Simon Balint: Risk, Travel, and the Power of Saying Yes

Simon Balint is an entrepreneur, world traveler, and builder...of companies, experiences, and second chances for old places.In this conversation, Simon shares how a childhood spent on a rundown farm outside Albany shaped his independence, curiosity, and work ethic. At 17, with $3,000 in his pocket, he deferred college and took a one-way ticket to Europe, backpacking through Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, the collapsing Soviet Union, China, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Japan in a journey that would permanently alter how he views risk, opportunity, and life.Simon recounts bribes paid in five-dollar bills, nights sleeping in construction sites, months riding the Trans-Siberian Railway, and working odd jobs across Asia just to keep moving. He later connects those formative experiences to his career: building a global emergency-response simulation company from scratch, selling complex systems worldwide, and eventually returning home to restore historic buildings in Troy, New York.This episode is about curiosity over comfort, calculated risk over fear, and why staying still can be just as dangerous as moving forward.