HOW WE GOT STARTED AS A FULL-TIME TRAVELING FAMILY | Speech at BYU

no, so the next person comes and says how much they would charge and I was. Look, I'm busy. I'm very busy. I know many other designers who will probably even do a better job than me. Well, you should hire them if you want to work with me. I charge $300 an hour. Okay, shoot. you gotta be the best and we really want to work with the best we'll work with you and you shoot $300 an hour yeah and so it got to the point where I was doing really well for doing really well and I got to another period. point at which life came to me and told me: this is your path where you are making a lot of money, you can support your

family

continue working as a freelancer as a web designer, I would like to continue on that path, but I did not like to feel good and, although I felt comfortable, I decided to get out of that way.

Comfort in the scary part I face my fears and try something new I decided for the first

time

I'm going to stop building things for other people I'm going to try to build my own Oh, excuse me there this was the first

time

I did the three hundred dollar meeting. I was on a Skype call and I was going to collect $300. I had to look professional at least from here. Sorry, we'll get over it. Okay, this was one of my favorite moments in life. No kidding, I

started

getting like teary eyed and choking chocolate when I was going through my journal and I came to this picture because this app here scans that's my baby, that was the first time I stopped building things for other people and I decided to build something for myself, so for the iPhone I built with two friends of mine here at BYU a simple barcode scanner called scan.

It's supposed to be just a side project. I remember it was very, very difficult for me because I had never created an app before. I designed something before I was trying to get some people to team up with me and be smarter than me so they could help me finish it and I mean, I was a freshman at the time, no one wanted to work with me, but I finally found to two people. who said yes Kirk we met and leaned early and they believed in me and that meant a lot to me so I gave them my all and we created this app called scan and this was the first time I saw it look how old it looks Instagram.

I saw it for the first time and was very excited that something I had built was available in the real world. Anyone around the world can download it. I was excited. I went to a party that night. I stood at the table. I told everyone at the party. Downloading my app wasn't the biggest party, but I got 12 people to download my app, okay, but the next day I went to see Ben and Kirk and I was like, guys, I got 12 people to download our app, you're welcome. It's like you have to review the analyst. Our first night we had 2,000 people, it was a much bigger party than the night, but the next night we got 5,000 people to download our app and the next night we got 10,000 very quickly.

I learned a lot. The power of the Internet doesn't matter if you are in the small town of Provo, Utah or, as I told you yesterday, if you are in Manila, Philippines, as if it were the world wide web www.daytontoyota.com that I was on. to do it is download download download download and that was an incredible experience that changed my life. I remember three months after that when we passed one million downloads and that's when life sped up. I don't know if they remain radars or trackers on this, but the moment we surpassed one million downloads, we

started

listening to Facebook, Google, and investors around the world.

This was the first time we met with Google and oh my god that meeting was a disaster because I was just saying yes to everything they said and I don't remember what they said and it turns out I remember we were meeting with different investors and then There was a special moment and that was when I think one of the investors could sense that I was an inexperienced and almost stupid young man because he almost treated it like a movie. This doesn't happen. If you went out and talked to investors. I wouldn't count on this happening because I think it's pretty rare, but this is how it happened.

I enter the meeting room. a long wooden table and this big investor comes and sits down and he has a manila envelope and he's like Garrett, you remind me of a good friend of mine, do you know Jack Dorsey, founder of 2? Yeah, he's like my hero and he's like you remember me. me from when he was a kid now she says oh my god, I love that and slides it over the manila envelope. I open it and there are graphs and numbers and all this technical stuff. Luckily, Kirk, my co-founder, was with me. much smarter than me and I thought what does this mean and his eyes get super big and he says we're basically millionaires yeah I just like trying to hide my smile oh my god and that's when we signed our first term sheet with the investors. for 1.7 million dollars to start our business.

I remember, I remember coming home to Jessica and telling her that our lives had changed. I remember that fun day we found an old abandoned warehouse and our friends helped us, we bought the cobwebs and My friend Javon liked to refinish the hardwood floors together and I mean we got out of that shabby place and turned it into this and it was right in south Provo and when we started living like a business, but once again life came to me and it was like hey, you're a businessman, this is how you should live your life, you should be a businessman. business, basically you should like sleeping in the office, your business needs to be successful, it should be the most important thing in your life, that's the way the world was. telling me that it didn't feel good, but it was kind of comfortable to listen to the world, but again, as a kind of life lesson, I learned that life has been better for me when I get off that path and try to have some courage and do it. things differently, so when I looked at how I lived my life while I was building this company, I had my priorities, the most important thing for me was my health, my spiritual health, my physical health, my mental health, it was also important that my relationships , my

family

, my friends, of course. my wife and then my job, work was at the bottom of the totem pole, but if you looked at how I spent my time, it was almost completely the other way around and I think most of the world is like that, like you worked nine to... five jobs that take up most of your time, there's no way your health or your relationships could outweigh that if you worked a nine to five job, if you took priority or looked at your priorities based on where you spend your time.

I think for a lot of us it can be unbalanced and that's when I did the same thing, I went off track and decided I needed to change things and it was kind of strange because what we ended up doing was even though our business seemed like it was every time. bigger and more successful, we changed things completely. I stopped sleeping in the office and working all day, every day in the office and started. In fact, I came back to BYU after dropping out and I got back on the football team I started working in the gym again I started spending more time with my wife and kids and we literally went to the office one day a month, no exaggeration, it was called the first week on the first Monday of the month. it was an office day other than that it wasn't like that it was like going to live their lives and the crazy thing was that even though our investors were right oh my god this business is bound to crash and burn that's when it took off like never before because I didn't feel like they were robots building this.

I feel like it was because we were like real humans living real life building a real product and that set us apart from all the competition and we started doing well and that's the day that this was the day that I sold it as my wife mentioned and I know, to be honest, I wish this was a time where everyone could experience at least once in their life, not necessarily the money part, but the part where there is something that you are working hard for. . from your soul that's what you strive for it's what you think about in the morning it's what keeps you up at night and then you achieve it I wish everyone could have that moment and that's what I felt when I sold my business we moved to Los Angeles, oh, I have this photo up there, I put this photo here, this is Ben Turley and Kirk, we met, these are the two guys that believed in me and I don't know, when I looked at this photo, I saw two things.

I remember each of the guys who turned me down when I wanted to work with them, but most of all I remember these two guys. I remember they said yes and one of the proudest things in my entire life is the fact that their life changed. forever because they took a chance on me, so the three of us, the whole company we moved to, we moved to Los Angeles and joined the new company and, man, once again, the recurring theme in my life, life It was coming at me and it was as if you had done it. you sold your company you are in a new job they paid me a salary of one hundred eighty thousand dollars plus everything from the acquisition like more money than I had ever seen or imagined but I didn't feel good, I felt like the world was time, stay here crying , climb the corporate ladder, try to be like a life vice president in this company, that's where you'll feel comfortable, but I didn't feel good and I remember the terrible day when my wife and I were trying to decide. since I don't know this may sound silly but I'm going to be transparent with you this is how my priority is work this is how my mind works and this was the decision I was trying to make here I am in a great company with great people who earn 180 thousand dollars a year plus the property, is it foolish to stay there when I feel like the right thing for me and my family is to leave, or is it foolish and even ungrateful to walk away from that type of company?

A salary like that is life-changing money. My brother, who is a high school teacher. I'll tell you. I called him and asked him what you think I should do. And I told him these are the numbers. This is my salary. let me think about it, he called me two hours later and told me that he and his wife had been talking for two hours and were even talking about the decision, they were just trying to imagine, oh my god, what would life be like if that was our salary because he was a high school teacher and his life was very different because of that, so I thought, "I think you're right," so I should stay.

He says no, even though it's life-changing. life changing money, nothing is worth more than what you feel inside and if you feel something else is better for your family, so the day came when I decided to quit. I dressed so badly that my nose bled and I felt like I was dying inside and I told my wife from home that she knew what I was going through. Send me a picture and it was like you have this baby, be brave, you can do it and yeah, and that's when I got off the path that life was coming from.

I decided to try to be brave and do something new. This is what I felt when I was at that company again. I don't know if this sounds weird or not. I'm just trying to be transparent in case it helps anyone, but I had never had a job before, so I stumbled upon a job. I had a time when I was supposed to arrive. A time when I was supposed to leave. A boss he was supposed to impress. Like a salary I was supposed to like. Wait. All of those things were new to me because I had never had a job doing this.

I had created it myself and these were the feelings that were new to me. I had a boss I was trying to impress and for the first time in my life. someone else's opinion was more important to me than my own opinion of myself and that seems super crazy to me, like no, my opinion of myself should govern everything, like who is this boss, you know? So that was completely new to me and made me very scared and uncomfortable the other part was my whole life. I had always woken up so excited that it seemed like a Saturday every day.

I was going to wake up at 5:00 a.m. m., have a bowl of cereal and watch cartoons. That's what my life felt like my entire life. life until I got this job and then I found myself waking up tired wanting to go back to sleep like I had never had those feelings before like what was that and then the last feeling I felt was I started to feel afraid and doubt that if I left this company, I could go back to doing something successful and I felt like this was the corporate structure, this is how it works, it's like they put these invisible handcuffs on you telling you that you can only do this or this is where this.

It's your path This is the ladder you're supposed to climb Here's the boss you're supposed to impress And that was all new to me anyway So when I decided to go out I found this quote and decided to live by it like me I need to live my life so that every day is Saturday. I need to wake up excited and my favorite thing about Saturday is six days of the week, and then you have Sunday, but for those six days of the week, they're all Saturday. If you are living it well, you can choose how you spend that day, no one chooses for you, no one tells you how to do it, everything you do is proactive by choice, you live with passion and that's when every day feels like aand they learned to be brave and they did it simply because we forced them to keep stepping out of their comfort zone oh great second question really a little more business based so I'm looking to get into the healthcare field, a witch, when can I say that I know absolutely nothing about business and entrepreneurship, it seems like you have a lot of freedom in business and entrepreneurship the medical field is a little more structured you are under large corporations I will probably always have a boss, even if you are a doctor, what recommendations would you give to someone who enters the healthcare field where they want to have the same sense of freedom and you know all the things that you talked about in your presentation, that's a very, very good question, I mean, because there are benefits when I was working at Snapchat, to me wife really liked that I logged off at 5 p.m. because when you are an entrepreneur you never turn off as if you were always working and thinking about it, she really enjoyed watching me turn off at 5:00 p.m. and then I was watching The Bachelor with her, I think so.

I think it is possible and it depends on each person's personality, but I think it is possible to be an entrepreneur in a structured environment. I mean, can I talk about Nike? But. What I would say is because if you want to be in the healthcare field, then you are going to create your own business in that environment or because yes, when I was a Snapchat and I was supposed to work 9:00 to 5:00 I was still okay, how do I like to change this system and work in the system to get as much freedom as possible and made sure my intentions were pure?

Am I going to work hard? Am I going to do my job? Is this to be lazy or am I doing this to have more freedom and spend time with my kids. You know there were those differences, so those were just the questions I constantly asked myself no matter what environment I was in. Traveling for a long time and you plan to continue doing it for a while longer when you move to New Zealand. And calm down, are you worried that you won't be able to do it? Yes Yes. I think it really worries Garrett. It's been a lot of fun, like when we come home for Christmas and we were at home for three weeks. with the family, but gee, it's like when you're on the road and you wake up and you think what waterfall we'll see you at today, how cool are we going to swim with it, yeah, it's a fun life and it gets addictive and then when you wake up and you know when we're, I mean, I would say when we decide to slow down or settle down somewhere, I think it's going to be largely because we're looking out for the interests of our kids, not ourselves because when someone says, hey, can we pay you to come to Thailand?

Yes, but you know, like Garrett said, we want our children to have some stability, some education, you know that kind of thing, so when that time comes it will be We will be biting the bullet and it will be It's hard to slow down, but we also want some consistency in our lives. I have Lucy here in front. She has a question about what your favorite memory is from that moment. God, I'm going to give you one, so I was in a country called Tonga and a deep blue ocean, very clear, beautiful water and that's also where the humpback whales live.

Huge humpback whales like as big as this room. I was just huge and one was swimming and getting closer and closer to me. It was like a plane or like a giant bus was getting closer and closer to me and it got so close that I felt like it was going to hit me so I extended my hand just in case and touched it on the tail, which was one. One of my favorite moments was touching a humpback whale, can it come and give you a high five? Hello Dorothy Twitter, your friends can give you a high five, what was your name?

Maisie Dorothy, what is your favorite memory from our travels? Advice from around the world. Disney, what do you like? Disneyland in California and Disneyland and Tokyo, both, any Disneyland will do, I have to, but the first one is if you could only go to one last place to travel, where would you go to one last, probably somewhere with a big Jaws, They would eat me and that's why I would be the last. What about yours? Africa, I'm very excited about Africa, yes, Africa is in our cube, what if you could go to just one place, where would it be?, Not me.

I probably know Africa, yeah, I forgot that too. Awesome good answer, has the bucket list family grown enough to support you, your lifestyle now? Good question, um, I thought really quickly about that because I was going to mention it in my presentation, I think it's great. question because I remember when I was a student and business speakers would come and since I always had this question, I just asked a question like how much money do you make as a private question, but as a young student I really wanted to know like Is this the lifestyle I want?

Is this the career I want? Is this someone you wanted to be? Where do you like? Anyway, I think it's a good answer to be transparent. When we started we were burning our forty-five thousand.

traveling

is very expensive and there are about four months left, maybe six months is when it was almost over and that's when we finally had eight thousand, when our Devi said yes, twelve thousand, so we had twelve thousand followers when our first hotel said yes, we want to. to work with you, they weren't paying us, they were just paying us to go, so they covered us and we started to be more and more like that, so even though our money was running out, it started to break even and then little by little we started getting paid jobs here and there, here and there, and then, I mean, and then it went up and up from there, where now we'll probably get three to five emails a day from Resorts Airlines of the company, whoever asks if they can pay us to sponsor or represent their company or visit their country, so maybe five months ago it became profitable and it started to be profitable to travel as a family when you do things together.

I'm here, I feel it as a couple in different places taking care of their children, do you fill it out so I can tell my mom? We often stay at quite nice resorts or hotels and therefore often use their staff, who are quite well vetted at other times. I used friends and then there have been a few times we've had babysitters or a babysitter or a bikini or a bikini so I'm really curious. By the way, I'm here. Hey, you guys are amazing? I'm a big fan, yeah, I'm curious what you mean about what you said that there are companies now starting to approach you to cover travel and things like that, but I'm just curious in the beginning stages of moving towards that being profitable.

How did I know that asking is always important, but what can be our strategies that you can use to reach out and build yourself up to get to that point? This is how I would do it if I knew that we were going to be located in places like you. What I said is probably about when we were going to Thailand and I just visited 20 or 30 hotels and said the same kind of things to everyone like, hey, we're

traveling

the world, we're adventure travel journalists, we made up our own title. and you know, we have this Instagram, we have this YouTube, we have this blog, could you and I would say you work with social media influencers and maybe one or two would come back and that's still what I do today.

I mean, if we ever do. We were going somewhere and I'm looking for someone to host us or a brand or something, so I'll just reach out and share our channels that we work on and then We'll share some of our demographics and our rates and now it's a lot easier, but that's what I did in the beginning, where I just asked a bunch of people and a lot of thought went into it from day zero. I like knowing that was the end goal. If you look at the first post we made on our account, we tried to start in a way like we were already legit, so we tried to have really good content that brands would want.

I like being a part of that, if you look at your feed and it looks like Patagonia or if it looks like North Face, North Face might want to work with you, you know we work with Airbnb, they saw a soft family. -Travel friendly, you know, those are some of the brands, so from the beginning we tried to look like an attractive or friendly brand and then the other thing is we just liked posting a photo of ourselves using Kiva and Being sponsored by TiVo, they they didn't sponsor us, but we just tried to play that role for two reasons: one I wanted other brands to think that Teva thought we were close, that they would think we were cool and then the other thing. was that we didn't want our fans to tell us and say oh man, you guys got big and then you sold out with Mike, no, we were selling out from day one, so yeah, from the beginning it was like a nice picture, a nice photo, Brandi type.

Kind of spam, nice photo, nice photo, so we tried to do that from the beginning, okay, if you have a microphone in your hand, this would be the final question. Sorry, we have to close it here. pretty quick, but okay, so with all the hours that you put in and all the hard work that you put into the bucket list family and keeping it going because your work life and your home life are so intertwined, how do you keep the equilibrium? There's definitely a good question, you know, when Garrett started scanning, we moved to San Francisco and my background is also in web, technology and advertising PR, so naturally I was able to start helping him and after a while he started to Treat me like an employee. and micromanaging me and then I realized we couldn't do this, this is ruining our marriage and then this just evolved, you know, into a family business, you know, we never really intended to work too much together like I guess. this, but our skills are very appreciated, we complement each other very well and I think that helps that, like I'm not your boss, you're not my boss, it's like, it's like a team effort, you know, and If one of us stops, so we stop, which is fine, you know, and there have been a few times where we've had to take a look at ourselves and pay a raise.

Do we end like this? Know? If our relationship is ever in stress then we will really have to check ourselves and take a step back and put that first, how did you meet and was it love at first time? This is for me, this is the - najih we met on our missions in Russia and he was my zone leader so no, it wasn't love at first sight, it was fellowship at first sight, say no. Derek tries to pretend it's something scandalous. It wasn't scandalous, all it was was that we met at the mission where Dorothy was born.

We came home from the mission, so yeah, we met on the mission and then we came back to BYU and started dating. I will save you. I wanted to thank you so much for doing what you do because it's really inspiring at least to me. My family and I wanted to ask Garret on Groundhog Day here, when you finally went to the Philippines, how did it feel to connect with that part of yourself? It was great, a lot of people had always wondered why they had never been to the Philippines. Because I'm half Filipino, I should have been at the top of your list and the truth is I was, but even when Jessica was asking me why don't we go to the Philippines, I'm begging you, it will be one of the most special. places I ever visit we can't just go there like we went anywhere else we have to do it right we have to make it special so we would put it off and put it off waiting for a special moment to happen and that's when they invited me to be on this TV show and actually, I mean, it was announced yesterday or today in the Philippines that it's a TV show called Discovering Roots and it follows me and my older sister as we go back to the We traveled to the Philippines for the first time and that was the who was gone 18 days in 18 days, every other day we visited a new island, a new tribe, a new village and we really connected with them, we cooked amazing things with them and it was exhausting. but it will be very exciting to see it, I think July is when it premieres, but yes, attention, ask, above all, it was great to see that I had always been proud to be Filipino, since it made me different and I like that, but now. it has a whole new meaning and a whole new level to like understand why I'm Filipino why I'm optimistic or happy or a little vulgar like these are Filipino things that I learned.

I'm like wow. this part of me and it's like there's a whole country, you know, that I've been waiting to see, it's very special. I bet I'm supposed to ask you a question from the back because I have kids, I have five because I have two extra kids. so I hate being asked this question, so are you going to have more kids? I don't know, let's go to Bora Bora, it's getting No, that's dying, say that out loud, you're sorry, yeah, we want more kids, so we're planning for the next time in Zika-free territories, okay, okay, I think I have the last microphone, so I want to finish with two questions.

One is: you say you do ads and sponsorships to help support your life and this journey, but how do you do it? you do it to continue beingauthentic and for us viewers not to mind it seems like everything they do is just an advertisement or sponsorship if that makes sense in the first place when we see we've been through this and you. It's like you have to bite the bullet from the beginning and you're just going to drink as much as you can, so if a carbonated drink that I don't drink, carbonated drinks, comes around, since Ike's going to pay you $250, it's like, oh, what? should be sold out and them?

You're like in the early days, you almost have no choice and then only once you get older can you be picky and picky, or well, $200 worth of carbonated drinks, like I don't have to worry. about that because this car company just offered me ten thousand dollars, you know, you almost earn that privilege and that right, but honestly, when I see bloggers and I can tell that they are selling out and they want to do that like 50 or more. The skin thing is a total joke but I feel your pain oh I'll double tap because he says it's like wrestling it's like what's your career when you do that but I mean at least for us.

Now I've finally gotten something like my backpack, we're actually working with them, it's a sponsored deal, they're paying me to use my backpack, but I was the one who approached them and said look, I need a new camera bag and I've searched all over the world trying to find the best camera bag and I think it's yours. Could you send me one? Then they say, "We've reviewed your page, we love your content, how about we send you a

full

set of luggage and do a

full

y sponsored gig and luckily we've been able to pull it off.

If you see us posting about a brand it's because we love it, we believe on her like we already used her Yeah, okay, my last question is as a spouse and being more towards Jessica but being married to someone who is adventurous and challenges you and wants you to get out of your comfort zone. Married couple, do you agree on what your next steps will be? Because I, this is kind of our life too with me in my spouse or is it that he wants to travel and do all these things and I think more like, oh, maybe I should. staying home and having a family and I like how that idea blends, I guess, of doing those things together and not having a conflict sounds like a stud, no, that's totally our marriage.

I mean, Garrett is 100% like. shoot for the stars outside your comfort zone, anything unconventional and I'm like the queen of comfort and he likes my comfort zone and I mean, he's pushed me a lot, you know, to be honest, like me, yeah If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would be doing this today, I wouldn't believe you for a second like this, it's not me and I'm actually pretty proud of myself for doing this and I'm grateful that he pushed me out of my zone. of comfort because I am very surprised and proud of what I am doing. this and I feel like I'm doing a good job and then I enjoy it like I like living in a suitcase.

I like to have a few things, so I think it's like a give and take. I know I'm so grateful for everything you know, Garrett has taken me out of my comfort zone, but at the same time, Garrett is alive today because of me, they really balance each other out and you have to go with the flow. a little bit sometimes and you know, it sells everything, you know, Garrett convinced me. I was like, well, what if we sell like 90 percent of his stuff and he says you don't see headlines saying the family stole nine, 90 were sold? percent of his stuff, no you have a family that sold everything you know so Garrett is like he's always pushing me to like be bigger and do more and it hurts but it's definitely a blessing when you get out of your comfort zone, but he is A lot because I'm sure thank you honey, the husband here, she supports me a lot and takes me out of the comfort zone.

Okay, applause.