Bakari Akil:
Thank you very much. And just for a point of clarification, I am a visiting lecturer. I wouldn’t want to find myself as a professor. Give me a bit too much status.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah. Well, very cool. And Cornell is a grade school and I have friends who went there. So before we get into too much about your entrepreneurial, I mean, I’ve been kind of as a New Yorker too. I’ve seen some lines you’ve said about like your rent and comparing to travel. How did you get into deciding you were going to go on this digital nomad one year abroad?
Bakari Akil:
Yeah, so I’ve always been interested and being a digital nomad is very in vogue. Right? One of the things that people, particularly people who work remote, would love to do is live outside of the country. I think a lot of times when people can contemplate doing it, it’s a lot of like doing it on your own. And so having to figure out how to set up a lot of the apparatus to make it happen. And I was very concerned about trying to do that, like setting up a work abroad situation all on my own. The who thing fell apart, it’d be on my shoulders. I would have no sort of support system or staff or anybody who would understand what I was trying to do.To me that felt like a really bad move. And so as a result I just was resigning myself to just staying in New York, paying what I’m paying in rent. It’s not like New York is the worst city in the world, right? Like you’re still in New York. But yeah, I would love that. Love had the opportunity to live abroad. And so I was talking to one of my friends who’s like a world traveler. He goes outside of the country like all the time. And I was asking him about it. He pulls it off and he said, hey, you know, you should consider this program called Remote Year. And pretty much from the moment he said the phrase Remote Year, I was like sold. I was like, yeah, absolutely. I’m guessing this is a program where they set up all of your trips for you and you get to live outside the world. I hadn’t even gone on the website. I figured out what it was just from the name. I was like, I got it.And so I looked online and all of the reviews checked out. And the great thing about it checked out. And for the most part, I was just like sold. And so I think that was March of 20 of this year when I learned about it. And by July, I was on a plane flying to Cape Town, which is where I started my Remote Year. So lived in Cape Town, South Africa for a month. Then I flew up to Athens, Greece where I lived for a month. Last month I was in Valencia, Spain. And this month I’m in Istanbul, Turkey. And the next month I’ll be in India.And so, yeah, I would have individually, on my own, not tried to pull this entire thing off. But because we’re all here, they set up the whole thing. Your flights are handled, your housing is handled. They set up things for you to do in the country. They set up classes for you to get introduced to the culture and the experience of being in that country. Like, they set this whole apparatus up for you and then you just go out and explore and enjoy, including a workspace for you to work from if you need to. And so, yeah, they really set up the whole program for you. And so I’ve been really enjoying my time at Remote Year.
A.J. Lawrence:
Cool. Well, as someone who, I have two more kids still at home. My oldest just went off to university so I’m kind of like, wow, maybe in five years this could be pretty nice. That does sound very, very cool.
Bakari Akil:
Yeah.
A.J. Lawrence:
I’m very jealous.
Bakari Akil:
I would say to anybody who is looking at themselves and saying, hey, you know, I’m older than Bakari so maybe I’m not able to pull this off. There are people on our trip who are in their early 20s and there are people on our trip who are in their late 50s. So there’s no age demographic that’s really like defining who can be on this trip. As long as you have the flexibility to do it with your job, your income and your timing, you don’t need to be back in the States. And if you do need to fly back to the States, like for instance, as you mentioned, I’m a lecturer at Cornell at the end of this month, I’m flying back to Cornell to do my session with the MBA students before flying back to the trip. And so, yeah, if you need to, it’s not like once you leave the country, you’ve now been barred from it, you can fly back in and out. And luckily, if you decide to do that, if you fly in and out, you’re in the country for an entire month. So it’s not like you’re cutting your vacation short. You’re just flying out for like a couple of days and then flying back to like where you’re actually based, which is something that a lot of the people on our trip do frequently when they need to handle business matters back in the States.
A.J. Lawrence:
Well, I want to come back to digital nomadism and this. But first, let’s kind of talk about how you see yourself as an entrepreneur. Where are you on your journey? Because as someone who’s been trying to acquire a company, and as I keep jokingly, I’ve been a bridesmaid but never the bride a few times here, you’ve had a couple of really good acquisition. Burlap companies, is that right? You led the acquisition of that. You have them. Where are you on your entrepreneurial journey?
Bakari Akil:
Yeah so, so far, so Graves Hall Capital is a private investment firm. We’ve completed two deals so far. The first is I bought a burlap bag manufacturing company called NYP Corp in partners with a private equity firm. Year before that, I bought an educational technology company with a family office. And so I’ve been doing deals like that. I’ve also worked for major corporations as director of corporate development or head of M&A, where I’ve been responsible for acquiring companies on behalf of them. And so where I would say I am in my entrepreneurial journey right now is I’m still actively in the business of looking for companies to buy, talk with business owners, brokers and investment bankers, even while I’m doing this trip on a weekly basis, engage with those types of people and with investors and lenders as I’m organizing that capital to pull. Like I’m actively right now in the middle of completing an acquisition. And so as a result of like my work as an entrepreneur is the finding of good companies, organizing that capital and acquiring those companies and ultimately exiting those companies in a couple years. I would say most entrepreneurs would look at me as at the end of an entrepreneurial journey.
A.J. Lawrence:
Right.
Bakari Akil:
I sat on the board of directors, the business has been operating for decades, it’s on autopilot from a perspective of like generating cash like the product that it serves to its customers. They see it as a critical resource that they’re looking forward to using and so they’re locked in with this business. So it’s very unlikely that this business will add shocks that disrupt its revenue flow going forward. So there’s that. But then as a private investor, I would say I’m at the beginning of my journey. I’m building out the firm that will ultimately be like a major, you know, hundreds and hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars under management. And so it starts with like a couple of good successful deals and a great track record and people aware and liking the story that of what I’ve accomplished.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah. Making some assumptions of the type of what you’re doing with, hunting and finding these companies, it seems that they have a whole management in place. It seems this. So are you looking to create your own private equity or is this more of like holdco roll up, holdco-type direction? Just more of where is this going as you continue on?
Bakari Akil:
Sure. So when I came into the searchfund world, my approach was to buy just one company that was going to run full time as CEO. And so I have not yet sat in the CEO chair. And that’s a goal of mine at some point is to buy a company that will run as CEO. And when I’m talking to business owners, that’s usually the story that I’m telling them, which is that’s what I’m looking to accomplish and that’s the reason why I’m looking to buy the company. That said, I am recognizing personally that I’ve had success as an investor more than I have had success as an operator of an individual company. And so it’s likely that going forward investors will look to me and say, hey Bakari, why go and operate this successful landscaping business that you just bought? Why not just roll that into your portfolio and continue building out this holdco style? And the holdco is what makes it possible for me to go and travel the world and live around with remote year in different parts of the planet. And so for that reason I’m considering what that potentially look like. But I still have the approach when I’m talking with business owners that my goal is to buy them and run the company as CEO. And so we’ll see. Ultimately, the reason why I didn’t end up becoming a CEO of the burlap company is because we decided that it made more sense for us to find a CEO who had operated in the textile space before. And so we interviewed a bunch of people and I ultimately picked a guy who I thought was really, really talented and could understand our space and understood both the sales element and the manufacturing element. And so he’s been running the company beautifully and we’ve been watching throughout the buying of the company. And so that’s what I’m expecting will likely continue to play out as I build my career, which is why I say I’m somewhere between the beginning and the end of the entrepreneurial journey.
A.J. Lawrence:
Well, let’s talk about transition because I really do want to kind of, I want to play around with what it’s like being an entrepreneur as a digital nomad, having been more of a location independent living abroad, but then also been in different groups where it is big. But first, talk about some big transitions in your own entrepreneurial journey. Like what are some of the times where you kind of hit either a plateau or just what I always call it’s usually like a complexity where all of a sudden things look like they’re growing fine, you know. I remember I grew my business to like we were just over 7 million and it was just like everything started shaking. And it was like no matter how little I slept, how much I worked, whatever things, I couldn’t get it together. Like kind of fell down. Before I rebuilt, it was like I hadn’t built for the growing complexity. I had a two million dollar infrastructure, not a seven million dollar business infrastructure. It’s like hindsight looks really clear in the middle of doing it. What are some of those moments you’ve had in sort of your growth of like things just got really difficult and what helped you kind of transition through it?
Bakari Akil:
So as an acquisition entrepreneur, the game I play is I’m looking for companies to buy. And I have had, as you pointed out years ago, where you put together the financing, you put the structure together, you have that seller who’s at the table, he’s ready to do the deal. For some reason it doesn’t happen. Always the bride, never the wife. Exactly that same sentiment. And so that experience for me was very difficult.Like, the hardest time in my journey happened when I had found a company that was perfect. It was exactly the type of business that we in the searchfund world like to promote as being the ideal type of business. It was recurring revenue, low customer concentration, no key man risk, very sticky customers. A business was being bought for a reasonable purchase price, I had the SBA already locked in. And just as we’re in the middle of completing this transaction, the lender starts shaking and deciding ultimately to back out the transaction. And this is sort of like on month three of a 90 day letter of intent.So at the 60 day mark, which means I have to restart all of my process trying to find a lender with the seller looking at me like, hey, I thought the bank was going to be the easy part. And so, I’ve experienced all of the challenges of navigating that process. And the only thing I can ultimately say that I did through this process is something I like to quote, which is a line from a rapper who I really admire named Nipsey Hussle. In an interview that he gave years ago, he was talking to somebody and they asked him, how you got to where you were going? He was like, listen. The only distinguishing quality between me and somebody else who’s trying to do exactly what I’m trying to do is that I didn’t give up. Like I went through every emotion. I went through pride and joy and despair and conflict and embarrassment and betrayal. Like are you going through all of those different emotions that you’re navigating trying to get this thing done? But if you stand behind, understands that you’re gonna die before trying to lose this, you’re gonna make like this has to happen. There’s no other way. I’m going to make this particular thing happen. If you couldn’t pull that kind of energy into a goal and you have the staying power when things get tough, more often than not, you’ll be able to accomplish the thing you’re trying to accomplish.
A.J. Lawrence:
That’s a good guiding light. I’m gonna have to actually yeah, we’ll see if we can throw a little Nipsey on the show notes for it because that would be good. It’s funny, I put together a playlist for since you and I, we were talking ahead of time about friends with Elliott. That’s one for his birthday I put together a playlist and Nipsey’s one of his favorites, so we add that.All right, cool. So you kind of force her, as I always call it. I kind of like throw everything on my shoulders and just I will force this. All right, so you’ve created this other sort of platform, plus you’ve taken on it seems like you’ve used this opportunity where you are looking at companies to kind of, you know, you’re still being active in exercise. You’re not just solo. Like, it’s my company. I have to find my company or not.
Bakari Akil:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I sit on the board of directors of NYP Corp and so I’m working hand in hand with the management on special projects and on growing that business. And so that’s like a full effort that I’m focused on to try to grow special elements inside of our company to like, I like, it’s the biggest part of my net worth. It’s a huge company. It’s 30 million in revenue, 80 employees, locations all around the United States. It’s a fantastic business and I want to see it really, really ramp up even beyond where it’s been for the generations since it’s been in business. And also I, on a day to day basis, I’m engaging in the market, looking and speaking with business brokers, investment bankers and business owners about companies that are on the market for sale. And so I have a portfolio and then I have like an investment style.
A.J. Lawrence:
Well, let me see if I can ask this question because it’s funny, I’m starting to get these questions from some private equity and some specialized firms. So they’re like, well, while you’re looking, would you be interested in either evaluating or maybe even transitioning, basically operating into these things. What kind of led you to say, was it the investors coming to you or you deciding, hey, this was a good opportunity. Wasn’t right for you to take over as your baby, as a CEO, but it was still a really good opportunity and you saw that you could put the numbers together and make it all and find the person to do that. What was it, a chicken and egg? Like, was it the investor saying, hey, since you’re doing this, would be interested in backing you or did you just say, wow, this is such a good opportunity. Even if it’s not right for me, it would be stupid not to do something with this deal because took the search and went a little bit you know, you kind of took advantage. You played a little judo with it, it seems.
Bakari Akil:
Yeah, I mean, for me, I started this process for the goal of buying that company and being CEO. Ultimately, I can’t dictate the terms of the capital that I source. Right? Like I can negotiate with those terms but there were some things that were inflexible. And when you’re dealing with a private equity firm, they’re not necessarily comfortable with a brand new. They don’t want a lot of change basically. And stepping in, buying a company and running that company as a first time CEO in a very complex industry, I think for them was like, they were comfortable with the acquisition, but not comfortable with the idea of changing the management into the hands of a newcomer. And the alternative was not like, you don’t get to be CEO and you don’t get anything. No, the alternative was actually a very good alternative. We were able to structure a deal that really worked in my favor while simultaneously allowing me to be a huge benefit to the company. Now it doesn’t result in me being CEO, which I think ultimately is a role that I would like to play at some point in my professional career, but this is not a bad ending by any means. No. Like I’m in Istanbul, you know, I got a great company supporting my ambitions and capital available for me when I want to go out and do another deal. And so to me, it’s a fantastic ending. It’s the type of ending I think a lot of people wait most of their life to get to.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah. And I think that’s kind of cool is that you took advantage of the work you were doing and you had an intellectual flexibility that kind of allowed you to kind of look at an opportunity and not just hold it as it has to be X, Y or Z. You were like, oh, you know what, maybe it is. That’s really impressive. And I like that it kind of helps you continue going on because usually the story is, oh, yeah, I was a CEO and then now I kind of invest into these things and I kind of find them and it’s like, no, you kind of flipped it on its head and it’s a nice acceleration.Let’s go back because this is one of the things that I like that you’re doing. And at one, I’m just going to start with the line I heard you use in another podcast, just about comparing the rent that you used to pay compared to like in New York City. I only spent 25 years in New York City before about six years ago moving to Spain and now back in the States. New York City is one of the best places on the planet. But it’s sort of like, I always call it like Bikram. Once you leave, like Bikram yoga, it’s like so hard to get going in New York City. But once you’re going, you feel great. There’s always something. There’s always amazing people, there’s amazing food, there’s just energy. But the moment you leave, you’re like, especially if you go someplace cool, you’re like it’s so much easier. So how are you finding being an entrepreneur now? What’s changing? The networking, the work, the style of work you have to do to kind of with the chain. How are you finding being a digital nomad impacting you as an entrepreneur?
Bakari Akil:
I think right now it’s more affecting my view on being a human being and being a citizen of the planet and better understanding being an American and what it means to be an American in the eyes of citizens of other countries. I think that’s having a bigger impact on me than like the entrepreneurial side of things. As an entrepreneur, my business is a rock solid business that requires my attention on a weekly basis, but not on a daily basis. It requires engagement with the leadership of the business, but not necessarily with the front lines. And so it’s not taking up an enormous amount of like of the mind share. When I’m offering off work, then there’s the work of trying to find companies for sale. And I’ve always been virtual. Like I remember telling somebody that there’s-and it’s still the truth actually come to think of it-is that I did a deal with the family office, the entire deal structured, put together the financing for it, the whole nine deal closed. And I never, I had never ever been in the same room with this financier. Like funded the whole night. And to this day, that deal closed almost two years ago, and to this day I have still never been in the same room with this guy. And yet we completed an entire transaction together, talked on a weekly basis every single day.So as an investor, it’s important to be on location to see the business and evaluate it. But when you’re evaluating these companies, you’re not flying to see these companies every single day. You’re not trying to be all up in the CEO’s face all the time. You really need to come there and make sure that the operations actually exist, that somebody’s not selling you a business that actually is not there. Like I remember, and it’s just give it like a highlight example. I remember a story once where I went to meet a business owner and he told me to come meet him at his company. And so he hadn’t sent me any financials up until this point but I saw online that it had a website and I wasn’t too certain about the entire operation. But I was like, okay, I’ll go see him. And you say you lived in New York so you’ll probably understand. He was inviting me to meet him in a neighborhood out in Queens. And when I get to this neighborhood in Queens, it’s completely residential. And the business that we were talking about was a huge service industry type business. So I’m walking down, I’m thinking to myself, where is the super factory going to be? And I make a right and then I’m walking into his house and I’m like, okay. I didn’t realize he was inviting me to his house. So I get to the house, I’m thinking, maybe at some point we’re gonna go check out the business. And he’s like, oh, actually, the business dissolved a couple days. A couple weeks ago, we decided ultimately to shut the business down. But I still had the brand name. So if you want to like buy the brand name, you figured we could work out. I was like, what are we talking?
A.J. Lawrence:
As someone who’s born in Queens, I’m flushing. There’s parts of Queens, it’s like, I’m just not gonna. And not for any reason. It’s just out in the middle of nowhere.
Bakari Akil:
There’s nothing. So I’m walking. Yeah. That was a wild story. So, yeah, those are some of the reasons why it’s important to be on location at some point to make sure that you can actually see a physical business that’s up and running. But you know, after you verify those types of things, it’s not like you’re in person with these things all the time. You need to have some meetings in person here and there but ultimately, you can run this type of a business, this investment business from wherever you can find a good internet connection, strong cell phone signal.
A.J. Lawrence:
So where does, kind of playing more into then that digital nomad, and what’s Nomad Noir for you?
Bakari Akil:
Yeah. So when I learned about Remote Year, the program I’m traveling with for the next 12 months I learned about it like word of mouth. Like I asked somebody, hey, how are you traveling? He was like, hey, you should look into Remote Year. And I never heard of a program like this. And I was shocked that something like this could exist and I didn’t know about it. And I started to look into some of the advertising around it and some of the assets in the world that existed. And a lot of them were coming from, I didn’t see many from black people who were involved in the program or who were being highlighted as a part of the program. Not because Remote Year was somehow saying, no, we don’t want black people. They absolutely wanted black people. And it’s a very diverse program. They actually do have a decent amount of cultures and ages that are represented in their programs. It’s just nobody had really taken a deliberate approach to highlight the experience for this particular demographic. And so Nomad Noir for me, is a way for me to inspire black digital nomads to pack up their home office and work abroad. And I’m showing what my real, true lived experiences are, both from the experiences navigating remote year, but also my experiences with the people on location. I just released a video called My Three Greek Dates Turned Ruins or something like that.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, go to the ruins.
Bakari Akil:
And it’s sort of a play on the fact that we go to see some ruins, right? We go to one to the rock that’s right below the Parthenon where Paul gave his speech. Then I went with someone else to the ancient agora of Athens and walked around with her through that area. And then I went with another to the Parthenon and the Acropolis, or the Acropolis and the Parthenon, and just showing what my interactions are like with people who actually live in Greece and what it’s like to interact with a black person, to them and me interacting with them as citizens of that country. And so, that’s sort of the work that I’m engaged in. Not necessarily on behalf of Remote Year, though I get some compensation when people decide to sign up. And there’s like I think I provided you guys with a link that if you sign up through that link, you’ll get like a hundred dollars off of your trip if you decide to take it.
But it’s not necessarily on behalf of Remote Year, but it’s more on behalf of black digital nomads who do have the option to travel and live abroad, but just haven’t made that decision on their own. And so providing and creating content for them to see that as more likely and possible.
A.J. Lawrence:
So given your dates and all that, you know, you’re still out there looking, you’re young, and someone with a little more gray here. But do you see this just ongoing? Do you just want to continue on until you find something or how long do you see this going for you?
Bakari Akil:
The remote year trip that I’m on right now is a defined period of time. It’s 12 months. And so it’s a year where I get to go literally see the world. So I’ve spent time in Africa. I’ve spent time in Western Europe, Eastern Europe. Right now, I’m technically in Asia. So as you know, Istanbul is split into two sides, I’m on the Asian side. And so technically I’m in Asia right now. Then I’m gonna be in India, so I’ll be officially on in Asia soon. And then from India, there’s a question on whether or not I’m gonna go directly to Thailand or if I’m gonna go to Kenya. So I would go to Kenya, Tanzania, and then come up to do Asia. And then after Asia, do Latin America. From Latin America come back to the States. And so there’s a question about how that’s gonna necessarily play out. We’ll see. But yeah, I think a lot of times people make roots in the country that they live in, not for any other reason other than the fact that they haven’t lived anywhere else. And so I think this little sampling other parts of the world and seeing what it’s like to be there will give me a more, if I ultimately decide to stay, it’ll be an informed decision.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, I laugh because a little bit older but like when I was a kid, younger, I did exchange program in Ecuador. I studied in Budapest in college, I did a year in Copenhagen for business school, I worked in London for a bit. And for me it was like, okay, I know I wanted to be abroad. So that’s when Spain, the opportunity for Spain came around. But I think nowadays with the digital nomad and as it expands and programs like Remote Year, there are some others but they’re probably the most organized for traveling at. It really is so cool because I think it makes it so much easier, like you said. Since we both know Elliott, I’ll just use him as an example. I’m just gonna, I’ll try not to make fun of him on this. But like, literally I started talking to him about the time I was planning to come back from Spain to the US was when he was planning to leave Atlanta to go down to Colombia. And I’ve been listening to him as he’d gone through that first crazy year of like everything not quite working the way it’s supposed to. It’s like, yeah, that’s the expats. But he’s not quite that, you know. It’s like when you have to deal with visas, when you have to deal with the banking system, when you have to deal with like being in a place, but he’s incredibly happy there. Would you see yourself in that down the road when you have a reason to be kind of?
Bakari Akil:
I’m not certain as of right now, I don’t have to interact too much with the banking systems. And my visas are all like visiting visas as opposed to like long term trade stays. And so for most part, they’re pretty easy to get. As an American, I would say that’s another thing that I didn’t appreciate about an American passport. It’s not like it’s the strongest passport in the world. I think right now it’s somewhere between Japan and a couple other countries. But it’s surprising to realize how, like I made friends with people who were in Africa and they had the flexibility in their schedule to be able to fly wherever they wanted it. They wanted to be digital nomad as they could. But if they wanted to come to Europe, they had to go through a whole like extra bit of work for their passport to work in Europe as easily as it was for me to just like show up and get the Schengen stamp and just jump right in into Greece and go see it. And so I think I was always aware of the privilege that comes with having certain passports but it’s different when you start to experience and interact with people who have the lived experience of owning that passport and what privileges it provides and doesn’t provide. It’s an interesting challenge and an interesting problem that human beings have created for ourselves where some are not able to go to some parts of the planet.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, it is a privilege. Definitely, yeah. For everything America does give you the privilege, even if you have to spend half the time explaining to other people what’s going on in your own country. Like I did feel like, yes, I’m the token American. I know everything that’s going in my country. Let me explain.
Bakari Akil:
Yeah.
A.J. Lawrence:
Other than that, it is really nice that you can go because like Istanbul, or sorry, Turkey, you fly in and it’s like, you got to get a visitor visa when you land. It came in 10 bucks, 12 bucks, whatever it was and it was like, okay, it’s fine. And I knew other people because I was at a conference once there and it was like, yeah, had three months of paperwork. And I’m like, give them my passport. I gave them.
Bakari Akil:
Yeah. When I landed in Turkey, I handed him my passport, I gave them 20 bucks. They put a sticker inside of it.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, that was the visa process.
Bakari Akil:
It’s a wild, wild truth.
A.J. Lawrence:
So you have very cool videos and I would love to give a shout out. So did you hire this video company? Are you partners with them? What’s this? Because you have a video company that you work with for that. Because the videos are really good, well edited.
Bakari Akil:
Yeah. So my producer is Taj Lewis, who runs a production company based in New York. And yeah, he’s fantastic. So if anybody is looking for that type of quality and content to be done, I can absolutely connect you with Taj who likes doing that type of work. He’s not only that, he’s also a good content idea generator. And so we work together really closely on figuring out storylines and all that type of stuff to really tell this and make it interactive and entertaining for audiences.
A.J. Lawrence:
Well, look, we’ll put a show note to him because as I was saying, the videos are really good and I was very much enjoying some of your adventures on that. So besides going to check out Nomad Noir or here, better yet, what if the audience, given this is an audience of business owners usually in the seven figures, if they’re interested, are you looking for specific types of companies? What would be a good reason for someone to reach out to you?
Bakari Akil:
Yeah, I say the first, depending on who you are, the first thing I would say is I’m actively in the market looking for companies to buy. And so if you’re looking to sell your company, that’s a good reason to have a conversation with me. But also if you’re looking to buy a company and you want to have a conversation with somebody who knows what it’s like to deal it done and would like some advice about the type of business that you’re working on, I have conversations with people on a daily, weekly basis helping them think through the different points of their potential acquisitions. And so can be very helpful there and can also point you to people who are in my network, people like Elliott who we’ve mentioned a few times and others who can provide guidance on due diligence and guidance on legal matters and guidance on financing and can provide financing and all those types of things. Separate from that, if you want to talk about being a digital nomad and joining remote year, let me know. You can always have a conversation about that. And I would say those are probably the two big things that are happening right now. I’m working on a memoir and that’s a part of like my travels right now putting those to paper and ultimately getting those reviewed. And so yeah, those are the pieces.
A.J. Lawrence:
Well, cool, Bakari. I mean, look, I’ll make sure we all this will be in the show notes everyone. We’ll put it up in our socials so you know, and then also in the newsletter when it goes out. But you’re doing such a cool thing and I like how they feed together. It’s a passion play for the digital. But it does seem like it’s a very nice flywheel that kind of puts together. So I’m excited to see what you do and definitely let me know when the book comes out. We’ll kind of push around if not have you talk about it because I have a soft spot for digital nomad. I mean I love it and I’m kind of missing and I love being that close to family. I don’t know why I look out the window because my family’s not there. But still I like being back in the States, being close to family. But I do miss the ease and being outside the state sometimes is really nice just to better understand. The differences are small and kind of fun. Everyone, everything seems to be more this. We’re all pretty much the same. And I think especially in this world right now and not go too far, it just seems people forget that. So when you live abroad, you get that great experience. It’s like, okay, why are we so worried about this? Really fair point. Well, Bakari, thank you so much for coming on. I’m really excited to do with this and hopefully, someone on the show today is listening and has that company for you. As long as you can continue doing as a digital nomad, I think it would be very cool.
Bakari Akil:
Yeah, absolutely.
A.J. Lawrence:
Thank you again for coming on the show. I greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
Bakari Akil:
Thanks, Andrew. Bye-bye.
A.J. Lawrence:
All right. Hey, everyone, thank you for listening to this. Please go check out nomadnoir.co or Bakari for his adventures. We’ll put some of the links to his investment fund and from his companies. If you want, just check out and buy some burlap bags. But at the end of the day, if you enjoy today’s show, please give us a review on the platform of your choice, whatever. So that way we can bring other really cool entrepreneurs like Bakari on the show and we get to learn a little bit more about different ways of kind of enhancing our own entrepreneurial journey. So everyone, thank you very much and I can’t wait to talk to you again. Bye-bye.
This episode of Beyond 8 Figures is over, but your journey as an entrepreneur continues. So if we can help you with anything, please just let us know. And if you like this episode, please share it with someone who might learn from it. Until next time, keep growing and find the joy in your journey. This is A.J., and I’ll be talking to you soon. Bye-bye.
