[00:00:00] It is almost been 10 years since my husband and I made one of the craziest decisions that no one understood. I mean, we got so much grief, I guess we’re gonna say, and that was when we decided to take our three kids. And travel the world for a year. So today I’m gonna unpack that and I’m gonna share about that experience with you.

Leah: Now to prepare for this, I’m like, well, what should I share? What do they wanna know? And of course, I know the most common questions that you know, I’ve been asked over the years, but I decided to let chat GPT ask me the questions. So we’re gonna go through these things. How did we plan something like this?

Did I keep working? How did we afford it? What about school for the kids? Where did we go? And what places were our favorite? Maybe even least [00:01:00] favorite. What surprised me the most? Did my marriage survive all the time together? And of course, I wanna end by talking about what this experience taught me about balance business and being a mom.

So that is what we are jumping into on this episode. Of the podcast. All right. Let’s start with where did this idea even come from? I have got to give a shout out to one of my dear, dear friends Jean Smith. She is a big part of where this idea came from because she did it, uh, I think two years before we did, and she had four kids.

They decided to travel the world, and I was in awe. I was like, how did you do this? Back in the day, Jean and I were in kind of the same speaking circles. So often we would show up at the same conferences, the same retreats. We’d both been asked to speak at [00:02:00] them at these different events. And so several times I would just pick her brain.

I mean, we would stay up late and I would ask her all the questions, all the things that was like, how do you even do something like this? So shout out to Jean for. Giving me the inspiration and the idea, but also helping me to see that it maybe wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. All right, so where did this actually come from?

Well, at the time my husband had several. Offices that he had opened for a larger company, all of these different clinics, and he had a really big non-compete where he couldn’t work within X amount of miles of any of the practices that he had opened. The problem was he had opened, I don’t remember what the number was, but several, and they were up and down the entire.[00:03:00] 

Mountain side, like everywhere we lived it, it covered such a huge area that there really wasn’t anywhere where we lived that he could work and be within his non-compete if he wanted to open up his his own practice again. And so as a joke. We threw out there, but we could travel for a year and ride out the non-compete.

That’s literally how it started. It was a joke, and the reason it seemed so ridiculous is because, A, we had never traveled internationally, ever. We, well, I’ll say we had taken cruises. So you know, you get off a cruise ship at your port and like, you know, you go around for a few hours and then you get back on the boat.

We’d done that, but we had never flown into another country. We had never spent any time more than the designated amount of hours that the cruise ship tells you that you can explore. We had never been outside of the [00:04:00] country in like a true travel capacity way. So it felt so big, so scary. Like, oh my gosh, how could we do that?

And obviously, you know, my husband, uh, wouldn’t be working. ’cause the whole concept is he’s writing out his non-compete. But I could still work because the business that I had built over the years is that I had built this. Virtual online business. So I had my course, I had, uh, trainings that I would do. I had these different projects that I would do for clients, but all of it was 100% virtual.

So it was very obvious I could do it from everywhere. And I remember my biggest fear being to learn to work on a laptop. And I know maybe that sounds so ridiculous, but even now I am on the biggest. iMac that they create. I mean, I have this giant screen and I love my huge computer. For years I had dual monitors so that I could have even more space.

It was actually [00:05:00] after our travel year that I finally was able to break the habit of dual monitors, and now I just, you know, whatever the biggest size that Apple has, that’s what I have. I love these big computers where I could see everything, and so I was so afraid of how I was gonna learn how to work on an iPad or not an iPad on a laptop.

So we started really talking this out and what would this look like? How would we do it? And, and so I’ll, I’ll get into the logistics and, and what we did and how we did this. Now I will say this was 2016. Prices have changed a little bit. We’re almost to our decade anniversary of going on this trip, which is just crazy to think about.

So how did we plan something like this? There was a lot less planning than you would think. We had a very rough idea of where we wanted to go. We decided we would start in England, in the UK because, and this was truly the reasoning. They speak English, so that’ll make an easier transition since we did not speak any other languages.

So we thought, okay, we’ll start in [00:06:00] England. That feels less daunting and we’ll kind of, you know, figure this out, get to understand it. And that was. That was a lot of the information We had other places we might wanna go. Uh, we knew for budgeting, being in Asia was gonna help stretch our dollar and we really wanted to explore.

Um, some countries in Asia. We kind of came up with the plan. This is what we knew we wanted to spend about one month in each country. We want it to vary the experiences. So maybe in one country it would be a very urban experience. We would be in the city and in another country. It would be a very rural experience, and we would try to decide within each country what we thought would be the most amazing experience for our kids and for us, we knew that we, our number one goal of.

Going of this trip was to create a stronger bond for our little family. . That was 100%. We [00:07:00] were both in agreement. The number one goal for doing this trip was to create this bond where it was us five, and our hope, and our dream was that this bond for our kids as siblings would help them be closer through their.

Teenage years and beyond for the rest of their lives. It has always felt so important to me that my kids are just best friends. They, they support each other and they’re there for each other and that they have this incredible relationship. So that was the number one goal. My secret other goal was to have some sort of like, eat, pray, love moment, because I had been working within the photography industry up until that point.

I had been very successful. It had been an. Amazing with the success that I had had, I had accomplished things that I truly never believed I was capable of. Never in a million years could I have thought that, that I could accomplish some of the things that I had [00:08:00] and that part I was so grateful for. But there was also this part of me that could feel that I was supposed to make a pivot like I was supposed to do.

The next thing, but I had no idea what the next thing was, and that felt so frustrating. And so I was like, okay, we are gonna go on this trip and I’m gonna have all these experiences and I’m gonna have this eat, pray, love moment where I know exactly what I’m supposed to do. So I was counting on that. I’ll, I’ll tell you how that went as we wrap this all up.

But that was about how much we had planned. We didn’t really know where all we were gonna go, and we allowed ourselves to make a lot of those decisions on what the cheapest next flight was. There was a great deal. We would be like, okay, we’re going to this spot next, and, and so that was how we made a lot of decisions.

Of course, there are some places on our bucket list, but honestly a lot of the places on our bucket list, we actually didn’t hit. We did not get to those, and it was okay. I mean, it was more than okay. It worked [00:09:00] out okay. So I think I’ve answered. Um, how did we plan something like this? We knew that we were gonna take the kids outta school.

That was terrifying. Absolutely terrifying because. I felt like, oh my gosh, I don’t know if I’m capable of doing a good job homeschooling. What if I don’t teach them enough? I was, in all honesty, I was afraid of the reaction I would get when I told the school that we were pulling them out, which I’m just gonna say they were amazing.

I was so apprehensive to go tell them that, like I was gonna be taking ’em out for a year and homeschooling him for this trip. And I thought like they might, you know, react poorly and, and make me feel like I was doing something bad and they didn’t. They were wonderful. They’re like, oh my gosh, this is incredible.

They’re gonna learn so much. The, there’s no way that you could ever duplicate something like this. Yes. You like their support was, it just bolstered me as a very nervous mom who was like, I hope I’m making the right choice. It was amazing. So I did keep working. We knew I was going to [00:10:00] work. We set a budget and that budget was $10,000 a month for everything.

So that was living experiences travel. So the budget was $10,000 a month. And I would continue working. My husband would not. And um, we, there’s some great deals. So we found most of our homes where we were gonna live on Airbnb and we tried to find homes and there’s amazing discounts when you rent a month.

So we would very specifically look for the opportunities. If you rented the house for a whole month, you got a very steep discount. 50% was the ideal that we were looking for. So then we could get a house for a whole month and it be, you know, 20, 20 to 30% of our budget. And then the rest could be for, you know, food and recreation, all those things.

Something that I think is really important to specify is that when you’re traveling for a [00:11:00] year, you’re not in vacation mode for a year. I mean, unless you have unlimited funds, you can’t be in vacation mode. For an entire year, you have to make decisions. I mean, you’re on a budget, so we would eat a whole lot of food that, I mean, the kids joke and laugh about the amount of oatmeal and spaghetti, just super cheap food, right?

We’d go to Costco. If the country had it, we’d buy in bulk and it would be like every day you’re having oatmeal for breakfast. Three nights a week we’re having spaghetti or something else that, you know, was very inexpensive. And then we would budget that so that when we could go out and experience ethnic foods and, and these different things on the other, on, on other nights.

So we absolutely did need to be thoughtful and careful because you can’t, you can’t travel. Long term and be in vacation mode where you’re splurging like crazy. I mean, we, we needed to be responsible throughout this process. So [00:12:00] working looked like for me, it looked like sometimes I was working in the bathroom because we were in these little tiny apartments.

I mean, when we were in Japan, we’re in these little tiny flats, and so I would literally be up early in the morning working in the bathroom. Eventually when we were in Tokyo, I would get up early and I would walk to the Starbucks and I’d connect to the wifi and I’d just work for a couple hours. And then when I came back, everybody was, you know, starting to get up and we’d, we’d have our day, sometimes I would do it at night.

I can vividly remember in Ireland we wanted to have a very rural experience. We did not understand how rural we had created. We accidentally booked this. Incredible darling little cottage in the country that was so remote that it had no address, no wifi, no cell service. I mean nothing. We were off the grid and we got there and we were like.[00:13:00] 

We didn’t even realize there were places that didn’t have wifi. So we’re like, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do? And I would have these webinars. I mean, I would teach these webinars once a month. A thousand people are coming on to listen to a training that I am teaching. And so what we would do is McDonald’s had the best wifi.

There’s one of those little silly tricks that you learn best wifi when you’re traveling internationally. McDonald’s also, it’s your go-to for good bathrooms. And so, um, Starbucks also. And so we would drive, I think, 45 minutes to get to the McDonald’s. They would go into the McDonald’s, hang out in the McDonald’s for one hour while I would set up my laptop in the car as close to the building as possible, connect to the wifi, teach my training, and then.

We’d, we’d head home. So there were some really funny things like that. So let me back up a minute and I’ll tell you where we went so that as I’m kind of sharing stories, this is all making sense. Okay. We started in England, so we were, we ended up being about six weeks total in England. We went to [00:14:00] England and then we came back for a couple more weeks and continued on.

What kicked off our trip is that I had an opportunity to host a mastermind retreat. In London, well, it was outside of London, but, but in, in the greater London area. Um, I had a, I would host these mastermind retreats for this course that I had. And the, within this course, you went through the course, but then you had the opportunity to go to mastermind retreats that I would hold, uh, and I would usually hold two a year, one in the spring, one in the fall.

And I had a, a larger, um. Membership that was in Europe and they really wanted to get to have a retreat. They wanted me to come to them. And so, uh, we chose London because there was a lot of ’em that were in the UK area. And then, uh, we had someone come from Germany and you know, some from some other countries.

But, um, so that was kind of our kickoff, like. We, I was gonna host this mastermind retreat that would bring us to [00:15:00] England and then we’d kick off from there. So we started in England, then we went to Scotland. We were there, uh, in Scotland for a month. We stayed in the cutest little town called peoples. It has my heart, so adorable.

Uh, from there we went to Ireland, and as I shared, we were. So incredibly rural. Our neighbors were the, the cows and the sheep. And, uh, it, it was just, it was a great experience even though it was exactly what I didn’t think I wanted. Like, I was not trying to have a little cottage with no wifi, no cell service, no anything.

You know, there was nothing near us for 30 minutes. And yet. Uh, again, you know when the goal is bringing you closer as a family, it did. We still laugh and joke ’cause we got this TV that had got two channels and the only two things that aired the whole time was the Olympics. But they weren’t the, uh, they weren’t what we were used to seeing.

Right. They were events that were maybe [00:16:00] popular in Ireland, but not popular to us. So we would laugh and talk about like these events we were watching and then. Uh, there was this other show, um, Bondi Beach, and we watched a whole lot of Bondi Beach and that made when we got to Australia and we actually went to Bondi Beach, like even more.

Amazing. Uh, but those were, those were the two channels and that seemed to be the only things that were ever on. So, okay. So from Ireland we actually had. Uh, a strange experience happened where we came home for two weeks and that ended up, I’ll, I’ll leave that part out. But it ended up being really miraculous.

Some things happened during those two weeks where it was like, wow, we would’ve missed that. So we were there for the two weeks and then we flew out and we went to Hong Kong. So next was Hong Kong. From Hong Kong, we went to Japan. Now, Japan was one of the places where we could not decide. Where we wanted to go.

So we ended up staying in Japan for [00:17:00] six weeks and we broke it up into two weeks sections. So we were in Tokyo, we were in Osaka, and when we were in Kyoto, uh, for two weeks each from, uh, Japan is Australia. We are in Australia. I think it’s Australia. We were in Australia for about six weeks, and then our final place was Bali.

Now, the goal had been one year and we didn’t end up doing a whole year. As we came closer to the holidays, we did Thanksgiving in Australia, and as we came closer and closer to the holidays, the kids wanted to be home. They wanted to be with their cousins and their grandparents and family, and they wanted it so bad.

And, uh, our first leg of the trip in the UK was right when Brexit was happening. It really killed our budget at the beginning, and we knew we wanted to come home. You know, being super financially responsible, still having our savings, all these things, and not blowing through everything. [00:18:00] And so we ended up coming home.

Around eight or nine months. And so, so there’s, there’s the lineup of where we went. Okay. Um, let’s talk about school for the kids. That was one of the things that I was the most afraid of. I was so scared that they would be, be behind when we came back and put them back into school. And, um, I, you know, did a bunch of research, tried to figure out what to do.

Essentially what I decided is I was going to focus on math. English language arts, reading, those type of things, right? They needed to be staying on those things, but I was going to let science history, those kind of things, I was like, the world is gonna cover this for me. And it did beautifully. I mean, the experiences we got to have, you know, museums and, um, I just, you can imagine a million things.

So we found online courses for math and they would be able to just, you know, get done with one lesson. They’d watch a video. We would teach ’em. They do. The lesson, move [00:19:00] on to the next one. And then, uh, language arts, very similar. They, you know, had to be reading books, those kind of things. So that was how we did homeschool.

So part of our day would be they’re working on schoolwork. I would be finishing up work, my husband would help ’em with schoolwork. And, um, and then, you know, we would go out and explore and, and go do all the things to see and experience the area where we were in. So. Uh, the part that I’ll tell you is that when we got back, when they did eventually go, you know, back into school, I was shocked that not only were they doing fine, like they, they, they, you know, went right back in.

They were ahead. They, and, and when we left, two of the three were not ahead. There were areas they were struggling and they ended up coming back being fully ahead, and that was just. I learned a lot from that experience and just [00:20:00] realized, um, that we could, we had more power than I guess, maybe I thought we did.

I don’t know. It just was a really amazing thing. It was something I was, I had so much fear around, I was afraid I was gonna let them down, that, that this could be a hindrance, and they ended up thriving and being able to work at their own pace and that own pace. Pushed them so that they went back in and felt so confident and so good.

’cause they’re like, oh, I already learned this. I’ve already covered this. And, um, that was a really amazing experience. Um, I talked about where we went, which places were my favorite. Honestly, it’s so hard to say because they each had different experiences for us. But I, I will say. I love Japan. Culturally, uh, the, the food, I mean, I absolutely have such a love for Japan and I learned so much there.

I would just study and watch people. There’s [00:21:00] even some old blog posts, um, about business lessons that I learned from Japan. I mean, there’s, I could go on and on, but I, I feel like culturally they seem to take. A thing, anything. And they ask, how could I make this the best possible? And I think that is such a beautiful quality.

Their food is phenomenal and they take that application absolutely to their food. The best corn dog I have ever had in my life. Is the seven 11 corn dogs on every corner of Tokyo. They are so good. They’re like dipped in like a corn bread, butter. Oh my gosh. They are amazing. And they were so cheap, which was so great ’cause we had a whole lot of corn dogs to offset when we wanted to go and have, you know, really incredible Japanese food.

And, um, yeah, just amazing getting to see that [00:22:00] lesson. Second is, uh, how much they allow their children. To. Have wings and go experience things for themselves. I’ve talked about this on other episodes, but watching little tiny kids go and navigate the subway system, the train systems, the transit systems going to and from school, and they were just incredible mean.

We, we as Americans would not let our kids go to school by themselves, especially through transit systems in kindergarten. And yet these little ones were navigating and they were doing phenomenal and it was really amazing to watch. And I learned some really incredible lessons about a allowing our kids to do harder things and that they are so much more capable than we realize that we are underestimating our children and how much confidence can grow in them when they get to.

Realize what they can do. So that was a huge lesson. There is a [00:23:00] really fun show on Netflix called First Errand. That’s what it used to be called it. I think it has a new name now. But if you look that up, if you just Google, they’re just like little 15 minute episodes and it’s little kids in Japan, uh, running their first air and, and you’ll be, just be dumbfounded with what they accomplish and then persevering when it doesn’t go right, when they forget something, when they, something doesn’t work exactly as it should or as they were told it would and how they navigate.

I mean, it is awe inspiring. So. I learned so much from the Japanese culture and have such a deep love, uh, for that country, for the old and the new, like this beautiful representation of honoring, uh, the history and the old, you know, cities like Kyoto, um, that are such old cities. And then the new of like.

Studying and, and learning about robotics in Tokyo and, uh, getting to [00:24:00] see all that. I mean, it’s just, it’s beautiful. So, Ja, Japan absolutely has my heart. Bali has my heart for, uh, the lessons that I learned in true joy and that joy has nothing to do with what we have and everything to do with how we choose to see the world and the gratitude that we choose to see.

We. Got to know the people of Bali. Bali was one of those places where we knew we didn’t want it to be like a super tourist experience, so we went out into the countryside and we were in the middle of rice fields and seeing these people, some of which had so little, they were bathing in the irrigation ditches and they had the most beautiful giant taking up their entire face.

Smiles. So much joy, so much gratitude, and we talked about that so much as a family and just learned so much about. The kind of people we wanna be [00:25:00] and how, how we wanna act and how we wanna receive people and treat people. And we talked about that in Japan when so many people would stop to help us. And they spoke no English, and we spoke no Japanese.

And they would be so patient and they would stop what they were doing to come and take care of us. And there’s just, oh, the lessons that we learned about the beauty of humanity through our travels. Was absolutely incredible. Uh, another place, I would say the place where maybe we had the most fun, like we allowed ourselves to just have a ton of fun was Australia.

We, uh, went to the Gold Coast. We spent so much time in the pool and on the beach, and it was, I mean, just sunshine and happiness. It was so much fun. And then I, London is one of my favorite cities. I mean, this is the thing I could tell you why I love every single one of the place. Is they were each so incredible every, the opportunity to travel and to experience the world from another cultural culture’s perspective, from, you know, to, to [00:26:00] just see how much we really are the same and then how much we can learn from other.

It was just, it was incredible. It was incredible. Okay. I, I will move on ’cause I could go on and on and on about this. Okay. The next question, what surprised me the most? I spent a lot of time worrying, I mean a lot of time worrying. We didn’t have this solid, super mapped out plan on some Google spreadsheet where we knew exactly where we were going next and how everything was working.

There were a lot of times where we were running up to the end of our 30 days. At an Airbnb and we did not know where we were going next. We didn’t even know what continent, what country we were going to be in. And I would stress like crazy. Like, oh my gosh, we’re gonna have nowhere to stay. We’re, what have we done?

We’re being such bad parents, we’re gonna be homeless. But you know, like, I don’t even know all the, all the catastrophizing. And it always worked out. It always, always worked out. And I would say, if you ask me what’s the biggest lesson that I took away from that experience, it was stop giving in. To worrying and spending all [00:27:00] that energy and that time for something that may or may not happen.

My experience was 100% of the time everything worked out, and yet over and over and over I would let myself worry and stress and all those emotions would come out and the kids would feel it. And. I wish I could go back and, and change that and, and I’ve moved forward changing that. I remember we got to one Airbnb and it had been exhausting.

I mean, one of the things you have to understand about traveling the world and every 30 days you have a travel day. Now these travel days often consist of, could be a full 24 hours of travel and you are literally going from. Taxi to train, to plane, to train, to taxi, to walking bus. I mean, you, you could boat, ferry.

I mean, there were times where we used every mode of transportation when, uh, when we were going to Ireland, we used every [00:28:00] mode of transportation from train, taxi. Plane fairy, I mean, everything. So those days were absolutely exhausting. Absolutely exhausting. And we got to, uh, a place and, uh, things had fallen through.

Our Airbnb had fallen through. I was so, so stressed. Anyways, we end up needing just a hotel. We get to the hotel, we get into the room, and I immediately sit down my bags and I go into the bathroom. And the kids, I, I found out about this later, but the kids are like. What’s mommy doing? And TE’s like, mommy just needs to cry for a minute.

Then she’ll feel better. And it was so true. Like I was so overwhelmed. I was like, oh my gosh, like what are we doing? And I just, you know, got all the tears out and then moved on. So there were definitely moments that were really stressful and really hard things would fall through and, um, stressing about we could have done a better job planning that would’ve alleviated a lot of the stress.

But you know what? I also am glad for how it [00:29:00] happened because I learned lessons on how to cope with the stress and uncertainty and things changing and realizing like it, it was all okay. It all worked out. So did your marriage survive all the time together? Uh, I love this question. I love that chat.

Should PT decided that that should be one of them? Um, yes. Clearly it did. We are still together and we are on 24 years of marriage and we absolutely survived it. And we, we actually built two habits on that year that we still do today that are so incredible. We were feeling all the stress, I was feeling very anxious about, like, constantly not knowing what we’re doing.

My husband was way more casual about it all, which then made me feel like I needed to be more worried to try to help move our decision making along, which, you know, then just creates more problems. And, um, I remember a specific time in Ireland. So we were probably three and a half, four months into traveling.

And like the [00:30:00] stress was, it was peaked, like we were arguing a ton. And it is very hard to argue when all five of you are together all the time in very close quarters, right? I mean, like, it, it was not good. And, uh, we were very frustrated with each other and, and didn’t like the way we were feeling and we wanted to fix it.

And we, uh. We, one thing is we, you know, picked a marriage book to read together and at times, you know, this is the thing, marriages have ups and downs. And when we’ve had harder times, we’ve often chosen like, let’s listen to a marriage book together. I, I’m grateful to say we have also learned to listen to marriage books.

When things are good, that’s the better time to do it. But earlier on we, you know, like, oh, we’re feeling like really frustrated with each other. Let’s read a book. And I don’t know if it came from that book or where it came from, but we came up with this idea of three things. And so every day we would each tell each other three things we loved about each other.

And still to this day, we don’t do it every single day anymore. But still to this day, if I’m just having a hard day, I’ll [00:31:00] say three things and he’ll immediately, you know, he knows what that means and he’ll immediately tell me three things he loves about me. And, um, so that was something that actually came from our travel year that we still do, that I’m, I’m so grateful for.

Okay. So. The dream of, oh my gosh, we traveled the world. It sounds so glamorous. And there were parts of it that were, that were they, they were amazing. They felt incredible. There really were parts that were like, this is a dream world. This is incredible. When we were in Bali, it was actually more affordable to eat out every single meal.

Every single meal. So it was only, it was less than $2 per person to eat out, and if we tried to buy things at the store, it was way more expensive. And so we had this little restaurant. Uh, within kind of the compound where we were living and, and we had this gorgeous pool and this incredible, um, town home that we were living in.

I mean, it was amazing. And every day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You know, we’d go into the [00:32:00] restaurant and order our, our food and I mean, it, it was, it felt incredible. Then there were, you know, there was Ireland in the middle of nowhere with no wifi, and I went and bought some really cheap paint sets and we spent a whole lot of time doing little watercolor painting, playing games.

Uh, watching weird Olympic events that we weren’t even familiar with. Right. So there there is, there is both. And that’s the reality in everything, in everything that we do, we often look at other people’s lives and we see the glamor, we see the highlight reel. And there’s always reality too. There’s, there’s, there’s both, um, within logistics.

You know, you’re, you’re understanding we, we set a budget. We came up with a, a overall budget, a monthly budget, and then we just started looking at how can we creatively stay within that budget but have the biggest experience possible. We created a plan for homeschooling and I didn’t, I didn’t make it something that there was no way it was sustainable.

Our, our. Primary goal was to experience the [00:33:00] world. So we did school within, you know, an hour or so a day doing math and language arts, English, those kind of things. And then we went and explored and made sure we had, you know, all kinds of learning experiences, uh, within and, and it was amazing. And then working while traveling, it was a little bit tricky.

There were times where, you know, I’m in the McDonald’s parking lot. I’m literally in the tiniest bathroom ever trying to use. The toilet as my seat and the sink as my desk and, and it was tricky, but we made it work. I think that what I learned from all of this is do the crazy things. Make room for the adventure.

It’s easy to let fear get in the way. I had a lot of family members who felt like. We were maybe even being bad parents and, uh, this wasn’t gonna be good for our kids. And, and I understand that there [00:34:00] was fear that was coming from those thoughts. Now that we’re home and we’ve had all the experiences, now they think it’s great.

But when you’re first doing something really different, you’re going to get resistance. You’re going to get people who, who wanna tell you their opinion. And it was hard to hear those things. And. Yet, I’m so, I’m so grateful that we pushed through and we persevered and we decided to try it. I can tell you within the first 48 hours we got off the plane.

We didn’t have a place to stay. It fell through. We had no idea what to do. We’re trying to go through customs for the first time. ’cause we’ve never been through customs, actually through an airport. It, it says that we need to say where we’re staying. We didn’t know where we were staying and we’re like, oh my gosh, they’re gonna send us back.

Like, I mean it was so funny now that I think about it, like so of our fears, but. It. I remember just crying in the middle of the airport thinking, what have we done? We are terrible parents. And we pushed through and it ended up being magical. [00:35:00] So I think that that year it did, it changed our family in a lot of ways.

What’s very fascinating is that that was 2016. What we didn’t know is, you know, years later, 2020, what happened? And COVID would shut down so many of our lives, depending on the state you lived in. And, and for us it was, you know, things were shut down and we saw that experience and we’re like, oh, well we can homeschool again.

We’ve already done this. And oh, we’re good at, you know, just spending time. The five of us all together, alone, we’ve done this. And you know, that ended up being, um. Kind of a moment to re-experience some of that bonding that we had on our travel year. I mean, there were so many parts of, you know, COVID tragedies that happened for people.

I know that for so many it was a really, really hard experience. And so I, I don’t want to not [00:36:00] acknowledge that. but I think that if we have the opportunity to have an adventure. It is worthy to stop and truly ask ourselves if we’re holding ourselves back, what’s the real reason? And if it’s just fear to try to try to get past that and go for it.

So my eat, pray, love moment, did it ever happen? Um, no. No it didn’t. I, our very last place before we were coming back to the States was Bali and. I was in, in the bathtub. We didn’t, uh, have a shower. And I was in the bathtub and, and I was just sitting there and I, I was just pondering and I was thinking, and I was praying and I was like, I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

I don’t know the change I’m supposed to make. And. I’ve had this time and I didn’t figure it out. And [00:37:00] I remember just being so heartbroken that I, I didn’t know how my business was supposed to change. I knew it was supposed to change, but I didn’t know how. I couldn’t see it clearly yet. And we were coming to the end of the trip and I was so sure I was gonna have, you know, this enlightened moment and it wasn’t there.

And the thought came to me.

What is the most in, what is your most important position? What is your most important role? Like of every title you have, what matters most? And it was instant. Mother, mom, nothing is more important than that. And it was like, okay, and, and that was kind of all the clarity that I got. What’s so fascinating now, almost 10 years later, is to recognize and realize that within that [00:38:00] epiphany, that moment, even though I would’ve said, I knew that, I said I knew that forever, but like that moment of take everything away, that is the title that matters to me most.

The shifts ended up happening in time both. Even deeper within my business, even more, uh, systems, more organization, more automations, more outsourcing to give me more flexibility, more time to be totally present as a mom. But the shift in my business became how do I help incredible, powerful entrepreneurial women be able to keep that role of motherhood.

Front and center and to feel like a great mom while simultaneously following through on this dream, this vision, this idea, this business, this career that they, they have that’s not on [00:39:00] accident. How do we manage both and. It took time to get into, into really realizing where I am, but it’s amazing to, to see now, but only in retrospect, only in that rear view mirror to say, wow, that word motherhood, that really has become my, my core thing.

How do I help women live their dream and be the best version of their self in their home, for their family, for their kids, and for themselves? How can we do that? How can I show them how we can do that together? So that’s amazing. That’s amazing for me to even realize that as I’m sharing it, like, wow. It really did all unfold.

I just couldn’t see all the pieces yet. I just, I didn’t know it yet. So there you go. That is my experience traveling. If you have follow-up questions that you wanna know right below, there’s leave a comment and in the [00:40:00] platform where you’re in. So you could absolutely leave a comment and ask, or you can reply to an email if you’re an LR Insider and you’re part of my newsletter list.

Um, and I can absolutely follow up and I hope that. That this has maybe inspired you to do a little more wandering, to have a little more adventure and to just carve out a little more time to just be family, to just be your little, your little family pod, whatever that’s made up of. Thank you so much for being part of Balancing Busy podcast and for just being part of.

My circle and I will see you next week. [00:41:00] 

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