~ 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
3
Products Building
HappyVoyager, TalentMucho & this Brand
30k+
Across Platforms
IG, TikTok, FB, Threads, YouTube
12k+
TikTok
Fastest growing
“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, TalentMucho, 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 and TalentMucho weren't built from spreadsheets. They were 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.
The right people change everything.
I started alone. Then I found Mary, Jan, and Honey ~ and everything shifted. Building with people who actually care isn't a luxury. It's the difference between grinding and growing. Team is the strategy.
~ Ready to build?
The work is the point.
Let's build something.
I'm not collecting titles. I'm shipping products, building systems, and documenting the real process ~ the kind that doesn't look glamorous until it works. If that's the energy you're after, you're in the right place.