hello alex welcome to all ears english i'm excited to have you here how's it going
it's good thank you for having me lindsay really fun guys i'm excited to
introduce to you today our guest alex boylan alex you may have seen him on television
so he's the winner of the reality tv series the amazing race from season two
he's also been he's also been the host of the pbs series the chefs table i saw a couple of clips on
youtube of that alex looks like you were sampling some thousand dollar truffles or something crazy
that's amazing he's also been in more than a hundred segments for the travel channel alex was
also nominated for an emmy award for his work on the steve harvey show so alex based on your bio it
seems like a big theme in your life is adventure is that right absolutely it's been part of it's
it's part of my soul every step along this amazing journey i'm very blessed to have a really fun life
around the world his adventure and whatever that could be trying a new meal or you know checking to
kite your falls in the in in guyana each piece of this you know adventure is a big piece of
my life i love it and when you say that i can tell that is so genuinely true for you
i mean adventure fills us up in a way that i think nothing else really does
yeah it's like you know adventure and it actually means a very relative term right it could mean a
lot for many different people but to me adventure is like not knowing what's around the next corner
and i think that's what's so exciting we're so blessed to live on planet earth yes awesome
with like hundreds of different cultures and and different people and so getting to me that i've
spent my pretty much my life dedicated to telling stories around the world and meeting real people
in the you know most far away places that most people haven't heard of and so to maybe that is
what adventure is all about and i love it i love it i love it so i mean it's clear that adventure
is such an important part of our lives and we're going to get into this today the fact that you
were also on an additional show you've been around the world and the other show that you filmed was
what was it called around the world for free okay and tell us the premise of that show because i'd
like to pull in that show and the amazing race and get some tips from you for our audience on how to
navigate globally absolutely so around the world for free very simple premise one person
season one i had to do it but one person had to circumnavigate the globe for free and the reason
for the for free was to basically force that individual to live eat and sleep with locals every
step of the journey so oh my gosh yeah so imagine each season is its own like complete journey of
how you're going to navigate this world absolutely for free you're basically couchsurfing the world
okay around the world okay so does around the world mean every country or does it mean a certain
route or what exactly were the logistics of that yeah it means circumnavigate so my season was
through you know we started in new york city on the cbs early show down through the east coast of
america through the caribbean west coast of south america up the east coast of africa southeast asia
uh and then across the u.s and then season two and season three with their own routes around the
world i love it so it's fair to say you've pretty much been everywhere alex between the amazing race
which is kind of the most i think the most famous show that our listeners might know of and this
navigating the world through around the world for free you've been everywhere you've had a lot of
conversations navigated probably sticky and tricky situations so i'm wondering alex if today you can
give our listeners three core tips on how to you know again navigate globally if they're living
abroad or doing business abroad three tips three takeaways three things you've learned from all
of this global navigation what do you think uh absolutely all right let's get into it rattle
let's start with number one and then i'll ask you a couple follow-up questions and then we'll move
on okay so number one i say this everywhere i say this to my cruise i say this to any staff
work with a smile and a wave goes longer than anything else that you can imagine and whether i'm
like you know meeting with heads of state or business leaders or just like going up the barrios
of some south american city it doesn't matter a smile and a wave will take you farther and open
up more doors than you can possibly imagine i love that tip because we can implement this immediately
right and this can also be implemented in business in personal life out in the world now did you use
the smile on the way when you were confronting what felt like some negative energy at first or
when would you implement it it's a really good question yeah naturally a smiley i'm a naturally
happy yeah i could tell well um you know it's funny it was myself and joe luca who was my camera
guy on the season one of around the world for free and we were in some crazy places around the world
sometimes and so it just just doesn't matter and we just we just started saying that to each other
yeah and by the way i should make another point on this it's an authentic smile it's not something
i absolutely love and i think when you're doing it authentically the other person reciprocates this
is like i'm open i'm welcome i'm here to learn from you and so you know authentic smile can just
it just levels everything so whether you're in a tough situation you're talking to business leaders
like who doesn't want to see a smile i love it it's so true and it has to be genuine as you said
i think in addition to the smile being kind of the global language in a way we also have a an ability
as humans to detect when people are disingenuous right with that smile maybe they're faking it and
they're not being true and so you're right it has to be genuine so smile and mean it right
i love that that is the first tip so what would be your second tip then for global navigation
is um it's like be curious and ask questions yeah we all you know we on this planet we all have
like have different sized backpacks on we all have walked different paths on this planet yeah that's
what makes this planet awesome our diversity and our like different journeys that's what's cool
and you're never gonna know right no matter what scenario you are whether it's business or filming
a show or what have you right don't ask questions and you're not naturally genuinely curious yeah
you're missing half the point of travel and half the point of like knowing another human being on
this planet yes curious ask questions i love it be curious and ask questions did you have any go-to
questions anything that really would open people up and that you would introduce i mean across the
board or anything or was it just whatever came to mind at the moment i think it's really whatever
came to the might in the moment i mean for me which will go into my next kind of
thought on this but it is you know finding where the locals hang out you know that's probably
what's going to open up like a conversation people like talking about their cultures their food what
have you so just the idea of like where did you go and get dinner right yeah you know i mean you can
ask that anywhere in the world and you're gonna get an answer we all eat right and so yeah i love
it probably you know where do you have where do the locals hang out here that is a very simple
question that everyone's gonna have an answer for and it's gonna give you some real insight on
where you probably should go hang out right right we wanna steer clear of the touristy areas i mean
yeah this is fascinating you literally did not have a penny in your pocket right literally
nothing and so you really had to bring out these skills and this brings absolute clarity when we
have some kind of uh constricting you know we're you have some certain limitations and we have to
get through that that really brings out the truth okay so be curious be open ask good
questions i love it what would be the third tip alex and the third it's kind of a little
play on that what i just said but i was like to me public transportation public transportation
the reason why it's like be with the people in that way and that's going to lead into asking
questions meeting people like getting outside um the international hotel space which is very common
for all of us travelers to be in right if you have to take public transportation now you're going to
be with the real people and now you're going to be able to start asking them what restaurant should i
hang out at you know what happens over here get to know the locals that is going to give you such a
bigger experience and that's going to help whether you're in the boardroom for a meeting you know
whether you're there with your family looking to have some real cultural experience and so it's
like get on the ground level with everyone and it's common for american international travelers
right you know to just oh i'm gonna you know i'm gonna get this shuttle because it's safe and it's
fine i'm gonna go over here and um let me get out of there try to just hang do what the locals do
interesting and as you did this over how long was it that you were traveling was it a year that for
the story without anything i didn't do we did a hundred so six months 159 days six months okay
did it get was there any ever a point where you were just you got tired where you thought i just
want that shuttle you know i want that nice fancy hotel room be honest well what's fun about around
the world for free is you know one second you know you're in a barrio somewhere and very limited
you know not many comfort items the next second someone else is writing in who you know lives the
high life and you're over there so you're swinging into many different like interests we're swinging
through many different worlds and cultures you know even in the same country that we're in i love
it i love it oh my gosh i want to have you back on the show another time to talk more about this
topic what a fantastic topic though guys these are great tips go and implement these you know
get on the train be curious right and smile so good alex i think we can use these in business
life and just to have you know you are really full of life and this is how we lead a happier life by
genuinely interacting with the world right alex couldn't agree more very well said i love it so
could you let us know about the project that you're working on right now what you're up
to and where we can find you online absolutely so thank you for asking that we right now i am
i'm uh executive producer created a show called the college tour the whole idea is to tell the
authentic stories of colleges across the country and we're in episode 60 something right now it's
so fun we tell this these stories to the authentic lens of real students so we're just trying to
lift up higher education in america you know so high schoolers and young people get inspired to
a get a higher education learn about majors learn about what their passion their purpose is in life
and you can check that out the college store.com it's also on amazon prime and a number of
different like premium channels and you can always find me at boyle and alex on instagram and i try
to you know update as much as possible my journey on this planet i love it so guys go over and check
out alex's projects what he's working on i love the concept of the college tour because right
now there really isn't there aren't many ways to learn about the colleges that we're looking at
beyond just the the top 100 books right things like that it's nice to have another lens into
college life if we're looking at colleges right absolutely this all got created because my niece
couldn't figure out where to go to school and during that me helping her navigate that journey
i was like oh you need to bring these stories to life and and we do we you know we we shed light on
delaware valley university which is a small school in albania and the university of connecticut's of
the world so we are we talk technical big small medium we're all over the map i mean our goal
our mission is to tell the story of every institution in america and we're on that
journey right now it's really amazing i love it so good so guys go on over and check it out
and alex thank you so much for coming on the show it's really cool to feel your energy and get this
this wisdom from your travels around the world and on tv so good thank you so much for coming
on and we'll hope to see you again soon thank you for having me all right take care bye yes