There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.

(You can read last month’s update here; next month’s here.)

Family

As November ended, we celebrated my beautiful wife’s 3xth birthday and our calm and happy daughter’s 8 month birthday – she is rapidly closing in on having spent half her life overseas.

The birthday week was also important because I spent most of November away from the rest of the family, back in home in Australia where I was advancing my Keynote Speaking career.

Obviously, I enjoyed the opportunity to live like a bachelor for 3 weeks – although it was a jam packed schedule of conference preparation, client coaching sessions, board meetings, and business development activity. And all exacerbated by being stuck in Abu Dhabi for two days (the joys of flying standby).

While I was away … Flash learned to crawl properly, and her first teeth came through. In a few short weeks we went from ‘keep her on the bed so she doesn’t roll off’ to ‘just try and keep up with her!’.

She also got a healthy dose of other baby time, thanks to our friends in Edinburgh and St Andrews. Great to see her socialising well, and also to compare some milestones since we’ve been away from home for so long.

Travel

Speaking of which! November was much calmer on the travel front, although I still clock up the radiation exposure with a return trip from Europe to Australia.

As noted, I spent 2 days in Abu Dhabi waiting for a seat to open up on a flight back to Australia (and that ended up being to Sydney, though thankfully that meant a night catching up with friends down there). Ultimately, it took me 6 days to get home from San Sebastian – and let me tell you, Abu Dhabi was not worth the stopover.

I was in Brisbane long enough to enjoy the Melbourne Cup at my old haunts, businessDEPOT, and to cop a cracking hail storm!

Then, before I knew it (and on limited sleep later), I was boarding the plane back to Europe – this time to catch up with the family in Edinburgh (for an airport hotel stay) and then a wonderful week in St Andrews with our brilliant friends there.

Our original European #GrandTour was supposed to end together, after 3 months at the end of October. We decided to extend the adventure when we were invited to a wedding in Scotland at the end of November – that’s why I had work booked back in Australia, while the girls stuck around in the arctic North.

Did someone say Scottish wedding?!

We ended November staying in Blair Atholl, just outside the small town of Pitlochry and adjacent to Blair Castle where the wedding was held. Next month we mosey on down to England (where I have more work to do, clients to see, sales meetings to have and so on) before we all return to Oz in time for Christmas.

Income and Equity

As flagged last month, the definite 3-month lag between sales activity and revenue is showing. I spent November doing a lot of sales activity, which will show up in future months. For now though, it was another ordinary month for Income ($8,800).

Equity Wise, we bounced back up to our round number milestone (45% of our Financial Independence Goal). We had touched this briefly at the end of August (just after we set sail on the #GrandTour). The growth was definitely thanks to our investments – our Shares and Property were all up from that August snapshot, while our Cash situation was down $11,000.

Activity: Clients / Marketing / Businesses

This was a BIG month for Activity, especially compared to previous months. The most notable activity was the completion of the SpeakableYOU Hot Speaker Track Program, where I got to deliver my new Keynote ‘On Being a Deep Generalist’ to a supportive crowd (and caught it all on film – watch this space!).

I definitely need to get clearer on 1) Our travels for 2020, and 2) How I communicate those with my network more clearly. One big sales opportunity fell into my lap, just because someone saw a LinkedIn post that suggested I was back in town; another client mucked up their schedule (ultimately meaning I didn’t invoice them for the month) because they thought I was in Brisbane longer.

Oh yeah, I also signed off on the first draft of my next book! If you want a sneak peak (and to meet my co-author Shan Naqvi) head over to The Start-Up Business Guide and join the wait-list.

Learnings

I freaking LOVE ‘me time’ – and I averaged one movie a day in November, which was bliss. I was also able to find my work-life rhythm once again, pulling some very late nights and combining them with some very late sleep-ins. How to juggle that back with a beautiful wife and baby, especially next year when my work time ramps back up again, will be a valuable tale for all.

And of course I missed Harmony and Flash when I was away from them, and reuniting was pure joy all around.

One thing I didn’t gain clarity on, but the research continues, was which of these two is the best beer in the world (or at least, my favourite beer): The Newcastle Brown Ale, or the Traquair Jacobite Ale.

It’s nice to have a beer with your name on it…