“And then I realized, adventures are the best way to learn”

Inspiration, Stories, and Resources for Adventurous Families

 I didn’t always consider myself an entrepreneur. I imagined my life as it was set out by society, graduate university, get a good job, work hard, get promoted, keep working, buy lots of stuff, take vacations for 1 week at a time, and then retire at 55.

It didn’t take me very long once I started working to realize I was looking ahead at 30+ years of spending most of my time working…and it just felt overwhelming. I was stuck on a hamster wheel and there must be a better way. I worried I would get to retirement and wonder what the heck I had spent my life on. Have you ever felt that way?

I am definitely one of those people that does not like working for someone else. I like to do my own thing, and I knew I really wanted to be in charge of something. Thing is, I was a nurse and in a professional role like that there is not a lot of opportunity for advancement in the first 5 years.  You are expected to pay your dues, get experience, and if you want to advance it is a highly competitive process usually based on seniority. Mostly I was working alongside nurses who had been doing the exact same job as I was doing for 10+ years. To be clear, this is not a commentary on nursing or people who pursue professional designations. If you love it, that’s amazing. Keep doing it. The world needs great nurses. 

For me, I knew I wasn’t exploring my potential. I wasn’t being challenged professionally, and I knew I wanted to have an adventure.  So, I opened my own home health care agency.  It was an incredible adventure, full of challenges, excitements, successes, and failures….but most of all an incredible learning experience. I was working for my self, but I was working WAY MORE than I ever had as an employee. My husband eventually left his corporate job to run the business with me and we grew the agency to more than 200 employees and 7 figure revenues. It was bigger than I ever imagined it would be. But guess what? After years of building, running, and growing this business….I was ready for my next adventure.  My husband and I decided to sell the company and “retire” at 35.

I put retire in quotes because I want to define what I mean by retire.

To me retirement means the ability to choose whether you want to work or not. It means you do not have to work. It means you are independently wealthy. It does NOT mean that I spend my time golfing and day drinking. I don’t play pickleball (yet). I don’t do nothing.   Retirement is Freedom.

With this freedom, I want to inspire others to take the road less travelled. Do interesting things! Prioritize family and this adventure called LIFE. 

There is no one destination that we are aiming for, instead we want to appreciate the journey. Trust me, I don’t succeed at this every day. I have days that are absolutely mundane. I get impatient with my kids. I sometimes think it would be easier to just have a job so I didn’t have to think about what I was going to do next.  Humans are strange, aren’t’ they? We always want what we don’t have. Being content is HARD work.

In our house we like to refer to our travel adventures as our effort to “Punctuate our life!”

Have you ever tried to recall the last time you saw someone, but when you are thinking back the years kind of blur together? Remember we went to the pumpkin patch and then you guys came over for dinner? What year was that? Then you start rifling through your memory index cards to try to find SOMETHING that stands out?   What are the things that stand out? Things that are different!  TRIPS to another country! The birth of a child. Death of a family member. A new venture, a new job, a new house, a new school. These are the punctuation marks in our memory.

So, through the stories of my punctuation marks, I hope you will be inspired to have a few of your own. Whether you are full-time globe trotters or mostly stay at home aspirational adventurers….I hope you enjoy!

The first big adventure we took as a family was moving to the Hawaiian Island of Maui for 6 months!