Ever dream of living a life less ordinary? Then meet a man who is doing just that.
Colin Wright is an author, entrepreneur, minimalist and full-time traveller. The world really is his office.
After living a corporate lifestyle in Los Angeles replete with a townhouse near the beach and so much excess income he owned eight computers, seven years ago he sold almost all his belongings and took a leap into the unknown.
He now moves to a new country every four months and has readers of his blog, Exile Lifestyle, vote to decide where to go next. Since 2009 he has lived all over the world doing everything from building brands for other companies in LA, to consulting on branding from the road, and building brands for himself. He has also started, and run, nearly a dozen medium, and small-scale, businesses in industries ranging from sustainable product design to subscription-based publishing technologies.
Now Colin makes a living by publishing books through a publishing company called Asymmetrical Press, which he co-founded with fellow authors, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus from The Minimalists. He also speaks around the world at schools, conferences, events, and businesses, and teaches classes and workshops.
The most important thing to know about Colin? He is fiercely devoted to creating a life that, in his own words, “leaves every option on the table.” ~ Rachel
1. How are you doing what you love?
I’m continuously identifying and clearing away the excess in order to free up time, energy, and resources to spend on the really vital stuff. To have more of the work and relationships and pastimes that really fulfil me, rather than the ones I’m told I’m supposed to want.
2. Tell us about your background…
I grew up in Missouri, and moved out to LA after school. Studied design and illustration while in college, but as a kid I wanted to be a comic book illustrator, and throughout high school I was really into journalism and fine art.
I have a wonderful family — two great parents, three great siblings — and we all have somewhat different priorities, but it was always a very supportive environment. Which is a good thing to have when you’re kind of a weirdo: you feel more comfortable with that weirdness. It gives you a better chance of sticking with it through the difficult moments and maintaining an accurate sense of who you are, rather than just giving in and falling into lockstep at some point along the way.
I started my first business, a culture magazine, at age 19 while at university. My magazine did quite well and then flopped, which gave me my first taste of the sweet-yet-bitter field of entrepreneurship. From that point onward I worked all the harder, taught myself what I could about how businesses are run, graduated, moved to LA, and worked for a production studio for a year before starting up my own multidisciplinary practice. I did some generalist design work, integrated web development and sustainability into my recipe, then refocused heavily on branding: a field that hit the sweet spot between many of my interests.
All this led me on a strange course that took me to the far extremes of capitalistic goal-setting, and eventually resulted in my stepping back and trying to figure out what I really wanted, and how I might use the skills I’d acquired to get it.
3. What led you to start your own design studio? And how has this experience shaped you as a person and your life as a maker?
I’ve always loved art, and I learned to love design when I took my first design class in college. They’re two sides of the same coin, and both are very useful means of expression.
I did well in my design classes, and was working a handful of design jobs during the spare moments I could carve out of my week. At some point an opportunity arose to start up my own magazine, and I took it. It wasn’t really a conscious ‘let’s be an entrepreneur’ decision, but rather something that just made sense in the moment.
And wow, did I learn a lot from that experience: lots of valuable things about business, but also about myself, and how I deal with both success and failure (two things I experienced while running that first business).
After school, I moved out to LA and worked for a multidisciplinary studio, and after a year of that decided to try my hand at running my own business again. Applying what I’d learned the first time around, I experienced a great deal more success and a lot less failure. I also had the opportunity to be a fish in a much bigger pond, which allowed me to stretch out a little and compete in a more competitive environment.
I enjoyed aspects of that lifestyle, and it helped me identify which aspects of creating I want to do every day, and which I could happily go without. It also showed me that it matters why you create; that life is so much better when I do work I care about, rather than just pursing money for the sake of money.
4. What was the catalyst for deciding to change your life and live and work on the road?
My girlfriend at the time and I decided to take a mini-vacation (which we never seemed to be able to do before) and drive up to Vancouver. On the way back down, we stopped in Seattle, and while listening to some music at a little underground bar, we kind of stumbled into a conversation during which we both admitted we weren’t very fulfilled by the way things were going. Things were fine, even good, but not great. Not everything we wanted. And there wasn’t any convenient pivot-point in sight.
So we decided that night to have a break-up party four months from when we returned to LA. We’d invite all of our friends over and celebrate a wonderful relationship and lifestyle that needed to end if we were both going to be able to pursue out dreams, and in the months between, we’d both figure out the specifics of what we wanted to do with our lives.
For me, it was travel. I’d always wanted to see the world, but never took the time to do it. I’d told myself that this was a priority, but never treated it like one: never gave it the time or attention it deserved, and instead spent my days and resources on things that I told myself would allow me to travel ‘some day.’
Hitting the road, 2009
It was becoming increasingly clear that ‘some day’ would never come if I kept running along the path was on, however. I’d need to recalibrate completely, and build a new business that would allow me to work from anywhere in the world. The worst thing that could happen if I took these new steps, I thought, was that I could fail, return to LA, and find some new clients. The worst thing that could happen if I didn’t change anything was that I’d never get around to living my life.
So I figured out some potential business models, got rid of everything I owned that didn’t fit into a carry-on bag (this alone took months), and started up a blog, through which my readers could vote on where I’d move, first.
5. What inspired you to start your blog, Exile Lifestyle, and to have readers vote to choose which country you live in?
Quite frankly, I really had no idea where to go. I’d never left the US at that point, so I figured everyone else on the planet had a better idea of which country might be a good place to start than I did. It worked so well, though, that I kept it up, and still do seven years later.
I love that it gets other people involved and dreaming about where they want to go, but it also gives me a sense of randomness — I’m not going to end up in places I already know about, I’ll end up in places I wouldn’t have thought to go because I didn’t know enough to get excited about them. The blog itself was a means of connecting with other people and learning what I could, while also sharing aspects of my journey so that others could take pieces of my lifestyle recipe to make their own.
6. You love keeping things new and interesting. What do you most enjoy about living in three different countries a year, as opposed to moving around more? And are there any challenges?
I like deep-diving into other cultures. There’s something truly fascinating to me about how other people live their lives, day-to-day, as opposed to the quick-jolt info-burst you get when you only stop through a place for a few days. The former allows you to slowly savor the culture, while the latter requires a lot of simplification, and in most cases results in exposure to a pre-packaged idea of what the place is.
That said, I’m always experimenting and changing up even this aspect of my lifestyle. Having other people vote and living in a place for 3-5 months is still my favorite way to travel, but I recently did a train-based road trip around Europe, visiting 27 countries in about two months, and I enjoyed that, too. It took some time to adjust to the rapid pace, and I didn’t get to learn the same things that I learn during my longer stays, but it’s still valuable in its own way. I think a mixed model is probably most ideal; for someone like me, at least.
The challenges in traveling full-time are myriad and diverse, but most of them are old friends at this point. Discomfort and temporality. Constantly banging up against the unfamiliar and gut bacteria dissonance. Over time, you get a little weirded out when you don’t have a little discomfort and everything makes sense — you truly can grow accustomed to anything.
7. What type of person do you need to be, or what kind of skills, qualities, do you need in order to survive, thrive and grow as a full-time traveller?
You have to really want it. Otherwise, all the issues you encounter along the way — and the road is paved with issues — will knock you from your path pretty quickly.
You also have to be comfortable being the most ignorant person in the room most of the time, and be open enough to new ideas that you aren’t constantly frustrated by other cultures and societies, and aren’t always trying to force your own ideas on other people (which is a great way to be that jerk no one wants to have visit their city).
You have to be tough, but the malleable kind of tough, not the unmoving object kind. You have to roll with all kinds of punches, and still be able to smile when everything goes wrong.
8. You have rendered your life down to very few possessions. How has the process of getting rid of things liberated you? What things have you kept because they’re meaningful to you, or because they augment your happiness?
Minimalism is all about reducing your focus on the unimportant things so you have more room for the important ones. For me, travel is key, as is having the freedom to do work I care about, try new things, and be around people who make me happy and challenge me.
So in my case, there are very few things that I actually need; it’s more about having the time to have new experiences, the energy to be a good friend, the enthusiasm to keep trying and learning things, and so on. Having a laptop helps me write and design, and having a smartphone allows me to stay in touch with people, but there isn’t anything that I own that couldn’t be replaced. My data is in the cloud, my friends are contactable through many means, and my work is diverse enough that there are many ways I can do it, and enjoy doing it.
The nice thing about getting to that point, though — where you don’t need anything — is that then you can choose very intentionally what you do bring into your life. Like a relationship, having these things is better when you don’t need them, because then you can be certain you are spending your resources (or in the cases of relationships, you time and energy) on them because you really want to, not because you have to or suffer consequences.
Being able to bring things into your life because they add to it, rather than because not having them would subtract from it, is absolutely wonderful.
I co-founded a publishing company with fellow authors, Josh and Ryan from The Minimalists.
9. Why does minimalism keep you moving forward? How has it enabled you to live a better, happier life?
I’ve been fortunate to be able to embrace my curiosity in a big way. Rather than defining myself by my job, or my location, or the clothes I wear, or whatever else, I’m able to regularly step back and figure out who I am and what I want, and what seems interesting at the time. Then I calibrate toward that the best that I’m able.
This is one of those ideas that’s so simple, it’s kind of difficult to fathom: recognizing who I am and what makes me happy, and doing those things, is what makes me happy.
10. You now make your living from writing books. When did you discover your passion for writing and what inspired your first book?
I’ve actually been a life-long reader. I was the kid they had to force outside at recess to go play with the other kids, because I just wanted to stay inside and read. My first real job, at age 14, was at a little local bookstore. It barely paid anything, but I got discounts on my book purchases, which made it very worthwhile in my mind.
I started writing my first book after I start blogging, and saw it as kind of a marketing tool to bring people to my page. The second was the same, and when I saw that these things were getting a lot of traction — several hundred thousand (free) downloads, at that point — I decided to try my hand at a book I would sell.
It was another year before I worked up the courage to try writing fiction. I kept telling myself at every step along the way that I was a reader, not a writer. It would never work. With books in general, then with fiction, then with long-format fiction, and so on. Every time it was the same: I told myself I couldn’t do it until the day I tried and did it. I tend to see those moments of self-doubt as challenges, now.
11. Where do you get ideas for your books? What are you working on now?
Oh, all over the place. Travel is great, because it keeps a steady stream of stimuli — new ideas, new people, new locations, new smells, new music, new tastes — coming in, so the real problem is sifting through them for gold and deciding which ideas to work on, first. I have a list of book concepts that will hold me over for many, many years to come.
My first book: a collection of stories from my first years on the road
My most recent book: a collection of stories and essays written about and from the Philippines
At the moment I’ve got two books in the works: one is a novel that revolves around conspiracy theories, and the other is an essay collection tentatively titled ‘Intentional.’ They’re currently taking a sideline to two new, non-book projects, however: a YouTube series, and a podcast, both of which I’m enjoying working on immensely.
12. As you like to keep life fresh and exciting we imagine that no two days are the same for you. What do you prioritise on a daily basis – in terms of your health, creativity, passion projects, spiritual practice, developing skills, etc.?
You’re right! I get asked about my rituals and routines a lot, but when you travel, you can’t really take for granted that you’ll have the same resources or schedules in the different places you go.
I do take 20 minutes per day to sit and do nothing — I just stare at a wall, no music, no tapping of fingers, as a sort of mind-unspooling exercise — and I work out for about 20 minutes each day, as well, with a routine made up primarily of body-weight resistance exercises, and yoga postures and stretches.
Beyond that, I work on things I enjoy, go for walks when I want to, explore a whole lot, and whatever else makes sense. I’ve had pretty much 24 hours a day to spend however I like for many years now, so I’ve gotten pretty good at balancing my days, but they’re almost completely unscheduled beforehand.
13. What do the words ‘extreme’, ‘freedom’ and ‘success’ mean to you?
Extremes are things I typically try to avoid, as they tend to be unsustainable or inaccurate. Much better to reach a balance, be it in your work, your diet, your lifestyle, or whatever. I think periodic extreme experiments can be useful, but only if they have a deadline, at which point you can stop, check in on yourself and what you learned, and decide how best to move forward from there.
Freedom, to me, is the ability to pursue the knowledge and projects that I think are interesting, and to be able to spend my time however I like. It requires enough money to do these things, as well, but you can always make more money, beyond what you need to put food on the table and a roof over your head. You can’t get more time, however, so that should probably be more of a focus than it is for most people.
My idea of success has changed radically over the years, but today it means spending more of my time being happy than not. Of the (if I’m lucky) 100 years I’ve got, I want to spend as many of those years as possible enjoying myself, doing work that feels meaningful, and feeding my desire to learn. If I can help other people along the way, even better, but at the minimum I think success is not creating a drag on anyone else — not pulling other people down emotionally or physically or financially. If you sacrifice your happiness for others, you create drag, and as a result unintentionally create unhappiness while trying to create the opposite. Not ideal.
Much better, I think, is being self-sustaining on all levels, and then, if you can manage it, helping others to do the same.
14. You’re already living a life you love; do you have an ultimate dream?
There are a lot of things I want, a lot of things I’m working toward, but the ‘big dream’ for me is to be in a place where I can pursue these things. So I’ve kind of already got it. A version of it, at least.
I don’t see life as having some kind of big, ultimate goal that you reach and then you’re done, though. Happiness and success are journeys, not destinations.
I don’t plan on slowing down or ever achieving some ideal state of being. There’ll always be more chances to learn and grow and iterate, and more joys to discover and difficulties to overcome.
Finally, a quote/saying that you like to live by…
You have exactly one life in which to do everything you’ll ever do. Act accordingly.
For more information about Colin and his work, visit his website. You can also connect via: Instagram / Snapchat / YouTube / Twitter / Facebook / Periscope / Vine / Medium
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