DATELINE: Santorini, Greece
I’m writing this post from the Cycladian island of Santorini, sitting on a balcony where I can see the bottomless blue Agean Sea on both sides of this narrow land and admiring the volcano which is slowly reforming in the middle of the caldera.
The eruption that tore apart this island around 1600BC was the 5th largest in human history, and yet we’ve replaced those scars with clifftop villas and an endless rotation of cruise ships.
My family is here about six weeks into our Grand Tour: read on to learn about how I’m kicking goals with clients globally, spending more time with family, and paying myself more than ever before.
(Prefer Instagram: Follow us @TheHarmonyFamily)
The Grand Tour: A Genesis
For a brief period in 2010, my business became location independent. I had two major clients who were happy with me working anywhere in the world, and that was the base that gave my beautiful wife and I the confidence to move to London, UK. (As it transpired, the global financial crisis crashed both projects, so I arrived in London with no work! But that’s a different story.)
When we returned to Australia at the end of 2012, having visited twenty-five countries that year, we had two clear goals: start a family, and re-create that flexibility to travel the world. As Audrey Hepburn sang in my favourite movie of all time
“Two drifters off to see the world / There’s such a lot of world to see.”
You may be aware of the difficult journey we had having children, though in many ways we can see that as a blessing because of the extra years it gave us to turn our Vision into Strategy. We welcomed beautiful Josette (Flash on social media) into the world this March, and the plans were already underway to make her a very well-travelled baby…
A Hero’s Work is Never Done
Something I learnt during that 2012 travel binge, drinking coffee on Italy’s Cinque Terre: I love long term travel … and I love business even more. I had to pause that trip to spend a day developing a business idea, which was when I realised that I would never retire in a traditional sense, and nor would I be fulfilled simply finding pockets of travel. So we made the strategic decision to combine the two – business and travel – by building a location-independent business (and potentially becoming ‘digital nomads’).
I looked for ways to scale my expertise, including the proposed businessDEPOT merger that you may have seen we officially decided against earlier this year. Ultimately though, business owners in Australia and internationally, seek to invest in me – my deep generalist expertise, as well as my systemised methodology for profitable business growth with a sense of humour and a lot of fun.
So I invite their investment, on the understanding that I will deliver an enormous ROI … even if our remote work means I rarely walk into their office.
Remarkably, most of my clients are excited by that!
It’s practicing what I preach. As I help my clients create the life and business they aspire to, it helps that I am living the life I choose. Never spend money with a broke business coach! And while my dream, helping entrepreneurial spirits from anywhere in the world, may not be your dream – the fact I’m living such an outrageous life suggests that I will believe, support, and help make real your outrageous ambitions.
(As a side note, I also invest in several business advisors and attend conferences around the world. I ask my clients to invest, so it would be hypocritical not to be doing the same myself, right?)
You may have assumed that I am no longer working as a business coach, or that I am no longer working with Australian businesses. Nothing could be further from the truth: if you’re interested in turning your outrageous into reality, let’s chat by Zoom, Skype, or over coffee when I’m next in your town.
When am I next in your town?
My life is like an amazing game of Carmen Sandiego. Harmony and I became #3Drifters in March, and started our Grand Tour on July 12th when we spent two nights in Australia’s Gold Coast Hinterland while I ran a strategic retreat for a dozen business owners. We returned home in time to do a day trip to Sydney – Flash’s first flights.
Later that week I attended the National Speaker’s Association Influence Conference, in Denver Colorado. That triggered a two-week period where I spent 51 hours in the sky, with a return-trip to the USA quickly followed by Flash’s first long-haul flight from Brisbane to Amsterdam (via Paris).
The European leg of our #GrandTour started in the Netherlands, where we also met up with Harmony’s lovely parents who are joining us for three months. We will officially end this part of the tour in San Sebastian, Spain at the end of October – having visited twenty European cities over 82 days.
If that’s not incredible enough for you, I’ll also be swinging through Toronto next week for a Conference – my first trip to Canada, and a chance to see Niagara Falls.
I will be back in Brisbane from roughly November 1st to 22nd, before I head back to join my beautiful, calm, and happy girls in Edinburgh, Scotland where we have a wedding. Naturally followed by a couple of weeks reconnecting with some clients and friends in the UK. All up, Flash will have done 14 flights before her first Christmas … and in years to come will look at photos of herself asleep in front of the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, Prague Castle (and more!) and wonder why her daggy parents even bothered.
Here’s the great thing in a business sense: because of the clear vision and strategic planning that has gone into creating this life, I’m:
- travelling the world while working with amazing people as clients …
- spending more time each day with my newborn than I would at home … and
- growing a business that means I’m paying myself as much as I ever did when I was locked in Brisbane.
I made my dreams come true. It isn’t accident or luck, and nor was it hard work – just choosing and creating the whole of my own reality.
