 think take away civil engagement lives here live we're back we're live I'm Jay Fidel having a wonderful Friday on community matters and we are talking about travel today with a professional traveler Joseph peach graves not pair but peach right pair yes you welcome to the show Joseph thank you very much I wish I was a professional traveler hey you know anybody would think that they would want to be I have to have a lot of money to be a professional traveler of course not you have to have a lot of desire to see the world and you know it would help if you were open to telling people ways to save money on seeing the world yeah do I do I have to have time to travel in other words you know you talk to people and they say oh I'm going to Venezuela for four days right you know but that's not four weeks no in the olden time you know they spent a lot more time in Venezuela yeah absolutely you go to you know Iceland for three days even though it's you know halfway around the world so how much time should I allocate for a given trip in the travel model that you are talking about here right well you know the thing is is that people make time for the things that they love to do the the idea is to stuff more life into our years and figure out ways to happen this is going to be on the final exam the idea is to stuff more life into our years that's right hope you write that down it's not multiple choice a subjective question on the exam okay Joseph and so you know in general your your ability to travel does take time it's how you make the time to do so so if you want to go somewhere for four days three nights you absolutely living in Hawaii you have to add an extra day on both ends and usually another day afterwards just to recover from the actual stresses of travel and a lot of people would say where can I find that time I hardly have time to go to the bathroom that's true you know so what's your answer to that one make it happen the the funny thing is that if we therapy already right how to organize your day no fine find yourself around people who have made those things happen and learn from that opens a whole new question so here I am Joe stunk the ragman and I would like to go to Venezuela right let's let's change that I want to go to Laos because we're having a show about Laos excellent so I want to go to Laos I really care about Laos but I don't know anybody else who's going and my wife does not want to go to Laos she's made that clear to me got it so if I go to Laos it has to be moi it has to be on you so what I have to do is I have to connect up right very important question for a lot of people including me so okay how do I connect up so there are communities you know and that's one of the powerful things about what I do building my travel club is basically I bring together a community of travelers so me personally I know a lot of people around the world that go different places and I'm able to connect into that network of travelers but even if you're not part of my specific community there are Facebook groups there are apps that help you connect to people and the idea is knowing that with the internet people are able to connect in that way and reaching out finding hey who's been to Laos looking up TripAdvisor and different sort of programs and ideas to see what's happening there what you could do there who you could meet there and accepting that people travel all the time me personally people always ask me hey if you're gonna travel somewhere are you worried if it's safe and I would ask you that yeah I'm a person if I get on a plane I look around if there is a little old lady who is not afraid to get on that same plane with me which generally there is yeah I feel like I have nothing to worry this is a plane with the chickens in the aisles either way you know open air there are people flapping on it but no really really you know all kind of different places I went to Africa last summer I went to Tanzania and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and it was fabulous incredible incredible sights incredible see altitude on Mount Kilimanjaro 19,341 feet bigger than Monacaia bigger than Mono Loi it's just a hair shy of needing oxygen to go to the top and it's the tallest freestanding mountain on the planet being different than a range right but in the town the night before we went I was in the hotel we were relaxing I wanted to go out and experience the culture the hotel told me I was not allowed to leave guess I could say because I was I was too light skinned to be in public at night in that area and this is because it was against the law because you're gonna be in danger they were concerned for me so I had to sneak out because I personally believe that if you go out in the space and you feel confident but you don't feel cocky you're safe and I had a blast I met up with some people they bought me drinks could it have gone you were the group that was that was gonna fit in anyway right exactly you know and I found them at a bar I was by myself at the bar and this person came up and asked me hey do you want to join us and then asked me hey buy a bottle for our table and I'm like oh boy I got to buy a bottle that's expensive all of 19 cents seven bucks for a bottle of gin like let's go medicine yeah exactly exactly but it's a good time and and that's been my experience throughout my entire life I've been to Dubai I've been to myself by myself I been a lot of places by myself and I walk and smile and and spread the certainly prepares you for life in general absolutely I was also thinking though I was thinking of that but I was also thinking of the notion of you know I wouldn't be myself right I appreciate what you're doing and I know a lot of people who do that but I want to be with a group of like-minded people like minded tourists if you will and I want to find a group you know that that I can like so these clubs this kind of club that you're organizing or that you're with does that allow me this sort of opportunity oh absolutely you know most of the way that my club is designed is we provide travel packages at wholesale rather than paying retail and that concept allows people to go and travel together in groups of like-minded happy people at I have to form the group no no you'll find the yeah the company takes you know it's all a database play it's all a database play yeah exactly it's we have we have a portion of our of our membership where people can add to their dream bucket lists and as people add to their dream bucket lists in our global society they say wow there's a lot of people who want to do this they want to go to Laos they want to go to Vietnam they want to go these places and so they design a trip and they let those people know hey we designed this trip you can book it oh so yeah I join I pay what the membership fee is I suppose I join and I get an email this is you know we got a thing going to Laos yeah next month and you know it's this that and the other thing we're gonna go to this place in that place and it's gonna cost you this much and that much and if you want to join you know let us know yeah so then I then I join and I have a group there's a group going with you now is the group all leaving from Hawaii is no or is the group collaborating you know global consolidating from yeah globally anybody yeah it could be anybody from anywhere and you all have that same thing it's such a it's such a powerful concept I'm really it gets me really excited I mean that's do we do we need an LA do we meet in again there actually so you meet at the hotel you know you in the country of the country so in general you know especially when we do international trips there are airport transfers where somebody stands there with a sign welcoming your group there they take you to and from the airport it's really just nice you show up somebody there yeah somebody from the club is they're gonna take care of me so if I if I have my long-awaited heart attack between the airport and the hotel somebody is gonna take me to the hospital in the middle it's it's funny you mentioned that because we know it happens absolutely we actually one of our memberships has emergency medical evacuation included to where if something like that does happen as long as you're 150 miles away from home they'll take you to your home hospital or whatever hospital you choose in your home country by emergency evacuation emergency evacuation that's expensive covered it's part of the membership everyone for for everybody who has that membership coverage especially membership with that membership you know because those emergency evacuations are up to $50,000 is what but it's not cheap you know it's it's really incredible like that yeah yeah but it's it's a good it's a good club membership I'm happy to build it you know and I just like I said I believe in helping people add for you for me it is you know not everybody really is a type of person that can do this what's it take it's something who loves travel we know that it's thing loving travel is important but not even really the biggest thing the biggest thing is being coachable and teachable understanding that there's a group of people who led the way for you and have a path to success and being willing to follow that path you have to trust the system exactly system stands for save yourself significant time energy absolutely that's the second question it's going to be on the exam and then you know it takes desire you have to actually want to have the freedom in life to see more of the world to spend more time with your family and friends a lot of people would say that they would want it but they wouldn't be willing to put in the hard work to do that right you referred earlier to research you know yeah and I suppose research is important to determine that you want to go to Laos instead of Venezuela I say Venezuela Argentina wherever I said yeah that's good too but you know and not some other place right so I have to do my research but once I've done my research it sounds like you tell me but this kind of club approach I don't have to do any more research yeah the club is going to is going to find and assign a hotel it's going to help me with tours absolutely in the city whatever it's going to help me with really restaurants all I need to yeah all I need to do right so I do all the reservations and planning for you from the mindset of a group of professionals who do this all the time so you know it's good one thing that's really cool we guarantee you the best price if you find one of our trips one penny cheaper we give you all your money back and send you on the trip for free which is pretty incredible and when you get to the location there is a host that the company employs who lives in the area who is there specifically to be your personal concierge so questions like you said about exactly he's the one he's the one who calls the plane yeah that's pretty cool yeah it's a neat but we've been so far I've been talking about like one single country correct these tours ever include like all of us for example Southeast Asia a number of countries you know the the easiest way to see a number of countries in a single trip is through a cruise cruises are incredible and you know a lot of cruises will go obviously Caribbean Asia they're not so much Africa so I can go on a cruise using the same system of course yeah we any any number of different travel opportunities and then for example what I did I went to Thailand and when I was in Thailand I wanted to see a bunch of Thailand we had two different trips that were four days three nights each and I just went from one to the other and I just chose to do them back to back and people can do that so if you want to be gone a month and you want to see all of you know Southeast Asia you can do that you can go to Thailand go to Yangon and there's a right no that's that's not Thailand I'm not sure I went to Chiang Mai Cosimo and Bangkok Bangkok Yangon is in Burma oh okay cool anyway so you go sorry you go to Thailand go to Bangkok right you have a nice time in Bangkok and up and down yeah in Thailand and then you say well I like it so much here I'm gonna stay after the fact you absolutely can do that right yeah that's really incredible my dad actually after I went to Thailand he decided to go out there for extended periods of time he stays out there ten months a year so does this mean that my air transportation is part of the package or not part of the generally not so you have the flexibility to do whatever you like you help me of course that's the what you call it club yeah we have our own booking engine just like Travelocity or Expedia except ours we basically guarantee the best price because we own it mm-hmm and we make all the arrangements easy for you to do so are are your prices I mean for the air fare through this travel engine airline engine whatever it is and you know the tour package right again on the ground yeah how much cheaper than the average cost would they be I mean remarkably cheaper so with with flights right now we don't own an airline we just guarantee the best if you find it somewhere I'm telling you we are the fastest growing travel club in the world and currently the largest travel club in the world and just the things that are possible we're planning on doing to the travel industry what Netflix did a blockbuster it's gonna be mind-blowing but the flights are just guaranteed best so sometimes will be exactly the same sometimes will be five bucks cheaper if we're more we offer you a hundred and ten percent of the difference back that you can use for future flights but with regards to the actual you know trips the the experiences that we offer it's usually between 740 and 70% lower in price significant it's it's because we're able to buy in bulk that way I drive the prices down yeah well we're gonna take a short break show sounds good that's Joe graves Joe peach graves if you don't mind me professional traveler wish I did dad maybe we can talk more about that later we're gonna have a short break we'll come back we'll still be here we're not going anywhere aloha I am Howard wig I am the proud host of cold green for think take away I appear every other Monday at three and I have really really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency hope to see you there hi I'm Bill Sharp host of Asian review here on think tech Hawaii join me every Monday afternoon from five to five thirty Hawaii standard time for an insightful discussion of contemporary Asian affairs there's so much to discuss and the guests that we have are very very well informed just think we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un the possibility of Xi Jinping the leader of China remaining in power forever we'll see you then okay Joe graves Joe peach graves if you don't mind okay talking about travel and indeed let me ask you this aside from the club approach which which sounds like it will proliferate you know yeah many clubs yeah around the world would you say to me now here today that there's more call it consumer every man type travel that's happening these days that happens to you five or ten years ago it's really growing the internet has made everything completely completely different people now the most posted picture on any sort of social media are travel pitchers and so people want to travel more everyone is looking for ways and so you know I heard of rolfing have you heard of rolfing it's where you go and you massage no it's you actually you go and you work at farm co-ops around the world as a volunteer and they allow you to stay at their location for cheap or for free there are other sorts of you know work while you travel co-ops and all kinds of different things because people want to explore more because they're seeing it yeah yeah yeah we went to Australia earlier this year and found they had a special visa for people you know non-Australians to come in and do work right like like kids yeah you know over the summer whatever and there were a lot of kids around absolutely working college kids and the like and you know I thought that was very enlightened yeah and so I it gets it takes me to my next question to you is what about visas are our visas easier now or harder we know the United States we got a different and some people call it a cockamamie policy about shutting people out and being isolationist yeah and that's our problem but I'm wondering about the rest of the world is it easier to travel and easier to get a visa easier to enter and so forth for people in the US what I found is we have it so much easier than anyone else there are still challenges sometimes and there are also rules that you should research if you're going to stay for any period of time longer than a month but for travel less than a month as long as you're able to get a hold of a passport as an American it's super super simple to pretty much go anywhere on the planet I am not the most regular international traveler I leave maybe three times a year to go somewhere internationally and I've never gone anywhere where I've had any sort of problem just showing my passport getting a visa when I show up and and things are good when I did go to Africa we got to the airport in Africa and it was a little bit of a it felt like a scam really they say if it feels like a scam it may very well be they had a piece of paper and it was just a regular sheet of paper didn't didn't have anything special about it that says American visas $100 everybody else 30 and it didn't seem was that me it was it didn't seem like there was any difference it's just that if you could read this piece of paper in English you had to give that money if you showed your passport but I don't know if it was just the people there put that paper up that morning and decided to do it but the people in the uniforms uniforms who work there but I don't know maybe it is just their policy their process maybe it's bribery and corruption it could be it could be pay the money you know I did I don't need to have a confrontation exactly I'm gonna buy a $7 bottle of gin I don't need to worry about the under to get in so what about countries that may be a little bit unstable yeah I mean if I if I get it in my mind and I'm sure my wife wouldn't come on this one that I want to go see all the sites in Syria hey do I call you or what well I mean you know there are there are choices that any travel organization makes I used to work on a cruise ship and there was a period of time where we did a Mediterranean cruise and we would stop in Casablanca well where they made the movie right two out of the six tours that I did on that trip they canceled that stop because there was too high of a risk to the passengers and me risk of what a risk of danger I'm not exactly what dangers not so much the terrorists terrorists theft injury social unrest you know a civil war or something like that yeah and in general if the plane will take you there I'll go I have no problem if you have to like make special arrangements and like you know hey can I get smuggled in this way because my airline won't do it you know I mean I'm not a I'm not a you know photojournalist I'm not looking to catch the action but as long as as long as through just normal you know I clicked it I booked it I go type of action and they'll let me go yeah I'm not so I shouldn't worry about it remember the Achilles Laurel it was a ship was a cruise ship and in the Mediterranean and these terrorists down the ship yeah it was this poor man who was in a wheelchair and they threw him over the side or killed him in some way that is I mean I was really not good for the cruise business no but it's a long time ago now and then you know and then the movie with Tom Hanks about the pirates yes off the east coast of Africa you know you worry about that yeah and of course you always hear about you know these weird things that happen on planes although they don't seem to be happening right now much right not would but you know there are risks and so I really wonder if you feel the risks are increasing or decreasing and if you could give us some advice about how to minimize those risks if I happen to be a kind of risk averse person right so what I believe is that there are some things that will just happen and and there's really no avoiding it personally if you are trying to fully be adverse to risk be the bubble boy live in your house never leave and and be safe that's not life to me that's not living I think that as long as you're not your first statement that we put question one what was it more life into your life into your years yeah okay you know because you've got to take risks you have to take a certain number of risks now it's good to be smart it's good to it's good to pay attention but I I do believe part of the reason maybe why those young ladies were able to make it around the globe without problem is the aloha spirit the the idea of smiling at people talking being nice its currency around the world if your just respectful to other cultures and other people you personally are less likely to get into individual specific trouble yeah I do remember on the cruise ship though when I was working on the bottle of gin it helps exactly we had we had water cannons on board the ship to deter pirates and so there are bad people out there there are bad people out there looking to do bad things looking to take advantage of people who have more than them who who they believe can get them more and I believe that travel is one of the things that will reduce that the more of the world that sees the rest of the world experiences other cultures the less hate there will be the more understanding there will be the less people won't want to take from each other and the more they want to collaborate with each other to create abundance around the world reminds me of a trip I took to Israel and they told us in no uncertain terms that we're gonna take you in the perimeter we're gonna take you on the borders of this country right all around the borders of this country why because we want to have a presence and we want you to see it we want them to see you we want you to be there at the border it's a better more interesting trip if you do that yeah and so and so I mean I think that actually applies in many in many trips so I need your I need your prognostication your prediction going folk okay Joe how is this going to evolve are these clubs you're talking about are they gonna become you know the coin of the realm they're gonna become ubiquitous everywhere are we all going to be flying on these clubs and all going to be meeting in foreign countries on these clubs well give me your your imprimatur about what's gonna happen going for me my belief is that the world is realizing that the model where there is a big separate company that advertises to the people the sheeple that will will just follow the pack and pay them to do all that is going away we look at things like Amazon where they created something you didn't have to pay to shop but there are more Amazon Prime shoppers then there are just regular Amazon shoppers because people are willing to pay to be part of something that provides added value you look at things like Uber and Lyft that have completely revolutionized the taxi industry because people are willing to use technology rather than corporations so you're running a parallel lift and these clubs it's all the same high-tech bailiwick right because the idea is through technology we're able to bring people globally together and through people coming together I just believe that people can do more together it's actually one of our taglines is together goes further that's your third question on this on the final exam it's only three I don't think there's more than three system pack more life in two years and together goes further the other one was systems system save your telf significant time energy and money and the third one just now is together goes further okay so the other thing I wanted to ask is we've been talking about foreign travel we talked about foreign countries and you know that's its own challenge and its own reward but what about you know domestic travel right these clubs also active domestically oh absolutely and I save money in the same way but but you know when you were talking about the foreign travel you're talking about tourist type travel right when I when you're talking about domestic travel you talk about business travel right and tourist travel what are we talking about here pretty much a combination of it all the the goal of companies like this and specifically mine is to change the travel industry to a point where people are no longer paying for travel as like luxury they're they're paying for travel as kind of a byproduct of what they do they just live on our planet and so they're able to get places on our planet because they live on our planet with the domestic travel we do have the tourist travel like I have a story where I went to Colorado and I stayed at the Sheraton downtown Denver I had an experience where I got to drive supercars through the mountains I drove a McLaren and a Nissan GTR and the entire trip cost me $109 it was absolutely here about that kind of thing all the time now one of our hosts went to Japan for I think it was $200 round trip yeah and somebody you know east coast was $100 or something so I mean what's happening is these deals and and you want to get the deals the clubs help you do that absolutely now did the clubs help you stop them when they try to raise your luggage charge from $25 to $30 they're right about that this morning before you know what every airline is going to be charging $30 for a piece of luggage can you stop that will you stop that will this process stop that there are lots of different things that could come from this because as people expect lower price travel places will say okay fine we'll bring our prices down for those who want to pay for just the gas in the seat and for those who want more you'll pay more the idea of a world where you have your two bags and your carry on included with a meal included in what are behind us for now what I do believe is that as people's abundance level comes up through you know just a recognition of production versus hourly concept of thinking with regards to money we'll be willing to pay more upfront to get it all I can I can see a club with political moments where you on behalf the club visit this airline they just raised it from 25 to 30 and say you guys we don't like that and we are not going to put you in our in our club offerings yeah you bring it down again absolutely and you know what you might win yeah Joe Graves man of the future thank you so much it is a professional tourist it's a pleasure sitting with you Jay thank you so much for your time