Dan Mathews on Adventure, Hunting, and Family Bonds

Dan , along with his wife , samantha , and their two children , are all about finding adventure . The adventure even included an opportunity to be a surrogate for two couples hoping to have children of their own . What an opportunity to speak with Dan Matthews . Just don't try to get him to eat sushi . It is not his thing . Welcome to Journey with Jake .

This is a podcast about adventure and how , through our adventures , we can overcome the challenges of life that come our way . While I expect you will learn some things about different adventures , this show will entertain you . Each episode will feature different guests , or guests as they share experiences and stories from the different adventures they have been on .

Not only will you be entertained , but you will also hear the failures and trials each guest faces and what they have done or are doing to overcome the hardships that come their way . My goal is to take each of us on a journey through the experiences of my guests , with the hope that you'll be entertained and inspired to overcome your day-to-day challenges .

After all , it's not all about the destination , as it is about the journey . Welcome back to another episode of Journey with Jake . I'm your host , jake Bushman , and this is episode 125 . I was joined by the nomadic outdoorsman Matthews on today's episode and what a fantastic and fun conversation .

Before we get to my conversation with Dan , be sure and give me a follow on Instagram at journeywithjakepodcast . This is a great way to see what we have going on with the podcast and probably the best way to get to know me personally , as I like to share some posts and stories about my life and what is going on .

So check me out on Instagram at journeywithjakepodcast . Journey with Jake is also on YouTube . This is still relatively new for me , but I know some of you like to watch the episodes and this is the place to do it . Just search journeywithjakepodcast on YouTube . I knew my guest Dan Matthews would be great . Jake Podcast on YouTube .

I knew my guest Dan Matthews would be great , but I think it was even better than I imagined . You are all going to love this episode with Dan . If you like this episode , you will also enjoy one of my earlier episodes , episode number five , with Skylar Harrison . All about his experiences as a hunter .

Okay , on to my conversation with the nomadic outdoorsman Dan Matthews . I'm excited , outdoorsman Dan Matthews . I'm excited because I have Dan Matthews on the show with me today . From what is it the nomadic outdoorsman ? Did I get that right ? Yeah ?

My wife and I , we met man 15 plus years ago now it's closer to 20 actually , but we've been married 10 years and right when we got married we were talking to a good friend of ours out in Colorado and he was like , when my kids ask for advice , when there's multiple doors open , I tell them choose the most adventurous one .

When we heard that , we started running with it . And that's when we quit our nine to fives and started doing content creation , started traveling more , spending more time with our family . We lived in an RV for a year but we traveled in it for like four months and hit 30 states I think 20 something states and yeah , that kind of kicked off our life .

Now I mean , between my wife being a surrogate , starting podcasts , starting social media , writing a book , we just always , in everything we do , we're like what's the more adventurous thing to do ? Let's go with that .

The bulk of what I did before all this was construction , though , and so I was doing indoor construction , outdoor construction , building decks , you name it . And then that led into my wife and I starting an RV renovation company .

We burned through a bunch of RVs , renovated them for people , made them look like houses on the inside instead of nursing homes , and we did that for a couple of years . That's when we were like this is it ? We can't go back to work , we can figure this out for ourselves . We both have a pretty intense drive to succeed .

That led into social media , but I've worked a bunch of odd jobs . You know it's not . I've never had like a full on career until I would say this , but working for myself now .

She had like two more years . We met because I actually attended college with her sister and she's basically from Missouri . She tells people I was born in California , but I'm like you moved here when you were like real little , so you don't even have to claim that anymore . You're , you're from Missouri .

They got into hunting , I feel , like later in life they got serious about it and at that point I was , you know , four or five years old when I could first remember them going out hunting . I was like man , I want to go do this , I want to see what it's all about .

We would just sit at home , me and my brother and my sisters , and we were waiting for them to get back . Like what happened ? What did you see ? You know , like asking all of the questions about how their day went out in the woods .

Once I got to like 9 , 10-ish , they started actually taking me with and letting me sit in the woods with them , and that's when I was hooked . Like everything revolved around the outdoors at that point .

You know , like hearing the different sounds walking in at four in the morning with a headlamp on and I'm thinking there's bears and wolves out here , like something's going to get me and my dad he had been doing it for long enough that he's like , just chill out , everything's okay .

And then the first time I had ever actually been with somebody when when they had a successful hunt , it was with my dad and he was like , okay , sit still , don't do anything . I said , hey , I need to put my mittens on , like my hands are freezing . And he's like I'll let you know if I see a deer . And I turned around .

We were both sitting on this down tree . It had tipped over in a storm or something . And we're sitting on this tree and I turn around to put my mittens on and I just hear boom .

And I turned around and there's a deer running straight at us and I'm like , oh , and he pulls the trigger again and we ended up grabbing it and taking it back home and I I was . I just couldn't believe it .

You know , like a wild animal out there , you might not see anything for hours and then , as soon as you hear a twig snap , your senses are all up , you're on high alert . Yeah , it was just a weird rush that I got . It was just this crazy primitive feeling that I still get today when I go out .

I'm cutting pieces , and it was just an L shaped chair that I strapped to a tree with a ratchet strap shaped chair that I strapped to a tree with a ratchet strap . And I brought out an old wooden ladder that my mom got from a yard sale . It was like a six foot ladder , put it as high up in the tree .

I mean my feet were probably maybe six or seven feet off the ground . It was the final day of deer season in Wisconsin and I I saw a deer come through . I get my shotgun to my shoulder . I was shooting a 20 gauge shotgun with a bead sight which , if anybody knows hunting like that's not what you use for hunting .

This deer comes through and I saw it was a buck . I was really excited . I pull up , pull the trigger , everything felt good . I climbed down and go over there and there's nothing , no sign that it had been hit . It ran off . I watched it run off and I go over there and there's nothing and I'm like I'm so upset because it's the final day .

I've got an hour left of hunting for the whole next year and as I'm walking back I can see a tree branch . It was about an inch around and it was just hanging there and I clearly hit that tree branch when I pulled the trigger . So I got up in my stand . I was so mad at myself that I didn't see the tree branch .

And as I'm sitting there sulking and complaining , I catch movement right in front of me and there's like seven deer right in front of me . I'm talking like seven yards in front of me , but I wasn't paying attention , I was just like complaining . And so I pulled my shotgun back up and there was a deer , you know , right at the base of my tree .

Essentially , I pulled the trigger . It went down right there . I started yelling . My mom and my dad came up and they're like did you get one ? And at this point I mean season had like I shot and it was maybe a couple minutes and season had ended . And so they came up and they've got their flashlights out and they're like did you get something ?

I said yeah , and they're like where is it ? And I'm like it's right next to you . And they like turn with their flashlights and they're like , oh my gosh , it's right here .

So I it was a very proud moment , to say the least .

You know you're doing it the right way , it sounds like . So that's pretty , pretty awesome

.

I'm like , well , I've got three deep freezers full of elk and ducks and rabbit and squirrel and deer and everything . These things that I put up on my wall . It's a memory . You know , I walk by it , just the same as you would have a memory on your phone with a picture . I have that up on my wall .

Most I would say the large majority of hunters have a great respect and a deep knowledge of the animals that they're pursuing and it's not just like I got to go kill the biggest thing I can . You know , I think I think the few that do that end up giving the rest of us a bad name yeah , I'd agree with that .

You know like people are driving in on four wheelers or walking in and so the pressure is pushing deer around . I joke that shooting a gun is almost a deer call in Wisconsin . I can't tell you how many deer I've shot and immediately had one right next to me . I had one almost run me and my nephew over .

I took him out hunting for his first time and I had just shot a deer . I took him out hunting for his first time and I had just shot a deer and we got up to go and get it . And you know we were going to get the four wheeler , drive it back , load it up .

All that and I'm looking up on the hill at my cousin who's hunting and we're we're like talking to each other , having a loud , loud conversation in the woods

and I yelled at him I'm like to your left , to your left . And this deer ran five feet from him down the hill and was coming straight up at us , and so we kind of like put our arms up , like hey , there's something here , don't run us over . And it , I mean it hit the brakes in a hurry and turned and ran through the woods .

But yeah , for whatever reason , it seems like when you pull the trigger , deer start showing up interesting that's yeah , I would have never thought of that .

Do we need to order anything before you head out ? And I'm getting my kids into it . They both are just ate up with the outdoors . I mean they just like looking at animals . They try to catch frogs in our koi pond all the time . It's a really cool thing to get your family involved in and she's the first call I make .

Every time I successfully harvest an animal . I call her FaceTime her . She gets excited . She's like sweet , does that mean like I have you back now for the fall ?

What does it do for you ?

For all of human history , man has done this , and so I'm like when , when you get people out there , history man has done this , and so I'm like when , when you get people out there , even people who had never shown interest in it , I take people out .

I try to hunt with like 20 new people every year and to see , like the look on their face when they're seeing an owl fly out of a tree to try to catch a field mouse or , you know , they hear something in the river or in the pond . There's like this weird connection that they immediately have with nature .

My wife and I are people of deep , deep faith , and so I'm like this is .

I feel like the outdoors is kind of my church , you know , like I feel connected to God , I feel like I'm just at peace , I don't have to worry about anything , I don't have to think about anything , and then especially going on like bigger adventurous hunts , going out to Utah and hunting the mountains out there , or Colorado or Alaska , or even just a new piece

of property that I've never hunted before . There's just something wild about it . Yeah , I don't know , I just feel at peace out there .

you start your podcast ? Cause your podcast ? It's based on hunting right , the nomadic outdoorsman .

I'm like I have sat and talked for like 10 straight days about hunting at this point , you know , but I mean I could , I could talk about it all day long .

The whole idea behind that was I'm a storyteller , I like to be goofy you can hardly catch me being serious and I've listened to other podcasts of people talking about this stuff and I'm like I want people to understand what opportunities are close by .

Or even you know a state away , because growing up in Wisconsin it was that nine day block , you know , the week of Thanksgiving . Basically we were out hunting and it wasn't until I moved down here that I really started exploring other things . Like people in Missouri go out and catch frogs . There is a season for frog hunting .

They call it frog gigging , and you either go out and you catch them with a net with your hand , with a spear , and you eat the legs and I'm like , well , I didn't know about this , and they're really good .

Like there are high-end restaurants that have frog legs on the menu , and so once I started figuring this stuff out , I was like , man , you can go down to Florida and shoot iguanas . They're an invasive species and they end up being a really big problem .

You can go and hunt these crazy Asian deer that are in Maryland , for whatever reason they're there , and so there's cool opportunities to get out .

If you're into the outdoors , if you're into hunting , if you're into new meat and I would argue that you know elk and moose are some of the best meats on the planet Venison is amazing and it's healthy , and so , yeah , that was the whole idea behind the podcast and it turned into . When people ask what do I talk about ?

On the podcast , I said everything from frog gigging to moose hunting , so like that's a big , big range . But , yeah , talking about opportunity .

And so it's like every year I'm doing that and maybe in my lifetime I'll end up getting a moose tag . When you know somebody who gets one , especially if you're close hunting buddies , it's like jump on that opportunity because you might not ever have it again .

And so my buddy ended up drawing a once in a lifetime moose tag in Colorado and we went out there , did a scouting mission in July , just rode around on the side by side looking for moose , found a ton of moose and then he successfully harvested one opening day of his season . That at this point is the only experience I have .

But we leave for Alaska at the beginning of September and we're going to go after moose and caribou and maybe , maybe black bear if we see one .

So I just I'm always since I've only seen one in the wild I'm like I always want to know about the moose hunts and those things are big and you know , I don't know , I think it'd be pretty cool .

I mean , some of these animals , like just one hind leg , might weigh a couple hundred pounds and you have to carry that off the mountain , you have to get it back , take care of the meat so that it doesn't rot or you don't lose any of it . It's going to be an adventure , to say the least . There's five of us going .

None of us have done this before , and so we're going to figure it out as we go .

Some of my closest friends in the world in fact I would say out of my 10 closest friends , probably nine of them hunt and we've hunted together or we continue to hunt together and we make traditions out of it . We get together on the last day of June every year and we get our gigs together , get ready to go frog gigging .

We're walking around in cow ponds , sometimes chest deep , and we're looking for frogs , and then we do the same thing for , like , dove hunting and the same thing for deer hunting so that aspect of it . And then we're communicating about it all the time .

Our wives think we're crazy because we're like sending pictures from cameras , like , oh look , what buck just came in tonight . Like they go this is what you do with your time and I'm like this is what we love . You know we bond over it's . It'd be similar like fantasy football or people who play video games together .

It's a weird thing that I feel like a lot of people have it in them and they just have no idea that it's there , or a desire to be outside . That much is there .

It was a show about Alaskans and living like very primitively and he's like that's what it is for us , my wife and I . It struck a chord with both of us . I'm like we don't have the time freedom . We have to answer to somebody . If we want to take time for our family , I've got to go and get approval for that in order to miss work .

Then it's like okay , you've taken up all your time , now you owe us the rest of the year . I'm like that's so wild that we don't view time as a currency and I feel like it is the most important currency . And so at that point I was looking at phasing out of a job . I had two new opportunities for jobs .

I didn't feel a piece about one , so I went ahead and closed that door . Piece about one . So I went ahead and like close that door . And then we ended up moving from Colorado back to Missouri and at that point it was like what am I going to do ? Am I going to go and apply and do interviews and stuff , or do we figure this thing out for ourselves ?

And so I I picked up some work doing construction with my buddy and at that point we had already renovated a camper that we lived in personally for a while . When we decided to sell that , we listed it and made a ton of money on it . And I'm like , hmm , my wife was like , hey , I follow people who do this and they make good money .

And I said why don't we do it ? And so we started pursuing that , getting more tools , getting the things that we need to actually renovate campers . And we had a couple of people reach out like , hey , we've got a camper .

My wife had been doing some social media stuff at that point and they were like , hey , if you'd be interested , you know we owe a certain amount on the camper . You guys renovate it . We will like , we just need the money that we owe back , but you guys keep the profit . And I'm like , hey , this is no overhead except for materials .

Let's go ahead and do it . And so that just kind of snowballed and we did several . And once we had that time freedom , because even at that point we decided that we were going to work on the campers .

Tuesday , Wednesday , thursday and then Friday through Monday we had time to spend as a family , and then Friday through Monday we had time to spend as a family . Even on those days it was like some days we'd be like hey , you know what , let's go to breakfast this morning , we'll , we'll start working on the camper at 10 .

And then , maybe the afternoon , something came up hey , do you want to go and see this show or go to the rodeo or I don't know whatever came up and we'd leave it too . And I'm like this is amazing , I can't believe . For the first half , or like our entire marriage up until this point , we've just been answering to other people .

And we get home and we're exhausted and it's like our time together isn't quality anymore because we've given so much at our jobs . Once we , once we got to that point , we said , hey , we're going to really dive into this adventurous lifestyle , we're really going to focus and prioritize family time . That led to where we're at now .

I mean , my wife has started multiple businesses . We're we're in the process . Actually , we just got the manuscript for a book . It's wild . It still blows my mind that this is what we're doing now .

But you could make little adventurous choices and just try something new and it might turn into your favorite thing . I didn't know that I was going to like hiking up mountains because I had never done it , and someone invited me to do it . I didn't know that I would like fly fishing and then someone invited me to do it . I didn't , you know .

And the list goes on and on . And so trying something new , stretching yourself , getting outside of your comfort zone , I feel like , is basically what adventure is , and it could look totally . I mean , you could buy a car and be like you know what . I'm going to try to figure this out on my own . I'm going to try to swap the engine .

Get on YouTube Academy . You're on an adventure right now with restoring an old car or just fixing a car up yourself . The beauty is there's so much information out there now . It kind of takes away that barrier of entry to a lot of new experiences for people . You can get online and learn whatever you want . I just feel

like most people don't have a good excuse for why they can't be adventurous . That's where we I mean we talk with our friends all the time like , hey , maybe try this , don't think about it , just just go out and try it , like the worst that's going to happen is you fail .

Right , I'm not saying go and pull all of your money out of your 401k to start a business you know nothing about , but it's like take take little steps towards adventure .

And we're like , okay , they're like what would you want the book to be about ? And we're like our lives are so crazy between surrogacy and podcasting and social media and RV renovation and like competing on a TV show and , you know , traveling the country . I'm like I don't know , like what can we fit all of that into ?

And so we were talking about it and we both kind of looked at each other on the very first call and we're like it's got to be about adventure , like that's the only thing we could , that's the only way that we could sum up our lives , our marriage , our relationship , into one book . So that's what it's going to be about .

I think it it will officially release next summer . The book writing process is very long . You know the manuscript . We have to go over it and make some changes if there's details that we missed , and and then you know we still have to work on a cover and how we're going to release it and all of these different things that I didn't .

I'm I'm not like I did terrible in school . I was not a dumb person , but I just didn't care about school . I mean it was kind of the same concept back then . I was like I only have a couple hours at home every night , I'm not going to waste it doing homework . I don't recommend this to everybody , but I never did homework .

I would show up and my teachers , you know , a month into school every year they just quit asking me for it because they knew I wasn't doing it . That led to bad grades , that led to me not being able to play sports , like a lot of negative things .

But I just knew that like my time was so valuable and like what I wanted to do and like even going hunting , I didn't . I quit a job because they wouldn't let me take off for hunting season . One time I mean it was at McDonald's and I'd only worked there for like a week anyway , so it didn't matter that much .

But through throughout all of school , like I would have if you asked me are you going to write a book one day . No , none of my teachers would believe it , that was not up my alley . And then , as I started telling these stories , I found the process very therapeutic in a way , remembering all of the things that we've done .

And it's actually brought up things that my wife and I we haven't had an RV for a while and on one of the last calls with our publisher , we're like I kind of miss that , like I miss being able to just go and you know , you don't know where you're going to end up the next day . We spent one day in Yellowstone and then I was like you know what ?

I want to see ? Glacier . Let's go up to Glacier National Park . So we drove up there . And then she's like you know what I want to go see the Oregon coast .

So we drove and it was just like every day we might , we might drive until 3am and sleep in a truck stop and then get back on the road the next morning , and so like we miss those types of things . But yeah , the book writing process has been , is , it's been wild and it's weird to say that like we're writing a book I know you .

Our first date that we went on , I had just broken my nose playing football . I couldn't taste anything , and even when I couldn't taste anything , I didn't like the sushi she tried to feed me .

And immediately I'm like this is weird , like do you need to tell me about some guy that I don't know about , you know ? And she's like no , no , no , no , no , it's not that at all . It's like you can do it a couple of different ways , but she's like the way that I would do it is it's completely there , you know , egg and sperm .

I'm just like the incubator for it in a sense . And I'm like I don't know , like that sounds crazy , like I don't know how would you do emotionally with that . It seems like a big , big responsibility for us to take on . And she's like I just feel like God's given me a body that I do well with pregnancy .

I know I'm done myself , but she's like , weirdly enough , I miss being pregnant , I miss delivery , and to be able to do that for a couple that can't like wouldn't that be awesome ? And so we took like a week to pray about it and did more research .

I learned a lot about it that week and I said you know what , if this is what you feel like you're supposed to do , let's do it . That started the process that led to you know , meeting with different people and do doing psychological evaluations through this company . That , like there's companies that match you almost like a dating website .

You have to like meet a couple and you're like , hey , is this the person we want to have a baby for ? Are they like , do they like us ? For about two years , it just didn't really go anywhere and so we were thinking like maybe this isn't it and she's like , no , I feel like it is .

But in that time we were doing the RV renovations and so , like life got busy and we didn't really talk about it a lot . Somebody on our social media reached out and she's like , hey , have you looked at any of the Facebook groups ?

Because there's a big Facebook , there's a lot of Facebook groups about it , but , like , there's people who match and meet each other on there . And so that's when we we met the first couple . We were going through the process of like medications .

She has to get injections in her butt every night for like 70 nights and it's like getting her body ready to be pregnant , like it's tricking her into thinking like hey , yeah , everything needs to fall in line . And so we're going through all of these different tests and communication with attorneys and all this stuff .

And the couple that weren't able to have a baby up until this point they miraculously got pregnant and they ended up carrying full term , had a healthy baby I mean , I don't even know , she's got to be four years old , at least at this point .

So at that point we were like , hey , listen , our goal was for you guys to bring home a healthy baby , like whether that was through us , and you guys did .

And so we terminated contracts at that point , reached out or put a post out , I think and had a ton of people submit applications to match with us , complications to match with us , and we ended up meeting this couple . We went through the whole journey with them . They had a healthy baby .

And then my wife was like you know , I feel like I want to do this again . That couple things , just they . They decided to stay more private . They wanted to just kind of like focus on their family , and one of the things that we really desired throughout this is to build a relationship with somebody . That's like an ongoing thing .

And so my wife is like you know , I feel like I still want that and I feel like we should do this again . So we went through the matching process again and we picked out this couple and she just delivered I think she's almost a month postpartum at this point maybe not even .

Maybe like two and a half or three weeks and so they took their baby back home and they're some of our closest friends . We go down to Florida and see them all the time , like they've come up here . It's going to be a lifelong relationship that we have . But at this point we're like completely done . My wife's crazy .

She didn't have an epidural for our two kids or the first surrogacy journey and then this time she decided she was going to and I was like this is the best thing ever , Like this was easier on everybody involved , like you were comfortable . I was comfortable , like you weren't telling me what to do , like we just got to hang out and then you had a baby .

So she looked at me about a minute after she delivered this baby and she goes babe , that wasn't that bad . And I said , nope , we're cutting this off right .

It's been awesome to especially for her to engage with the infertility community , because there's so many different reasons why people can't have babies To be a voice for an option if you want to bring home a biological baby , that's yours and your spouse's .

It's just a really , really cool thing and an option that technology , science , the medical industry has provided .

, like you , I didn't even really know what it was . I've heard of it somewhere , but I didn't know . I was like I didn't realize she did it twice . That's incredible , yeah .

You guys have the chocolate chips and the cookie dough , but you don't have an oven , so we're going to cook it in our oven and then you get to have the chocolate chip .

We let God do that , and then , once we've got five doors in front of us , if we feel a peace about them , we get to choose the most adventurous one . We let peace guide us on everything . If we don't both , it can't be like I'm excited about it . She feels weird about it , uncomfortable about it .

Unless we both fully have peace about it , we don't move forward with anything , and the one time that we did was with actually a camper purchase . We both didn't have a peace about it , but I think she was sick at the time . She felt obligated to go ahead and buy this thing because we drove a couple hours to go pick it up .

I was like I don't really like it , but I know she's excited about it , so I'm just going to pretend I'm excited about it , we buy it and it was basically totaled . We got it home and everything was rotted . All the walls were rotted as soon as we started pulling off wallpaper and we just lost all of our money on that camper .

I was like isn't that wild that the one decision that we didn't both have a full piece about ended that way .

Even , why not include deity with everything that you believe in ?

If we didn't lead with peace or , like you know , didn't have that relationship with God , what would our lives be like today ?

So , yeah , I feel like all of our biggest challenges are self-imposed . And then there are external challenges , especially with social media and podcasting and being in like the public eye .

External challenges , especially with social media and podcasting and being in like the public eye , cause , you know , my wife , between her platforms , has several million followers and then I've got a decent following on things , and so we get input from everybody and that can be a challenge .

We don't let it get to us most of the time , but then every now and then a comment gets through or somebody that we know will say hey , did you see what this person said ? And it's a challenge . We have to think are we secure in our decisions ? Are we secure in who we are ? Let's push that to the side .

Let's make decisions between the two of us without all of this other input , and so , yeah , I feel like that's some of the biggest stuff that we've dealt with and that we'll probably continue to deal with going forward is just knowing that if I said , hey , water's really good , there would be people talking about how there's bacteria in water and this and that ,

like someone's always got you can't win right . No , you really can't . And so it's like , hey , nobody's ever going to agree with , we're never going to get everybody to agree with what we say . And it was the same thing with surrogacy Like , oh , you're just doing it for the money .

Well , one of the journeys she got compensated for this last journey she decided , you know what , we're not going to take any compensation at all . I mean , it's a big financial burden , but people , people will like attack us for that . And it's like now I can speak from a place of both . This wasn't a money grab for me . I didn't make anything on this .

This was literally because I wanted to bless somebody with a child . It's like , hey , we're good with that . And then there's people who are like , oh well , you got more fame for it . And I'm like , okay , at what point do you just have to block it all out ? Because it's like you do it and you try to be as pure and honest about it as you can .

And then something still comes back to you .

We would have been the people in charge of naming the ant eater . Right , it eats ants . That's what we , that's what we're going to call it .

The nomadic outdoorsman correct for the podcast beautiful , yeah , anybody . Yeah , I want to get your hunting fix . Definitely , check it out , listen , listen to dan on that . Before we wrap up , what kind of words of advice to give to someone who's thinking , okay , maybe you , maybe you know what do I need to do to be adventurous ,

or maybe I want to go on my first time ? What ? What kind of you know ? What words of advice are you giving to someone like that who's on the fence ?

There's going to be failure at some point , and so don't let that hold you back . Yeah , Get out and try something new .

You can also follow Dan on social media at the Nomadic Outdoorsman Remember this is man m-a-n and not m-e-n . Also follow at we are dan and sam to see the account of dan and his wife , samantha and what they have going on , including their surrogacy journey . What I love about their instagram account is they're just funny and goofy .

It is just a lot of fun down to earth couple , tons of fun . So check them out . Thanks to each and every one of you for tuning in and listening to Journey with Jake each week . It means the world to me . Do me a favor and leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts , Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts .

This would mean a lot to me and is a way to spread the word about Journey with Jake . Next week on Journey with Jake , I have Beth Atencio on the show . Beth is living the van life all by herself and she's an empty nester now .

She calls it her midlife adventure rather than her midlife crisis , and I was really impressed with Beth , who she is and what this adventure means to her . Be sure , and check out next week's episode with Beth . Just remember , it's not always about the destination as it is about the journey . Take care everybody .