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This week on the podcast we are joined by Mack Lawrence from the Sweaty Traveler! Mack is a fellow traveler, digital nomad, and podcast host who keeps it real while she’s traveling abroad. In this episode, we talk about how Mack got started with her digital nomad adventure, why she was inspired to create The Sweaty Traveler, and why it’s so important to show the not-so-glamorous side of travel.
Enjoy!
In this episode:
- Mack’s travel story; getting addicted to living outside your comfort zone
- Growing a social media business and supporting a travel lifestyle
- Discovering a personalized work/life balance routine
- Starting the Sweaty Traveler podcast
- The anti-travel-influencer brand; showing the not-so-glamorous side of travel
- Controversial travel destination opinions
- Solo travel adventure goals
- And much more… Listen now!
If you would like to get access to the past and future episodes of our nomad series as a World Wanderers Insider, head on over to Patreon.com/theworldwanderers. Thank you so much for your continued support!
Connect with Mack here:
Digital Nomad Life: The Not So Glamorous Side Of Travel With Mack Lawrence
Welcome to the World Wanderers podcast, your source for travel stories, travel destinations, and travel philosophy. We are your hosts Ryan and Amanda, and we will be taking you on today’s adventure as we speak with this week’s guest.
In this week’s episode, Mack Lawrence joins us from Columbus, Ohio!
She is a digital marketing and social media expert and the host of The Sweaty Traveler podcast. She is also a recent member of the digital nomad community that started her journey mid pandemic.
On her podcast, she’s fully transparent about all aspects of travel and covers important issues when it comes to digital nomadism. She reveals the not-so-glamorous sides of staying on the road, the challenges that come along packed in your suitcase, and shares real experiences through interviews with guests. She even has an episode with us, so you should go check that out.
Throughout this episode, she shared the story of her adventurous life as well as the philosophy behind her brand.
Mack’s travel story: getting addicted to living outside your comfort zone
We are always curious to find out how the guests on our podcast have started their journey, and this is how we are opening this episode.
Mack caught the travel bug early in her life. She had family in Italy she dreamed of visiting, and Italy has been on her bucket list for quite a long time!
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved the idea of travel. I didn’t travel abroad until I was out of college, but I always wanted to do it. My grandparents are from Italy, so I always wanted to go back to Italy.”
Her first traveling experience was when she was 12 years old, and it was a trip to San Francisco together with her mother. Having felt the euphoria and the excitement that comes from exploring a new place made her fall in love with traveling. She made a decision to get enough savings and start living her dream. That is a pretty big goal for such a young kid!
“I remember my first trip, which was San Francisco from Columbus. It was with my mom when I was 12. I went to the Pacific ocean for the first time, and we just ate all this amazing food and went to craft shows and museums and Alcatraz. At that moment, I thought, I never want to stop doing this. And so, since I was 12, I started saving money to go on a big trip to Europe whenever I could. I didn’t know when it was going to be.”
She hadn’t experienced traveling abroad until she reached her college years. She realized she couldn’t wait for a travel buddy forever, so she packed her bags and embarked on a six-week trip to Europe by herself. This decision marked the official beginning of her adventures, and they haven’t stopped ever since.
“When I was 19, I said screw this. I’m going to book a flight to Europe and just go by myself. And so that’s what I did. I booked a flight to Portugal, and then I did Paris and Italy. That was the first six-week trip that I did. And that was my first big thing. And I haven’t stopped ever since.”
Mack shares something that we believe all travelers and digital nomads can relate to, the challenge behind explaining the passion and addiction to travel. Mack describes it as something she has always had inside of her the whole time, even before experiencing all the crazy adventures. It is a part of who she is, part of her identity.
“I can’t explain it. It’s just been inside of me my entire life. Even before I started traveling, I had felt like that. But once I was there, I never wanted to stop. I think it’s really hard to explain why you get addicted to it. I could tell you reasons why I love to travel, but I can’t tell you why I want my entire life to be travel.”
Growing a social media business and supporting a travel lifestyle
Being a college student who is constantly switching between corporate jobs made her beginning a bit rough. Two weeks of vacation time didn’t satisfy her need to explore.
At the time when she was struggling to make her dream a reality, she didn’t know about the concept of digital nomadism and remote work. But her passion was so big. She would even quit jobs just to go and travel to Europe.
“I was exhausted all the time, and I wasn’t getting to experience any of those places. And finally, I was thinking, sitting at one of my corporate jobs, I can’t do this anymore. I want to go back to Europe. I didn’t know about digital nomadism or what remote work was. I didn’t know that was a thing, but there had to be a way for me to get clients and work online.”
Fortunately, she had someone to look up to and was driven and motivated to find a way to start living this lifestyle! We find out that the inspiration and courage she got to finally quit her job was from her favorite podcast, “The Extra Pack Of Peanuts.” Today these people are close friends of hers, precisely they are the ones who provided her first job and the opportunity to become a digital nomad.
“I remember the day; it was December 20th. On that day, I decided I’m never, ever going back to a corporate job. I will somehow find a way just to make it work, traveling and working on the road. I don’t know if any of your listeners have ever heard of the Extra Pack of Peanuts travel podcast? They were kind of the reason that I was able to quit and start getting clients.”
Mack reached out to them and eventually did everything she could to start working with her first clients. This gave her confidence and a solid base to continue with her career, and she is proud to say she has been successful with digital marketing ever since.
“They gave me the confidence to go out and do that on my own. I would take my laptop home from the corporate job and work on client work there. It was crazy. And then finally, Heather and Travis told me they think that I have enough clients now. They think I’ve gotten to this on my own. So December 20th of that year, I quit. That was my last day.”
Taking this step finally gave her the freedom to start exploring the world. So, all the hard work and all the craziness of trying to balance a chaotic life finally paid off.
“Ever since then, I’ve been working with different clients. Mostly social media marketing, email marketing, digital marketing strategy, and it’s just been nice to have that freedom.”
Discovering a personalized work-life balance routine
As we always say, the reality of being a digital nomad is something different from the expectations everyone has. When you finally get to experience it, you realize that it’s not as easy as it looks, and creating a balance is key to continue being good at what you do while traveling.
“Doing this client work on my own, it was very hard for me to get in a routine. I wasn’t strict with myself. So I thought, can I continue to do this? Am I going to be structured enough? Am I going to have enough self-discipline to do this on the road?”
Mack continues about her rough beginnings and how she realized that if she’s about to live like this, she needs to maintain self-discipline and that was the solution to her hardship.
“I’ll just work on my laptop. No, that’s not how that works. I can’t work on my laptop while we’re driving. So during that time, I realized that if I want to be able to do this in the long-term, I’m going to need to be able to travel to places longer and experience a country like Mexico.”
After getting the hang of it, everything was flowing better. Remote work doesn’t mean working less; it just means having the freedom to give yourself a schedule. And that’s what we all love about it.
“It’s not that I hate working from nine to five. Most days, I work from nine to four, nine to five, whatever, but it’s the flexibility. You can do all of your work on a Monday and then take Tuesday to hike or something. That’s what I love about it.”
Starting the Sweaty Traveler podcast
Later on, you will hear an exciting story of how typical quarantine boredom led to something creative and significant – her podcast, the Sweaty Traveler.
She has been a podcast host for over a year now and how she came up with the idea was intriguing. She says that the name popped up in her head almost by accident; she didn’t know what to do with that idea, so she just kept it in a notebook.
“I started it last May, so it’s been a year. It was during quarantine. I was like; I hate this, I’m so bored. I feel like I’m not creative anymore. And so one night I woke up in the middle of the night and I just thought “sweaty traveler”! I didn’t know what that was, but I wrote it down in my notebook. I’m just going to leave that there.”
But then all the pieces clicked, and she decided she would open up this platform where she would talk about the experiences of traveling while keeping it 100% real with the audience.
She was inspired by her own unpleasant experiences while on the road, and she realized that the media often doesn’t cover the other side of traveling. The one that’s not so bright, filtered, and shiny.
“And then in May, I said, I think I’m going to start a podcast called The Sweaty Traveler and talk about all of the things about travel that nobody is showing on Instagram. Because when I took my first trip, I told you guys about the panic attack I had in Paris. I was thinking, well, why am I not experiencing all these things I see on Instagram?”
Having experienced something negative does not have to stop someone from traveling. On the contrary, all of these positive and negative encounters everyone has are what makes the journey so unique. She wanted to help out and share with the world what it’s really like to constantly move around, and cover both fun and challenging parts of it all.
“I want to show that to people, and I want to talk about it. So that’s when The Sweaty Traveler was born!”
Honest and raw, in her own way.
“At that moment, I was like, I have to start this and have that fun, playful side of travel and also telling people what travel can be like, not just the pretty things that you see online. So that’s when it started.”
The anti-travel-influencer brand; showing the not-so-glamorous side of travel
Mack also shared some of her experiences while traveling and how she understood, with time, that the concept of the digital nomad life is over glamorized, especially by influencers. The realization that some places that look polished and nice online may feel completely different when you go and experience them on your skin.
“You see all these beautiful pictures of Florence. And when I got off the train, I was like, I hate it here. It didn’t look like what I had seen on Instagram. This cannot be the same place. And finally, I realized they’re just over-edited.”
Being labeled as an anti-travel-influencer brand has brought her some troubles, but she continues with her idea to capture the real meaning behind it. Although it always has a positive message, in the end, she says!
“I posted a Tik-Tok about what influencers show about Mexico versus what they don’t.
Even though the purpose of The Sweaty Travelers is to show both sides of travel, that’s the only time that that’s happened.”
She explains why it’s essential for people to see both sides and accept reality. In the end, all the struggles you go through on this journey make it worth living.
“It’s really important to show. Sometimes it’s not easy, but you do figure it out, and it is worth it, in the end, to go through all those hardships to get there. But it is still a place of privilege to be able to travel.”
Mack’s idea to start a conversation on these almost taboo topics has had its ups and downs, but she is doing a great job so far! Every coin has two sides, and she is not afraid to talk about them both.
“Just like LA and New York. It’s the same thing. You see the beautiful buildings, for example, you see the skyscrapers and the beautiful sunsets and the rooftops and whatever, but also there’s tons of crime and trash. So, anywhere you go, it’s just cool to bring different types of realities to people’s attention and just get people thinking about travel for all different types of people.”
Controversial travel destination opinions
When it comes to discovering and exploring new places, Mack is also honest about the controversy created when having an unpopular opinion of a famous traveling destination.
This is precisely why she even challenges the guests on her podcast by asking them what place they don’t like. Mack believes the stereotype that you must fall in love with every place you go to as a traveler must be broken.
“I like to ask people on the podcast, have you been somewhere you don’t like? And people always say, well, I don’t know, and they’re very hesitant to answer the question.”
Even sharing a list of her own, she explains why that might be so controversial for some people. And believe it or not, the first on her list is Rome!
“I would try it again, but it always is a shock when I tell them Rome just isn’t my place. I did not like Rome, It was too hot. I didn’t like it being all touristy. I don’t think you could find as good of restaurants as in Florence or in other small towns, like the Amalfi coast and other older Italian, smaller towns. That is what I like to focus on. But Rome, I hated it, and it breaks my mom’s heart because I grew up very Catholic and my mom thinks that Catholics have to love Rome. And I’m like, well, I didn’t like it. It just wasn’t for me. And of course, I would go back because I’ve only been there once. I would definitely try it again, but it always is a shock to people when I tell them that Rome just isn’t my place”
Solo travel adventure goals
Lastly, we peaked into Mack’s traveling bucket list and what her plans are for traveling in the near future. It’s not surprising that she made a long list of solo trips and destinations she dreams of visiting.
We shared many of these beautiful spots, and Mack’s plans for this year include Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, and Europe.
“I would love to do Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand. I booked a flight to Japan for next March, so hopefully, I can make that trip. Vietnam has always been at the top of my list and then this summer, hopefully spending a longer period in Europe.”
Going around Europe will surely be an adventure since there are tons of places she wants to visit.
“I want to go to Slovenia. I would love to spend a couple of months in Italy if possible and just do a little bit more of Eastern Europe, but Southeastern Asia is a big one for me. And I would like to spend some time in Russia.”
Mack ended this episode by stating how much solo traveling has changed her life, allowing her to build confidence and independence to keep on pushing through this journey.
“Traveling solo for me, not to be dramatic, has literally changed my life.”
Last Words
We had a great time, soaking up the story of a very recent member of the digital nomad community who somehow managed to make it work even when faced with a pandemic.
Mack’s stories are truly inspiring and show us that dream-achieving is only possible when one is exceptionally determined and hard-working. It was also fun to use her creative brand to highlight some of the hidden realities of traveling.
We hope this was another eye-opener for those of you who plan to become digital nomads or are just starting. Life on the road is not always glamorous, but it is always a magical experience that makes every struggle worthwhile. And this is the real message Mack Lawrence is trying to spread to her audience.
