Design theme
Customize ~ more themes~ My Story
Survived first.
Now we build.
I accidentally travelled the world. It started with a decision, little savings, and a one-way ticket to Japan. No grand plan. No safety net. Just the quiet understanding that staying still was the bigger risk. Two years later, I found a base ~ and now I'm building with depth.
27+
Countries unlocked
with a weak passport
2
Products Building
HappyVoyager & this Brand
50k+
Across Platforms
2x IG, TikTok, FB, YouTube, Threads
1M+
Monthly Reach
Across all platforms
“Not doing something about my life was more painful than embracing the unknown. So I booked the ticket.”
~ Abie Maxey
~ The Journey
How I got here
A one-way ticket and $120.
Growing up in the Philippines, travelling was a luxury. Our minimum wage was ten dollars a day ~ not per hour, per day. I reached a point where not doing something about my life was more painful than embracing the unknown. So I booked a one-way ticket to Japan with the little savings I had left.
Seen as a flight risk at every border.
Nobody tells you what it's like travelling with a Philippine passport. The moment they see where you're from, you become a suspect. Assumptions about why you're travelling alone. Not because of anything you did ~ just because of where you were born. That's the weight we carry every time we cross a border.
Hostels, cheap flights, and the visa game.
I jumped from one hostel to another. Found a $267 flight to America. Figured out what I could negotiate, trade, or offer in exchange for a place to stay. The visa game was another level ~ start with cheaper countries, work your way up. Each one: 30 to 60 days of waiting. But that waiting gave me something. Time to actually know each country, not as a tourist, but as someone trying to live.
Lost my job. In a foreign country.
Mid-visa application. No safety net. No fallback plan. Most people would have gone home. I didn't. I kept researching. Kept strategising. Months of it ~ no lawyer, no agency. Just me and everything I'd learned.
The nights nobody posts about.
There's a version of this story where I skip this part. I won't. Foreign city. No income. Family who didn't understand why I was still there. Dark nights where I genuinely didn't know if the whole thing had been a mistake. I sat with that. I didn't run from it. Those nights didn't break me. They clarified me.
I chose to upgrade my passport permanently.
I was done playing the visa game one country at a time. 40 extra steps. 40 extra layers of scrutiny. Spain Digital Nomad Visa ~ approved. Then I started building. HappyVoyager and this brand. All born from the problem I lived through, not market research.
This is the season where everything ships.
The survival arc is over. The foundation is set ~ residency, businesses, team, community. Now it's build season. Products launching, content systems running, playbooks shipping. Not chasing freedom anymore. Building something that lasts ~ and documenting every step so the next person has the blueprint I never had.
The Shift
From executing to building
Before
- ~Had a remote job and called it "freedom"
- ~Seen as a flight risk at every border
- ~30–60 days waiting per visa, one country at a time
- ~Lost my job mid-visa application in a foreign country
Now
- ↗Spanish resident with a path to EU citizenship
- ↗Multiple income streams ~ three businesses, one suitcase
- ↗Building the roadmap nobody gave me for the Global South
- ↗27+ countries unlocked, no more begging for visas
I stopped performing productivity. I started building things that last.
~ What I believe
The principles
A weak passport is not a life sentence.
I started with one of the weakest passports in the world. Every border was a negotiation, every visa a prayer. But I learned: you can work the system. Start small, build credibility, then go bigger. The game is rigged ~ but it's not unwinnable.
The crash was the clearest brief.
Losing my job abroad gave me something no business school teaches: a real problem I understood from the inside. HappyVoyager wasn't built from spreadsheets. It was built from scars.
Nobody built the roadmap. So I am.
There are millions of people from the Global South with the skills and the drive, but no blueprint. That's what I'm building. Not just a life ~ a system. So the next person doesn't have to figure it out alone.
~ Ready to build?
The building is the point.
Three doors ~ build it yourself with me, have me build it for you, or get what you've made in front of the right people. Pick the one that fits where you are.
Build it yourself, faster.
You want to ship with AI. I show you the workflow ~ in a cohort, 1:1, or a 4-week founder sprint. Three tiers for wherever you are.
From €600 ~ cohort to sprint
Have it built for you.
You don't want to learn. You want it shipped. I build landing pages, full products, dashboards, and the boring infra that makes them earn.
From €1,500 ~ landing to retainer
Get found.
You have something good. People don't know yet. I make content that brings them in ~ UGC, brand partnerships, and the kind of posts that compound.
From €250 ~ audit to retainer