart from each other for a little bit while I was in New Hampshire, but she also was there for part of that time as well.
Blake Boles 46:16
And just to dwell on the romance a bit more Russell, do you think that something like this could work with a non-climber, it feels like, you know, your life is very oriented, where you want to live is related to climbing, your friendships, your community, do you feel like you’re all in on the climbing community, like 360 degrees, all the relationships?
Russell Max Simon 46:43
I’ve thought about that a lot. Before I met her and I was single, this was probably the main question I had in my mind. And I was dating people in Barcelona right when I moved there. But every weekend, I was climbing.
Russell Max Simon 47:00
That was always the same answer. What are you doing this weekend? I’m climbing. And that was always my preference. But I think the answer at the end of the day is that I think it would be fine to develop a relationship with someone who’s not a climber.
Russell Max Simon 47:16
I mean, it’s not all my time. It is the bulk of my free, outdoors time. And it’s definitely been incredible to be with someone with whom I share that passion a lot. And every day out at the climbing crags is a good day, even if we’ve had a bad day in our work life or our personal life or whatever.
Russell Max Simon 47:42
And so it’s amazing to share that passion with someone. On the other hand, I’ve met plenty of climbing couples who it’s like combining your work with your passion. They mix with each other in an unhealthy way.
Russell Max Simon 47:59
They bring their relationship problems to the climbing crag. And then they realize that they’re not having fun climbing either. And that’s really not that good. And so I think it could go either way.
Russell Max Simon 48:13
If I were to date someone who didn’t climb, it’s fine. I would like to share some other passions with them. I don’t just want to be sitting there having dinner and drinks. And that’s the only thing we share.
Russell Max Simon 48:25
I want shared loves. But yeah, they would just have to understand, hey, I’m going to be out doing this thing for a sizable number of hours each week.
Blake Boles 48:40
And tell me about your co-parenting relationship and how your 14-year-old fits into your life and whether there’s any kind of conflict there with the lifestyle you’re trying to lead.
Russell Max Simon 48:53
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, my son is what kept me in the DC area for a really long time. I was pretty committed to being a 50-50 co-parent with my ex. We split up when he was one years old, so it’s pretty much always been a co-parenting relationship, and that’s always been his reality, was going back and forth between the two homes.
Russell Max Simon 49:22
When I was living in Washington, DC, it was a pretty traditional one-week, one-week kind of split, aside from summer vacations, lunar vacations, which would be kind of alternating, which is a pretty typical way to split up a co-parenting relationship.
Russell Max Simon 49:40
When I was looking at moving to Europe, and when I ultimately finally bought this property, the original plan had been to have my son go do a study abroad with a family that we know in Germany, and both his mother and I were really supportive of this idea.
Russell Max Simon 50:02
We thought it would be great for him. She really supports international experiences as much as I do. At the end of the following through, my proposal was, why don’t I take him to Spain with me? That’s how we ended up in Barcelona.
Russell Max Simon 50:20
I found a great international school that he really loved and thrived in. He loves soccer slash football. He especially loves FC coming with me to Spain for that year. At the end of that year, I had a discussion with his mom, what’s next?
Russell Max Simon 50:48
It was clear she really missed him. It seemed reasonable, okay, let’s have him go back to the US this year. I’m going to stay in Spain. I’m going to go work on this renovation property full-time. We’ll probably have another conversation like that at the end of this year.
Russell Max Simon 51:08
He’s old enough at this point that obviously his opinion starts to matter more and more. I know that when I turned 14, I was basically out of the house from then on. I went to boarding school. I was traveling even in my summer vacations.
Russell Max Simon 51:26
Mostly, I wanted my independence and to go explore the world. We’ll see what happens, but it’s always been a pretty good relationship with his mom. We’ve been pretty good at working together to give him amazing experiences throughout his childhood.
Russell Max Simon 51:43
Sadly, there’s not that much of it left, but I hope to be providing him with cool experiences as much as I can.
Blake Boles 51:53
Yeah. And it’s great that he seems so receptive to traveling, living abroad. Yeah, he loves it. He loves it. Yeah.
Blake Boles 52:01
Something else that you wrote in that wonderful post, why you should stay in place, was about money and about the idea that having too little money is not free. That’s not a form of freedom. Almost everyone knows that. But also having too much money is not a form of freedom. And you just have very interesting, nuanced thoughts about the role of money in your life.
Blake Boles 52:26
And what you said earlier about wanting to be very careful to not equate money with time, because then you know that you will feel like maybe you should spend more time working. Like that’s a very high level of self-awareness there.
Blake Boles 52:41
And so just tell me a little bit more about this. Too little money is bad, but too much money is also bad from the perspective of freedom.
Russell Max Simon 52:49
I think I got that with due respect to Nassim Taleb from his book, Anti-Fragile. Yes. He was talking about different professions and which of them could be fragile versus anti-fragile. Anti-fragile just meaning, it’s not just the quality of resilience, but it’s the quality of actually being able to grow and thrive when things are chaotic around you.
Russell Max Simon 53:12
Writers are one of his prime examples. So the more the world is going through chaotic times, the more writers are called on to do their work and to explain what’s going on to people. But it applies to money because the way you have to get so, so wealthy usually involves building a business of some kind.
Russell Max Simon 53:40
But when you build that kind of business, you take on any number of these commitments. Maybe you take on investors. Now you’re beholden to your investors. Or maybe you take on employees. Now you have a responsibility to your employees.
Russell Max Simon 53:54
Maybe you go public. Okay, now you have regulatory responsibilities. Some of my clients, a lot of them are doctors and they’re very wealthy and they’ve run their own businesses and they are extremely tied to responsibilities related to these businesses, whether they’re on the board of some big medical organization or they have professional standards and guidelines that they need to be very conscious about in terms of their personal behavior and their standards that they follow.
Russell Max Simon 54:26
So it’s not that having $10 million in the bank somehow ties you, restricts your freedom. It’s that the methods of getting that much money sitting in the bank necessarily commit you to things that end up restricting your freedom.
Blake Boles 54:44
Mm hmm. What have you said no to? What have you walked away from that that could have taken you in that direction? But you said no, I value having real choices, real options, and more freedom and flexibility.
Russell Max Simon 55:00
Full-time jobs. There’s a lot of people I work with who are, you know, marketing directors inside companies, which is what I was 10 years ago. And you could work your way up, become a VP of marketing, chief marketing, you know, just work your way up a corporate ladder.
Russell Max Simon 55:18
I could have kept doing that. I also could have kept doing that at nonprofit organizations or in politics or whatever it is. I have walked away from job offers. I have walked away from jobs. I’ve walked away from even clients who wanted a particular, you know, like, for example, an hourly contract instead of a flat fee contract.
Russell Max Simon 55:43
And at the same time, I guess I’ve walked away from doing business development. I don’t even really spend that much time trying to find new clients. I’m fortunate enough to just mostly have referrals and have a lot of longstanding relationships that want to keep working with me.
Russell Max Simon 56:03
So there’s a lot of ways in which I could have earned more money by working my way up in the American economy, but just chosen that too.
Blake Boles 56:15
Again, I feel very aligned with you. My little travel company for unschooled teenagers, uh, I essentially stopped developing the business. Like, I don’t know, two years after I started it. And I just said, as long as enough people keep signing up for enough of the programs that I really want to offer, then that’s great.
Blake Boles 56:33
I’m chill. And I, once I got to a point of being able to make like a satisfying amount of money on each trip, I said, that’s it. No more. And, and it’s a bit shocking to some people when you don’t seem growth oriented or you’re, you’re perfectly happy to just coast because that is, it’s almost like an alarm for many people to like, either you’re, you’re growing or if you’re not growing, you’re, you’re dying or you’re not investing in your business and so it might not be as strong as it could be five years from now.
Blake Boles 57:06
Um, how do you, how do you combat that, that sense of like anxious, always squealing away more resources for the future, uh, the future orientation, maybe even tie this into your, your history as a goal setter, Russell.
Russell Max Simon 57:24
Yeah, this is a when I first started out on my own and I think one of the big decisions with if you’re your own boss is do you want to try to grow the business or not? And I think I decided pretty early on that I wanted to grow the business to the extent that I could still do it myself.
Russell Max Simon 57:44
I didn’t want to grow the business to the point where I needed to hire someone. That was not something that I felt comfortable doing. I did not want to make this like random life experiment that I was doing for myself.
Russell Max Simon 57:57
Like I didn’t want to make someone else’s financial livelihood dependent on my business. Amen. So that was kind of the limit that I set for myself. And at first, I felt a little odd. But slowly by slowly, I was writing and I started writing the newsletter post nomad.
Russell Max Simon 58:21
And I remember when my first client or my first ex colleague signed up for it, you know, a doctor who was pretty high up in the organization and who I had worked with for many years. And I thought to myself, Oh my God, what’s this person going to think?
Russell Max Simon 58:37
They’re going to read all my writing about seeking meaning in other places. And, you know, will they even give me my, you know, continue to give me their business? And the truth ended up being that they were just kind of jealous that, you know, this person loved to surf.
Russell Max Simon 59:00
But like me was very far away from the surfing beach and could only do it once or twice a year on a family vacation and wished that he could do it more often and just envied the life that I had set up for myself.
Russell Max Simon 59:18
And once I started realizing that that was actually the more common reaction, I started relaxing a little bit. To be honest, the more difficult thing for me has been explaining this to my son because my son has grown up with so much privilege and wealth all around him.
Russell Max Simon 59:44
I mean, we lived in one of the wealthiest counties in the US and right outside Washington, DC. And, you know, his mom’s family makes really good money and has plenty of wealth. And everyone that he’s at school with makes plenty of money and has lots of wealth.
Russell Max Simon 01:00:03
And they all live in really big houses and like gigantic ones. And they’re driving Teslas and, you know, gigantic, cheap things, you know, that are designed to cross rivers and they’re driving them around the suburbs.
Russell Max Simon 01:00:19
And my son is looking around wondering why I’ve decided to rent kind of like the smallest house in the neighborhood and why I drive a used Honda and why I spend like most of my time climbing. And I think he would always ask me like directly, like especially when he was eight years old, nine, ten years old, like, Daddy, why don’t you make more money?
Russell Max Simon 01:00:49
Like, why don’t you go try to make more money? Like, why don’t you go get more business? And I just had to explain to him over and over and over again, like, I have enough money, kiddo. Like, you see how much time I spending doing things I want to do?
Russell Max Simon 01:01:05
Like, it’s most of my time. Like, what would I do with more money? And then he would say, well, he would buy a Tesla. And I’m like, yeah, those are cool. But like, I really like my Honda. It’s totally fine.
Russell Max Simon 01:01:22
I don’t even if I had a million dollars, I wouldn’t spend a hundred thousand of it on a on an expensive sports car. This is the this is the main challenge, to be honest. It’s the main cultural like wave that I felt like I was swimming against mostly was making my son okay with this idea that that I that I really do feel wealthy and really happy and fulfilled with less money than all the other people who were our neighbors there, you know.
Blake Boles 01:01:58
That’s one of my biggest cultural fears around the idea of becoming a parent, which is the expectation that comes from other parents, but especially from your own kid and from other kids about like you need to be visibly consuming as much as like the other people in our community.
Blake Boles 01:02:20
Otherwise, something is wrong. Sounds like that’s what you’re describing.
Russell Max Simon 01:02:25
Yeah, 100%.
Blake Boles 01:02:28
A final question, Russell. You and I are both Americans who have decided to spend a lot of time in Europe. What is it for you about Europe?
Blake Boles 01:02:38
And of course, Europe has many things, so you can tell me about specific places. What is it that captivates you and keeps you there and keeps you in love with this place?
Russell Max Simon 01:02:52
I have always been very partial to Southern Europe. And it’s not that Northern Europe isn’t nice and lovely and beautiful, but it seems to me that Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, et cetera, that the people here have decided to just shift the balance of their culture toward quality of life in the form of social connection and away from wealth seeking and workism and long hours.
Russell Max Simon 01:03:34
And that’s the central core thing. And obviously, that’s helped by the weather. It’s really nice. You can be outdoors a lot of the time in any of those places. And when you can be outdoors a lot of the time, that means you can sit with friends outdoors for a lot of the time.
Russell Max Simon 01:03:56
And that’s what you see here is coffees or beers with friends not taking a half hour, an hour, but taking four or five hours. And that’s amazing. These people have conversation skills that I don’t have as an American.
Russell Max Simon 01:04:13
I’m like, how do you keep that going day after day? And I think the answer is that’s baked into their culture is just having more of a focus on community and social connections than we do in the US. There’s a weird quirk about the Spanish social safety net that I learned a few months after moving here in my Spanish class, which is that the government actually subsidizes vacation time for retired people in the off season because they just so are interested in making sure that as you go older,
Russell Max Simon 01:05:01
you have the time and the resources to spend time with your friends and your family. And so you have all these 67-year-olds traveling to Mallorca and spending a lot of time together. And it’s wonderful to see that in the small town where I am in Barcelona, almost anywhere you go, you’re going to see this.
Russell Max Simon 01:05:25
And to say to anyone here, oh, I am making things that I love to do my priority and that thing is not my work, it’s just a super ordinary thing for everyone to say here. They work, and then they take a lot of time off.
Russell Max Simon 01:05:47
And no one is walking around saying to themselves, oh, how’s life? Oh, I’m really busy. Oh, great, you’re busy. That must mean everything’s good, right? No, no one says that here. Here it’s, oh, I work.
Russell Max Simon 01:06:03
I’m looking forward to the weekend so I can go do the things I love. And everyone’s like, yeah, me too. That’s what we all do here. And you just don’t find that so normalized in the US.
Blake Boles 01:06:19
I remember reading some little illustrated book from an anarchist perspective long time ago and there was a single cartoon, like a six panel cartoon and one person, they’re having tea or something, one person asks another, what do you do?
Blake Boles 01:06:34
And they say, oh, you know, they list a job title and they say, what do you do? And it’s like, well, I sew, I hang out with my cats, I cook meals for my friends, like, no, what do you do? You know, and they’re like, that is what I do.
Blake Boles 01:06:49
And, you know, I’m sure there’s also something they do for money, but just flipping that upside down and responding to the question, what do you do with like the actual activities that you care about and you prioritize and you look forward?
Blake Boles 01:07:02
I sit in and talk with my friends for four hours over one and a half beers. Yeah. Yeah. That is what I do. And I also do some other stuff to make money and contribute to society. But yeah, that’s not number one.
Russell Max Simon 01:07:18
There’s a meme that I saw between a European workplace and a US workplace and the US workers basically writing an email saying, Haha, Europe, we beat you in GDP growth, GDP growth, wealth, creation, stock market, lower inflation, haha.
Russell Max Simon 01:07:43
And he gets an auto reply from the European worker that says, I’m sorry, I’m out of the office for the next six weeks and won’t be back until the end of September. I’ll get back to you.
Blake Boles 01:07:55
Yeah. How can people find your writing and any other information about you online, Russell?
Russell Max Simon 01:08:03
It’s all at Post Nomad, which is at RussellMaxSimon.com. That’s where all my writing is, and you can reach out to me there.
Blake Boles 01:08:13
Thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been wonderful.
Russell Max Simon 01:08:17
Thanks, Blake. It was really fun.