Check out the latest interviews with Chris Guillebeau.

In Chris’ own words:

My mission is to help people live unconventional lives, make their own choices, and change the world.

My writing offers unconventional ideas for remarkable people. I write through personal experience, including both failures and successes. Among other projects, I am on a five-year personal quest to visit every country in the world.

Background

I served as a volunteer executive for a medical charity in West Africa from 2002-2006. It was thrilling, challenging, and exhausting – all good qualities to have in an adventure. I gave keynote speeches to presidents, hung out with warlords, and learned far more in those four years than anything I learned in college.

After my time in West Africa came to an end in 2006, I came to Seattle for a graduate program in International Studies at the University of Washington. I enjoyed my studies, but I enjoyed travel even more – during every break between quarters, I traveled independently to countries like Burma, Uganda, Jordan, Macedonia, and 20 more.

So far I’ve been to more than 125 countries, but there’s a long list of places I haven’t made it to yet. It’s going to take a while, so I’ve given myself three more years until I’m 35 years old. (Any good goal has a deadline.)

I have been self-employed for my entire adult life, having successfully avoided the dreaded “real job” for more than a decade. My entrepreneurial history has ranged from importing coffee from Jamaica, search engine optimization in its early days, Google Adwords and Adsense arbitrage, and building a small publishing company while volunteering in Africa. I now write on this site and sell Unconventional Guides.

I live with my wife Jolie, an artist and teacher who has been to more than 40 countries of her own. Jolie is nice about letting me travel the world whenever I want as long as I promise to keep coming back. We live in our adopted city of Seattle, Washington Portland, Oregon.

Interview with Chris Guillebeau