The Anti-Capitalist Who Built a $3M Net Worth in a Colombian 'Trap House'

We spoke to Rob Hoffman in this week's episode of Moneywise, and his story is anything but conventional.

Imagine taking sales calls for your million-dollar business while sitting in a "slum" apartment with moldy concrete walls, a lone Superman poster as your backdrop, and Colombian gangsters selling drugs next door—all by choice. That's Rob Hoffman.

He's a former anti-capitalist hitchhiker that transformed from sleeping under overpasses in Canada to building a $3M net worth by making a counterintuitive bet: moving to Colombia with just $10,000 to his name and paying $50/month in rent. Within six months, he had the realization that would change everything: "I can skip ahead in life financially by 10 years." He was right.

Like all Moneywise episodes, Rob breaks down his net worth, income, portfolio, and monthly expenses and then I, your humble host, pick it all apart.

We also went deep on: living "rich" on a middle-class income through geo-arbitrage, the ethics of benefiting from currency differences, and how an anti-capitalist hitchhiker transformed into a successful entrepreneur.

Below you'll find my summary of the episode along with the entire transcript.

And by the way...this podcast, the concept of it came from Hampton, a community Sam Parr and Joe Speiser founded where CEOs and business owners come together in small groups of 8 to help each other grow. Hampton members range from people with newish startups doing $3M in revenue all the way up to publicly traded companies with hundreds of millions in revenue and thousands of employees. Because of Hampton, we get to see these private conversations about business, money, success, and life. Sam and Joe figured some of these private conversations should be public, which is why they started this podcast. So if you're a CEO, founder, or business owner, check this out. New Moneywise episodes come out weekly.

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Now, below are the notes and the full transcript.

The Numbers

• Net worth: $3 million (~$10 million in Colombian purchasing power)
• Business valuation: Approximately $5 million
• Annual income: $200,000 (after salary, dividends, etc.)
• Business revenue: $300,000 monthly recurring revenue (~$3.6 million per year)
• Equity stake: Recently grew from 25% to 50% through a buyout
• Initial savings to start business: $10,000 (lived on this for a full year)
• Early monthly spending: ~$1,000/month
• Early rent in Colombia: $50/month in a dangerous neighborhood
• Current rent: $3,000/month (equivalent to ~$10,000/month in Toronto/Chicago)
• Charitable giving: 5% of income goes to community projects
• Growth goals: Plans to grow business to $10+ million valuation
• Expected income increase: Plans to double take-home pay after completing buyout process

From Anti-Capitalist Hitchhiker to Successful Entrepreneur

Rob's journey is far from typical. Growing up in middle-class suburban Canada with a financial planner father, he was taught financial discipline from an early age. Despite this foundation, Rob initially rejected entrepreneurship.

"I actually never wanted my own business. I was the kind of kid and growing up that I wanted to be a journalist my entire life, and so my expectation is that I would never have money. And I was kind of one of these 'money's evil' type folk or kids," Rob explains.

His early adult years were spent hitchhiking across Canada, sleeping in tents, and embracing an anti-capitalist mindset. But a pivotal piece of advice from Hunter S. Thompson changed his perspective: "Instead of trying to do what most people do, which is to choose your career and then try to make your life and your lifestyle fit into that career, you should do the opposite. You should figure out what is the lifestyle that I want, and then figure out what is the career that is best going to enable you to live that lifestyle."

This insight led Rob to prioritize freedom above all else. "The lifestyle that I wanted is I just wanted to live anywhere in the world, and I wanted to be able to travel whenever I wanted. And in a word, it was freedom."

The $50 Rent Experiment That Changed Everything

In 2019, Rob made a radical decision. With just $10,000 in savings, he moved to Medellín, Colombia to start a marketing agency. His strategy was extreme frugality to stretch his runway.

"My theory was that Medellín, aside from just being an awesome place to live, the cost of living is super low. And so I basically did the math, and I figured out that I could move there with just my $10,000 of life savings, and I could live off that money for a full year," Rob shares.

To make this work, he lived in what Reuters described as a "slum" – paying just $50 a month in rent. "We had no hot water. And my next door neighbors were Colombian gangsters, known in the neighborhood for stealing motorcycles, selling drugs and kidnapping."

Despite these challenging conditions, Rob thrived. "It sounds really rough, but to me, I was like, I have the greatest apartment in Medellín. Like, I'm living the life right now. Like, my rent is next to nothing and I can basically budget like $10 a day."

Even when his business started to take off, Rob faced unique challenges. "I was doing these sales calls over Zoom, and there was no way that I could point the camera to make my background look legitimate, because the walls of my house, they were like unfinished concrete, moldy." His solution? A Superman poster as his backdrop – which became a good luck charm as he went on to sell half a million dollars in advertising that year.

The Financial Fast-Forward: Geo-Arbitrage Strategy

What started as a temporary move became a permanent lifestyle choice when Rob had an epiphany: "I had a bit of an epiphany when I was about six months in to living in Colombia, which is that I actually don't have to go home. I could just stay here forever. And I started to do the mental math, and I was like, if I stay in Columbia, I can jump ahead in life financially, lifestyle wise, like ten years."

This realization transformed his strategy. Rather than making sacrifices to build his business, Rob found he could live well while accelerating his wealth accumulation. The financial mathematics are compelling: $1 USD has approximately $3 of buying power in Colombia, effectively tripling his net worth in practical terms.

"The apartment that I rent now is about $3,000 a month, but in Toronto it would probably be $10,000 a month. Or in like Chicago it would be about $10,000 a month," Rob explains. "I don't know, I would probably have to make to live the same lifestyle, maybe $300,000 a year as like a minimum, whereas here I can make $300,000 a year still, but have all that extra room to put more money into investments."

This creates a powerful financial feedback loop. Rob lives abroad to save money and fund his business, while also growing his business to sustain the lifestyle that he wants – reinvesting the surplus to grow faster than would be possible in North America.

Beyond the Numbers: Ethics and Community

Rob is conscious of the potential downsides of geo-arbitrage, particularly how it can impact local communities. "There is a lot of people who are discovering that Colombia is a great place to live and are moving down here, and the locals, a lot of them are not happy about it," he acknowledges.

To address this concern, Rob allocates about 5% of his income to giving back to the community. "I, as an example, created this skateboarding program to teach kids how to skateboard. And, you know, we gifted them all like full, complete skateboards and paid instructors to give them classes."

His approach to living abroad goes beyond financial optimization: "If you're going to move somewhere, do so with the intention of immigrating, which means learn the language, assimilate into the culture. The whole thing for me is if you do those things, you're going to have a much better life there."

Rob fully immersed himself in Colombian culture, learning Spanish and building local relationships. "I assimilated myself into the culture. So Columbia really did start to feel like home. All my friends were Spanish speaking. I could speak Spanish, I would do therapy in Spanish. I would do everything in Spanish."

The Lifestyle Business Philosophy

Unlike many entrepreneurs focused primarily on exit strategies, Rob has embraced a lifestyle business approach. "I actually think that a lot of entrepreneurs regret selling their business, because what happens is you sell your business and then naturally you go, okay, I have all this money, what am I going to do with this money?"

Instead, Rob aims to build "a cash flow machine where I have this business, I can remove myself from it to a certain extent. It just spits off cash, and then I can use that cash to buy other businesses, start other businesses, invest that money."

He's content with his current lifestyle and struggles to imagine spending significantly more, even as his income grows. "I've tried, by the way, to live the more like lavish, luxurious lifestyle and spend a lot of money on things like fancy apartments and stuff like that. Didn't really do anything for me. Kind of just made me feel like an asshole, really."

His financial goals remain modest: "What I want is if I have $10,000 a month that I can spend on, let's say, Airbnbs and rental cars, and then also have like another, let's say, 10 to $15,000 on top of that, for my other expenses, I'm good."

Other Key Quotes

"I used to go hitchhiking when I was like 18 or 19. I hitchhiked across Canada a few times. I would just live out of my backpack and sleep in my tent and overpasses, and that was very much my thinking."

"I always thought, it's a shame that I'm not an entrepreneur, because I think if I did like money, I would be pretty good at making it."

"I actually think that a lot of entrepreneurs regret selling their business, because what happens is you sell your business and then naturally you go, okay, I have all this money, what am I going to do with this money? And you go, well, I'm going to become an investor. And when you start learning about investing, you realize that some of the best investments are just in these boring, cash flowing businesses. And that was probably the business that you just sold."

"I'm really obsessed with just living an awesome life. So part of that is having community with my friends. And I've talked to some of my friends about the possibility of, for example, hey, what if we all pitched in on some sort of compound or community in a place like, there's this really great lakeside town in Colombia?"

"What really excites me is to just grow a cash flow machine where I have this business, I can remove myself from it to a certain extent. It just spits off cash, and then I can use that cash to buy other businesses, start other businesses, invest that money."

"If you're going to move somewhere, do so with the mindset of learning the language, assimilating, giving back to the community wherever it is that you do live and trying to make yourself a net positive in that country. And if you do that, then you could probably live there happily for the rest of your life."

Links You Might Like

• ContactStudios -- Rob's SEO company
• Laura Roeder's Moneywise Episode - The episode Rob referenced about lifestyle businesses 

Full Transcript

[00:00:06] Rob Hoffman: If I stay in Colombia, I can jump ahead in life. Financially, lifestyle wise, like ten years.

[00:00:15] Harry Morton: I'm gonna level with you. Today's guest isn't a billionaire. He isn't worth 100 million. He's not even at 10 million yet.

[00:00:21] Rob Hoffman: My net worth is probably close to $3 million.

[00:00:24] Harry Morton: But stay with me here. Because first of all, let's keep it in perspective. To be worth over $1 million still makes you very well off. And second. Well, it's kind of worth triple that. Check this out. Rob Hoffman is an entrepreneur from the Hampton community. He moved to Columbia to stretch his dollars while building a business.

[00:00:42] Rob Hoffman: Rent in my neighborhood was $50 a month.

[00:00:45] Harry Morton: At first he thought it was temporary, but even after his company took off, Rob chose to stay. And he's made a lifestyle and a financial playbook that's worth learning from. This is the story of how he did it. The upsides and downsides of geo arbitrage life. The ethics of benefiting from a cheaper currency, and also how he went from anti-capitalist hippie to a thriving entrepreneur. I'm Harry Morton and this is money wise. This isn't just another podcast about how to get rich. This is a show about what happens once you've already made it. We get more honest and vulnerable than honestly, probably any other podcast out there. We share the real numbers and the emotional journey of building wealth and the changes it brings to your life, for better and for worse. Oh, and I just mentioned that Rob is a member of Hampton. That's the community of high net worth founders that I'm a member of and that makes this podcast. That's how Rob and I got connected. And if you want to have conversations like this in a private, highly vetted community, you've got to go and check out join Hamptons.com. All right. Let's get to it. Stories of founders living frugally or scraping by in the early days are a dime a dozen, but none of the stories we've heard on the show are quite as extreme as Rob's early days.

[00:01:54] Rob Hoffman: We had no hot water, and my next door neighbors were Colombian gangsters known in the neighborhood for stealing motorcycles, selling drugs, and kidnapping.

[00:02:05] Harry Morton: So who willingly chooses to live like that when they don't actually have to? Let's start there. Quite the opposite. From the warm, sometimes dangerous country that is Colombia. Rob grew up in a cold and quiet suburban Canada.

[00:02:18] Rob Hoffman: So I grew up in a suburb of Toronto called Newmarket, Ontario. And very middle class. Like middle of the line household. It's pretty much like the most boring average childhood that you could ever imagine.

[00:02:33] Harry Morton: Growing up, financial discipline was deeply ingrained in him.

[00:02:37] Rob Hoffman: My dad is a financial planner, so we were always very careful with our spending or just making sure that saving is a priority. So I learned really young the value of saving. And one example of that is when I would go to school, all my friends, they would get money from their parents to buy lunch at like the cafeteria or whatever. And we would always do just like a pack lunch every single day. And I would be like, man, I can't believe that people are spending $5 on lunch. Like, don't they know that $5 times 20 days, like 20 school days in a month is X amount of money and what you can buy with that? So we definitely didn't grow up like wanting for anything. We had more than enough, but it wasn't like a frivolous spending situation either.

[00:03:23] Harry Morton: Despite always having the instinct to save and be smart with money making, it wasn't always something he cared for.

[00:03:29] Rob Hoffman: I actually never wanted my own business. I was the kind of kid and growing up that I wanted to be a journalist my entire life, and so my expectation is that I would never have money. And I was kind of one of these money's evil type folk or kids, which that quickly changed once my frontal lobe developed when I hit 25 and realized that it's cool to be broke when you're 18 or 19, but when you're 30, it's it's not as cool. I went to journalism school for one year And then I dropped out because basically I went to Western, which is a really good school. It's kind of like Canadian Ivy League. And I went for journalism, and I just remember sitting in these classrooms of like 300 people and looking around and being like, we're all learning the same stuff. Like, how am I getting any competitive edge? What I realized is, why am I paying money to basically spend more money to buy books and then read those books in a classroom when I can just buy the books that I'm interested in myself and read them and study and put that learning into practice. So I dropped out. In that year.

[00:04:32] Rob Hoffman: I read almost a book a week. I would read a lot of obscure stuff like, um, moral mazes. I forget who that's by, but it just talks about the structure of like the typical American corporation. And it was really kind of like the opposite type of book that you would read if you were into business. It was, again, one of these books that was more like, uh, money is evil, like corporate America is evil, like this type of thing. So you can really see like how my thinking changed pretty drastically. Like, I used to go hitchhiking when I was like 18 or 19. I hitchhiked across Canada a few times. I would just live out of my backpack and sleep in my tent and overpasses, and that was very much my thinking. But I did always think that, man, it's such a shame that I'm into journalism and I'm not into entrepreneurship because journalism is so hard. It's almost mathematical where you can it's an equation or like a puzzle that you can piece together. And so I always thought, it's a shame that I'm not an entrepreneur, because I think if I did like money, I would be pretty good at making it.

[00:05:37] Harry Morton: But Rob's extensive reading did leave him to a change of heart.

[00:05:41] Rob Hoffman: If you're into journalism, you probably know Hunter S Thompson, and he was one of my favorite journalists. He wrote this really good letter when he was in his 20s that has this advice, which is instead of trying to do what most people do, which is to choose your career and then try to make your life and your lifestyle fit into that career. You should do the opposite. You should figure out what is the lifestyle that I want, and then figure out what is the career that is best going to enable you to live that lifestyle. And I took that to heart. Basically, the lifestyle that I wanted is I just wanted to live anywhere in the world, and I wanted to be able to travel whenever I wanted. And in a word, it was freedom.

[00:06:22] Harry Morton: And here we get to an important piece of Rob's story. Why he moved to Medellin in the first place is crucial to understanding why he ended up staying. It was never about living a luxurious life for less effort. It was about allowing himself the freedom and the ability to create a life he wanted, both financially and personally.

[00:06:39] Rob Hoffman: I started my business in 2019, and that was the same year that I moved to Medellin. I left because I just always wanted to leave Toronto or the suburbs of Toronto, as we do. If you're from the suburbs of Toronto, it's just so boring. I just wanted to live in a place that was beautiful and adventurous and interesting, and I didn't really care about the luxurious lifestyle.

[00:07:05] Harry Morton: Now, we've talked a lot about frugality in the early days of building a business. Rob took that to a whole new level.

[00:07:12] Rob Hoffman: My theory was that Metagene, aside from just being an awesome place to live, the cost of living is super low. And so I basically did the math, and I figured out that I could move there with just my $10,000 of life savings, and I could live off that money for a full year. And that would allow me to focus my full time on trying to get my business off the ground, which was a marketing agency. The first year was really interesting because in order to make my money last, I decided to move in with some local friends that I had met in Medellin, in what American newspapers described as a very dangerous neighborhood. And in fact, I saw one Reuters article about my neighborhood that characterized it as a quote unquote slum. Rent in my neighborhood was $50 a month. We had no hot water. And my next door neighbors were Colombian gangsters, known in the neighborhood for stealing motorcycles, selling drugs and kidnapping.

[00:08:10] Harry Morton: Did you budget for $50, or could you have paid more if you wanted to?

[00:08:13] Rob Hoffman: I could have done more if I wanted to, but I also just wanted to live with my friends and they were just from this neighborhood. And so for me, it was just a great experience to live in a local neighborhood. And I loved it, by the way. Like, it sounds really rough, but to me, I was like, I have the greatest apartment in Medellin. Like, I'm living the life right now. Like, my rent is next to nothing and I can basically budget like $10 a day. And I was still the wealthiest one out of all my friends, just spending $10 a day.

[00:08:45] Harry Morton: What was your monthly spend at the time?

[00:08:47] Rob Hoffman: It was close to $1,000 a month all in just because there would be random expenses, like for example, probably visa expenses or just certain things that you end up having to spend like $300 on some random expense. But the $10,000 that I had lasted me for almost exactly a year, so it was probably just under $1,000 a month that I was spending.

[00:09:12] Harry Morton: But that first year didn't end up being the launch he was hoping for.

[00:09:15] Rob Hoffman: Basically, what happened is that 12 months went by very quickly and I still wasn't making any money, and so my savings were almost gone. And luckily at that time I got a phone call and it was the VP of product at that startup that I used to work at in Toronto, the one that I had gotten fired from. And I was actually the top writer at that company. So when they got their feet back under them and they were starting to rebuild the company, they called me up and said, hey, do you want to come write for us again? And, uh, I looked at my bank account and said, yes, I do, absolutely I do.

[00:09:55] Harry Morton: Instead, Rob started working a regular job until his company started to grow. But his living arrangement wasn't as beneficial in that scenario.

[00:10:03] Rob Hoffman: The problem at this point was that I was still living in a quote unquote slum. So basically I was doing these sales calls over zoom, and there was no way that I could point the camera to make my background look legitimate, because the walls of my house, they were like unfinished concrete, moldy. And I just kept imagining my clients or people on sales calls being like, all right, you're trying to say you can make us all this money, but why are you living in a slum, dude? And so, um, basically what I did is I took the only halfway decent decoration in my entire apartment, which was this dumb Superman poster, and I put it up behind me on the wall. So I would at least have some sort of decoration in my zoom background, and it kind of became my good luck charm, because I went on to sell half $1 million of advertising that year, and the next year I sold a million. And so I eventually became the CEO of that company. And I took those learnings and I would apply them into my own business. I learned how to sell. I learned how to get leads. I learned how to manage a team, how to be a good leader. And slowly but surely, I started to grow my company. Basically, once my company hit 1 million of annual recurring revenue, I decided, okay, it's time to quit the startup and go all in on my own business. And then we did about 2.4 million inches 2023. Last year we did 3 million. And then right now we are doing about 300,000 of monthly recurring revenue. So that's about 3.6 million per year.

[00:11:49] Harry Morton: Did you start giving yourself a salary at that point?

[00:11:51] Rob Hoffman: I started paying myself $120,000 Canadian. As we grew, I increased my salary and started to take bonuses and whatnot. So basically, after salary, dividends and all that, now I make about $200,000 a year.

[00:12:12] Harry Morton: Let's talk about Rob's net worth. Like I said at the beginning, these aren't massive numbers.

[00:12:17] Rob Hoffman: My net worth is probably close to $3 million.

[00:12:20] Harry Morton: Now, at the beginning, I also mentioned that it's technically triple that. Let me explain that. So 1 USD has the buying power in Colombia of approximately $3. So that means your 3 million of net worth is actually worth about 9 million. And that to Rob already affords him the lifestyle he wants.

[00:12:38] Rob Hoffman: I definitely do want more than that, but I look at it in terms of, again, how much money do I need to spend every month or every year just to be happy? There's another guest on Money Wise who said that that number for her, it was Laura, I think was her name, and she said, there's not much that I can't afford on about 200 or $250,000 a year, and I kind of feel the same way in my heart. I am still a bit of a hippie, you know, I'm still that same person who would go backpacking and sleep in tents and stuff like that. So and I've tried, by the way, to live the more like lavish, luxurious lifestyle and spend a lot of money on things like fancy apartments and stuff like that. Didn't really do anything for me. Kind of just made me feel like an asshole, really. What I want is if I have $10,000 a month that I can spend on, let's say, Airbnbs and rental cars, and then also have like another, let's say, 10 to $15,000 on top of that, for my other expenses, I'm good. Like, I don't really need much more than that. And especially because I really love living in Latin America or parts of the world that are maybe, you know, the cost of living is a lot lower.

[00:13:53] Harry Morton: But that's not to say he isn't still growing his net worth. His business is still growing at a good pace.

[00:13:57] Rob Hoffman: So the business is probably worth about $5 million today. And I think over the next few years, we can grow it to at least double that 10 million plus. Our plan is to take advantage of the audience that we have, because we actually have one of the biggest, most valuable audiences in the SEO space. And we're going to leverage that to create a suite of vertical products. So a SaaS, a course, community consulting, and then our agency. And that's more or less the roadmap that we're hoping is going to take us to that 10 million plus mark over the next few years. On top of that, my personal stake in the business has also grown over the years. So when we started, I had a 25% equity stake in the business, and that has recently grown to 50 due to a buyout that we did with some of my other co-founders.

[00:14:57] Harry Morton: And although Rob does feel happy with what he has, where he's at, we're all human and he is still thinking about what he'll do with that next level of wealth.

[00:15:05] Rob Hoffman: So the buyout process is going to take place over the next 12 months, and after the 12 months are done, me and my co-founder are expecting that we should be able to at least double our take home. And it's kind of been this interesting thought experiment to figure out what would I even spend that money on? And part of me feels like I don't really need too much more money to be happy. But then there's always the part of you that thinks of, okay, well, what could I spend that money on? And I'm really obsessed with just living an awesome life. So part of that is having community with my friends. And I've talked to some of my friends about the possibility of, for example. Hey, what if we all pitched in on some sort of compound or community in a place like, there's this really great lakeside town in Colombia? What if we all just had a property together there where we could go and live there part of the year? Hang out, mastermind Wakesurf do fun stuff. I think the thing is, is whenever more money comes in or the ability to make more money, it does expand your mind a little bit and you start to think about all the cool things that you could do with that money.

[00:16:19] Harry Morton: But at this stage, Rob has done what he set out to do. He gave himself the opportunity to live abroad, to put everything into his business and to speedrun, building the lifestyle he wanted. And the plan for this stage was to leave.

[00:16:31] Rob Hoffman: I never actually thought that I would stay in Colombia forever. I think I just assumed that I would go back to Canada one day.

[00:16:37] Harry Morton: But he isn't.

[00:16:37] Rob Hoffman: I had a bit of an epiphany when I was about six months in to living in Colombia, which is that I actually don't have to go home. I could just stay here forever. And I started to do the mental math, and I was like, if I stay in Columbia, I can jump ahead in life financially, lifestyle wise, like ten years. And that was really exciting for me. I also learned Spanish. I assimilated myself into the culture. So Columbia really did start to feel like home. All my friends were Spanish speaking. I could speak Spanish, I would do therapy in Spanish. I would do everything in Spanish. So it just felt very natural for me to stay in Columbia. And again, doing so would give me this great opportunity to just skip ahead like ten, 15 years in my life. Uh, lifestyle wise.

[00:17:33] Harry Morton: What's interesting, though, is that he isn't actually living a vastly different lifestyle compared to what he would have in Canada. Instead, he's just able to bank a ton more and reinvest at a much faster pace.

[00:17:43] Rob Hoffman: The apartment that I rent now is about $3,000 a month, but in Toronto it would probably be $10,000 a month. Or in like Chicago it would be about $10,000 a month. And that's just rent, right? Because it's a very beautiful apartment. So I don't know, I would probably have to make to live the same lifestyle, maybe $300,000 a year as like a minimum, whereas here I can make $300,000 a year still, but have all that extra room to put more money into investments. Like, the thing is that you can live pretty extravagantly for a comparably low amount of money. So $3,000 in an apartment, it's like, that's an extravagant apartment. I have somebody who, uh, does like my meal prep like a private chef. Basically, I have somebody that comes in and cooks and cleans and whatnot, all the luxuries that you would have in the United States if you're making maybe half $1 million a year plus and you can do it for very little. And so I think the thing is, is that it's almost hard to spend the money, even if I wanted to. And that's great because that's all extra money that I can put into my business that I can reinvest.

[00:19:03] Harry Morton: Robs financial and personal lives are caught in a bit of a feedback loop. One fuels the other. He lives abroad to save money and fund his business, while also growing his business to sustain the lifestyle that he wants. And again, this lifestyle approach is exactly why he became an entrepreneur to begin with. We first talked about the idea of a lifestyle business with Laura Roeder, a fan favorite episode, by the way. So go and check it out if you haven't already. Turns out Rob's a fan too. So the idea of exiting isn't exactly something he's sold on.

[00:19:31] Rob Hoffman: I actually think that a lot of entrepreneurs regret selling their business, because what happens is you sell your business and then naturally you go, okay, I have all this money, what am I going to do with this money? And you go, well, I'm going to become an investor. And when you start learning about investing, you realize that some of the best investments are just in these boring, cash flowing businesses. And that was probably the business that you just sold. And so for me, what really excites me is to just grow a cash flow machine where I have this business, I can remove myself from it to a certain extent. It just spits off cash, and then I can use that cash to buy other businesses, start other businesses, invest that money, and that is most likely what I will do. But who knows.

[00:20:20] Harry Morton: And this again brings us back to the decision to stay in Colombia. Rob didn't move away as a sacrifice for his business. He moved away because it was part of the lifestyle that he wanted. So if you're coming at this from purely a strategic standpoint, meaning you just want to maximize your ability to reinvest in yourself and your business and make your millions go even further. There's a good chance the move isn't worth the sacrifice.

[00:20:45] Rob Hoffman: There are downsides to moving abroad. One of the big ones is that you are far from family. That said, my family does come and visit and they love it here. I go back quite frequently now to visit them. I did in the beginning. That is a huge downside. There are other downsides too, which is that people move to Canada and the US for a reason. It is very safe. It is quiet. There is no noise past 8 p.m. here. You have to get used to things like there's a helicopter flying and circling above me right now, which is making it hard to film or to record my audio. Sometimes at night you have people who will have parties, and especially this was the case when I lived in the first neighbourhood that I lived in in Medellin. My next door neighbours were literally gangsters. It was like a trap house. I would walk into my door every day and there'd be like 20 dudes out there, just like hanging out, smoking weed, drinking beer. It was nothing against those things, and they would have parties until like 5 a.m. on any given Wednesday or Tuesday. And I'm not going to go and knock on their door and try to be like, can you keep it down? It's like, no, I value my life. And so there's things like that. I think that some of those downsides are unique to me, just because I've had a bit of a unique experience here. Uh, I was the only foreigner to live in that neighborhood. Nobody else really does that for a reason. I have a ton of crazy stories. I've experienced a lot of really interesting things. Really kind of crazy things that I haven't told my parents.

[00:22:22] Harry Morton: I don't want to beat around the bush about this. Moving abroad for personal financial gains can and often is exploitative no matter what. Going somewhere with a weaker currency, only with your benefit in mind, will harm the community.

[00:22:34] Rob Hoffman: There is a lot of people who are discovering that Colombia is a great place to live and are moving down here, and the locals, a lot of them are not happy about it.

[00:22:41] Harry Morton: So it's incredibly important to be intentional about returning the benefit. You should be actively working to give back and uplift the community you're in, which Rob does.

[00:22:50] Rob Hoffman: So I put about 5% of my income into giving back to the community. And so, for example, I, I used to skateboard. And so I, as an example, created this skateboarding program to teach kids how to skateboard. And, you know, we gifted them all like full, complete skateboards and paid instructors to give them classes and do stuff like that. Really, what I would love to do is to actually teach these kids or like teenagers entrepreneurship, because I just think that it's like really sad that, uh, there is such a lack of upward mobility or the ability to make money if you come from a poor neighborhood in Colombia. Because, number one, if you don't know English, it can be more difficult to make money. But on the other hand, I don't love the idea of Colombia Columbia becoming more English speaking because I've gone to Mexico as an example. And people will default talk to me in English. And I'm like, I did not work as hard as I did to learn Spanish for you to default, talk to me in English. So I just pretend like I don't know English, to be honest. So it's a bit of a give and take. And I think right now there is almost this debate going on in Colombia where there are a lot of local people who are pissed off because there are people like myself, quite frankly, who move down here. They use the dollar to their advantage. They rent expensive apartments that gentrifies certain neighborhoods.

[00:24:13] Rob Hoffman: That makes the cost of everything go up. On the other hand, there are also benefits. So as an example, if you just think logically, I don't know macroeconomics. I would argue that nobody knows macroeconomics, least of all economists, but just logically, if I am making all my money in the US and spending all that money in Colombia, I would imagine what could be better for the economy? And to be fair, I mean, all over the world, people are not happy about people moving to their country. In Canada, you and I know we have the same problem. A lot of people are upset because you have wealthy people from other countries who come. And this is why in Vancouver you'll see like 19 year old kids who come from abroad and they're driving around Lamborghinis because Canada, to them is also an arbitrage of cost of living, even for people who have USD. Canada is really cheap. There's a lot of US businesses who hire in Canada because it's 30 to 40% cheaper to do so. So I think that this problem manifests itself all over the world in very different ways. And there's always going to be pros and cons. But again, probably like my way of making myself feel better about it is, again, if I am just trying to give back to the community and do something positive for the community here. Then, you know, at least I can feel good about myself.

[00:25:42] Harry Morton: And getting involved in the community and immersing yourself in the culture is going to make or break the experience for you. We started by asking the question why Rob stayed? The answer isn't the financial gain. It's that he embraced the country and ultimately fell in love with it.

[00:25:55] Rob Hoffman: If you're going to move somewhere, do so with the intention of immigrating, which means learn the language, assimilate into the culture. The whole thing for me is if you do those things, you're going to have a much better life there. And then it's not just this short term thing where you're moving for a few years and having fun and eventually end up back in the US. I don't see myself living anywhere else besides Colombia because, again, I'm able to do everything here that I could do in Canada because I know the language. And the last thing that I would say is, if you plan to stay here, then you're not doing the Tim Ferriss thing of just trying to earn like $5,000 and then live like a equivalent lifestyle of what you would have in the US for like $200,000 a year. What you're able to do is you're able to just continue to expand your wealth and make more and more money, and then your life just becomes increasingly awesome and you have more money to invest. So that would be my advice is if you're going to move somewhere, do so with the mindset of learning the language, assimilating, giving back to the community wherever it is that you do live and trying to make yourself a net positive in that country. And if you do that, then you could probably live there happily for the rest of your life.

[00:27:18] Harry Morton: Rob story proves that living abroad isn't just for people trying to live large on a small budget. It works just as well, maybe even better for people who already have a lot of cash but want to reinvest and grow faster. But moving abroad isn't some magic hack, it's just a tool, and it only works if it helps you create a life that feels right for you. Your money should always work for your lifestyle, not the other way around. For Rob, it works out that living in Colombia ticks a lot of the lifestyle and financial boxes. And one more thing. If you do do this, you can't forget that people in your community are joining. If you stand to benefit, you should be uplifting the people around you, not just exploiting a currency solely for your benefit. So if you want to have conversations like this, maybe even with Rob directly, you've got to check out Hampton, join Hampton. It's a private members community for founders and CEOs. And lastly, I've got to give a plug for the production company that made this podcast. It's my company actually. It's called Lower Street. If you're a founder or a CEO and you're thinking that you want a podcast just like this for your company, you've got to go and check us out. We'll help you to come up with the concept to produce the show. We'll help you grow it and find your audience. Everything there is taken care of. So go and check us out.