Latest / To Your Success! Podcast / Episode 45: They Sold Everything To Travel The World
Transcript
- speaker-0: Do you ever regret doing this? Or I wish I didn't sell the house. speaker-1: you're making this big life decision like we did. Like there's a lot more questions that pop up than you anticipate and there's a lot to talk through and figure out. And we know that we can work things out together. We may not be in agreement at the beginning, but we know we'll get there. We're both sort of reasonable people. speaker-2: I mean our friends don't think we're reasonable. We're like we're selling everything and leaving the country. We've learned so much not only about ourselves but about the world that we didn't know existed outside of our little comfort zone in California and it's been amazing. speaker-1: Welcome to your success. You've built a life others admire. You've achieved, delivered, and become someone people rely on. But somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like yours. Mentor Krister Johnson and Ellen Solheim know that feeling. After following successful paths of their own, they chose something different. More clarity, more freedom, more presence. Today, they help high achievers design lives that feel true. not just impressive. This podcast is for those ready for their next chapter. Not more pressure, not more performance, but a life that feels like yours with clarity and direction. Welcome to your success. speaker-3: Welcome to the To Your Success podcast. This is a special episode. I'm Christa Johnson. With me today is... And we have two guests here. We have Nancy and Jason from America. And we are going to share this podcast with them and with you because they actually did what most people are really afraid to do. So, ⁓ and this is the first time we have guests on the podcast. speaker-0: Ellen Solemn, as always. speaker-3: So it is as exciting and strange to us as it is to everyone else. But we just jump into it. So warm welcome Jason and Nancy. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where do you come from? Your story. speaker-1: You can kick us off. speaker-2: Well, I'm Nancy. This is Jason, just to be clear. We are from the United States and we've been married for 20 going on 29 years here. And we've got three boys and we've just kind of been doing exactly what we were supposed to do the way we were told growing up, right? speaker-1: Right. mean, I'll just add for background perspective, we're sort of originally from Texas, but we lived in California for the last 10 years before deciding to jump off into this new lifestyle. speaker-2: Right, because now we're traveling the world full time and you know our boys are our adults 21 through 26 there's three of them and they're doing fantastic and it was a lot to consider before we decided to leave and before we decided to kind of quit that kind of lifestyle and jump into a whole new arena that we knew nothing about per se. speaker-1: And now we're just traveling the world and figuring things out as we go. speaker-2: And we're in Saranda, Albania today, which I never thought I would ever say in my life. I didn't even know where Saranda was. speaker-1: Two years ago, it was never a thought to be anywhere in the Balkans, Albania or anywhere else. That's how quickly all this happens. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-3: What was the first seed? What happened that made this thought come to you? speaker-1: Yeah, it was a culmination of things, but I think... getting to the point where we are now where we're traveling full time was, I had recently turned 50 and at some point you get to a point where you start reassessing where you're at in your life and where you want to be. Work was really demanding and stressful for me at that time. I would spend 11, 12 hours a day at work and I wasn't doing things that were personally fulfilling to me. It sort of gets the mind going, you what else should I be doing? And yeah, I could go get another job or, you know, we could launch. Yeah, I knew what that looked like. speaker-2: but you'd already done that. You'd already gotten another. You're really going to jump into another pot. speaker-1: So I knew that wasn't going to fulfill me. know, even though the work I was doing was pretty cool, right? I was a program manager for the space industry. You know, we would send hardware into space, into satellites, and you know, that's pretty cool. I think most people think that's a pretty cool job. Why would you ever want to leave that? Well, because it's also a grind. You know, it's very demanding. It doesn't give you time for yourself to pursue your own interests. So it was something I really struggled with. So, you know, as I got to thinking about, you know, what are the other options for us? you just kind of come across things. And I came across that people were traveling full time. And the more I got into it, more I thought, this sounds kind of interesting. We've always loved to travel. We haven't done enough of it, I think, together up to this point. And it was just something that was really appealing. And then you think, well, how would we ever afford this? how could we leave people behind? There's so many questions that you have to go through before you do something like that. speaker-2: At the same time, we had started realizing that over the last few years, we were losing people that were very close to us, friends that just passed suddenly or they got more injured and their life changed in one way or another in a way that they couldn't recover from it. And we were thinking, what are we waiting for? But of course, those conversations were happening on the side as Jason was kind of burning out from his job. So it was kind of like the perfect storm coming together, I guess, for us in our mind. speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, think about so many people who, like we said, that we knew that even if they don't pass away, they get injured or they get sick and they don't get to fulfill kind of the dreams and desires that they've had in their lives. And I think that struck chords with us as we were seeing, you know, example after example of people who aren't going to be able to fulfill dreams or potential, that sort of thing. We thought, well, we don't want that to be us. You we don't want that to be anybody that we love and care about. speaker-2: But we're like, there's like a window of opportunity and it seems to be coming up and we either jump in now or we don't know what it's going to look like tomorrow. So we're going to go ahead and go. But Jason brought it up to me and it was a whole process of us talking through it. I wasn't an immediate yes, but I definitely was not an immediate no. It was kind of like, say more. then together over the. speaker-1: But we can do something about it. speaker-2: long few months or years, couple years, we figured it out. speaker-3: Yeah, because you have a different background. Well, you have an engineering background as well Nancy, but you have a different speaker-2: Yes Yeah, so I'm a mechanical engineer as well. That's how we met in college. I did engineering for a few years after college and then I started to drown between wanting to be at work and also wanting to be with my children. And it was kind of like we, I was working so much that we had about a half an hour of quality time with our son, our oldest son. And that quality time was really in the car or driving home from work after picking him up. And I really I felt guilty about all that in so many different ways. And so that was another one of these, can we figure this out so that ⁓ I can be a work from home mom, I'll figure something out. But I knew that I would probably ⁓ not do well if I wasn't doing something else besides watching my kids and doing that. I started another business from home ⁓ and just grew that slowly and slowly. We've always known that whatever it is that we decide to do, you know, we'll be okay. We'll figure it out. ⁓ yeah, eventually I transitioned into acting. Sorry, thank you. This is what we do. He's like, finish my sentence. speaker-1: Yeah, but eventually you got into... speaker-2: Yeah, and ⁓ so I went from engineering to running a business from my home and then this guy decided to ⁓ open another box for me and said, why don't you get into modeling and acting? And ⁓ of course I didn't see that for myself. I couldn't see that yet. He could. So I just leaned into his belief and lo and behold, he was right. So I got into the industry and kind of got sucked in to commercials and film and TV. And I've been an actor for the last 20 years. and now an acting coach, which is a whole nother story, but that's one of the ways that we figured out that we could easily support ourselves if I just continued the business that I had created as an acting coach. And so I still do that remotely. speaker-1: Yeah. And part of her being successful when we lived in Texas, successful as an actor was it sort of helped us to make the decision to move to California much easier because it would be, you know, hopefully beneficial to our career, which it was ⁓ because we, we wanted to change at that point too. ⁓ You know, you may see a little bit of a pattern that we like to have change every now and then and pursue the things that we're really interested in, you know, at that time. we said, you know, we've, we've been to California several times. We liked the lifestyle. of thing. So we said, hey, this would be good for you career wise. We want to be by the beach anyway and bring our kids out there and kind of raise them in that lifestyle. So all that stuff kind of came together, allowed us to make that move. speaker-2: Yeah. Yeah, it came together. It came together kind of in a way that we would have never considered and that I had been an actor in Texas for eight years. I was doing really well and had done films and TV and was traveling all over. And then my longtime agent just kind of decided to steal a whole bunch of money from me, which I discovered. And then, ⁓ of course, that was devastating. I thought we were friends, but things kind of go awry sometimes. issues. She had issues. speaker-1: Do you have some issues? speaker-3: So then circling back to your story, I, when I listened to your story, I was like you are used to doing transitions, right? So you are comfortable, you said something important and say that whatever happens is going to be okay. You have a huge trust in yourself, you have a huge trust in you as a couple. Right. That is an important thing in a transition. Because you sold the house, you sold everything. So you just decided, okay, we cut, we make a true transition. We haven't done that. We have our house in Norway still. And that was more important to Hélène than to me. Because I was ready just to sail. But I'm really glad we have the house now. ⁓ I didn't know we should run a business from the boat. And I said, I want to sail around the world. But you are used to doing the transitions, right? And you cut the cord completely. Was there a touch of fear and security in that process? speaker-2: Absolutely. Because we went back and forth. Do we rent it and keep it or do we sell it? And that was almost down to the wire when we were putting the sign in our front yard. speaker-1: ⁓ absolutely. Yeah, we did like my original thought was we were going to keep it and we were going to rent it out But you know we still owed quite a bit on it. It's you know bought the house in California We've been in for ten years. It wasn't paid off and you know the the just the risks of being on the other side of the world and Having this this big asset back home. That's that's a significant part of your wealth, but also a huge part of your debt Right that was just a really uncomfortable spot for us speaker-2: It's a massive responsibility. speaker-1: Yeah, and when you run the numbers, when we ran the numbers and looked at them forwards and backwards, it just made the most sense to sell it. And it was really hard because we loved our house, we loved our neighborhood, we loved our neighbors, our kids grew up there, like this was not an easy thing to do. speaker-3: think you're looking for your identity, I think. speaker-2: Absolutely. And we even thought, okay, well, what do we do with our furniture? Should we keep it and store it? And then we realized, when we, you know, when and if we come back and, ⁓ and we've sold our house, what do we, we don't even know where we would put that furniture. And now we've paid so much for a storage unit that has a bunch of it. It was just like, it just kept snowballing into, I think we just need to cut it and go. speaker-1: Yeah, when you're making this big life decision like we did, like there's a lot more questions that pop up than you anticipate and there's a lot to talk through and figure out and you know, like you said, you know, we just have faith that we'll figure it out because we've been through a lot of these decisions and conversations and we know that we can work things out together. We may not be in agreement at the beginning, but we know we'll get there. We're both sort of reasonable people. ⁓ speaker-2: time. I mean our friends don't think we're reasonable. We're like we're selling everything and leaving the country But at the same time we don't even know what all the questions are to ask until we're there and so I think that's the trust part where We've done our Research or diligence. We've you know, we know that we can figure it out. And so ask questions come up ⁓ We'll figure it out. Like just yesterday we went to the dentist in Saranda Albania, know, it's like ⁓ yeah, we have to continue continue our lives as we move around just as we would at home. Yeah, like, oh yeah, we need a teeth cleaning. speaker-1: It's easy to forget that. live in normal lives or just like bouncing around from place to place. speaker-3: Yes, I think it's the same challenge as we face You never know. I mean we we have a grocery list just to take the basic thing It's like okay. I need to fill water on the boat today because we're sailing to Greece tomorrow And it's like do we have water? Yes, yes, do we have power? Yes or no? speaker-0: Maybe have soy sauce. speaker-1: recording. speaker-2: You're very close to me. ⁓ speaker-0: Mexicans. speaker-3: Mexican food is like, okay, so this morning we didn't have very much breakfast because we didn't do grocery shopping yesterday and then it's kind of well we have to, you know, we have our kick bikes, right? So it's easier to go shopping but still all these things, right? ⁓ For us, we talked about that a lot the last couple of days. It's like, why do we actually do this? We don't do it because it's easy. We do it because it's hard because it is a challenge, right? It's a new thing. Is that the same thing for you? speaker-2: This is not easy. It's fun. speaker-1: Right? It is fun. We like the challenge, and maybe we didn't know this so much before we started doing this, but I think we like the challenge of going somewhere new every month or sometimes every week and just acclimating to that and seeing what it's like and just adjusting. It kind of keeps life interesting. speaker-2: I mean it really keeps your brain working, right? Which way is north and south? I don't even know anymore. Like where are we? ⁓ And to some people that would be jarring, but to us it's exciting. It's like adventure and exploring and we've learned so much not only about ourselves but about the world that we didn't know existed outside of our little comfort zone in California. And it's been amazing. speaker-0: I remember when I saw your Instagram account the first time and I saw this movie of you, Jason, being released into the wild again. Into the free run. It just caught my attention and I was thinking that you are the kind of people, you are the like-minded people like us, you want to explore, you want to do something different and you want to do it together. and you grow together while you're doing it. And by the way, people should follow your account. So it's what you call it. speaker-2: Our freedom project life. ⁓ speaker-0: Because we ended up becoming your biggest followers as I told you we followed you all the way to Montenegro speaker-2: Thank you. speaker-1: And we're glad it was such a pleasure. speaker-3: Thank speaker-0: We will sail to Montenegro speaker-2: But you know, you know that that's that's what's been so amazing is that this ⁓ we've met more people and made more friends in the last four months of us traveling than in years of just doing our normal daily life where you ⁓ don't expand your circle. It's just the people you work with, the people in your neighborhood, the friends you already have, which is always so difficult to break into those cliques and those groups because they're already established. But here, yesterday there's a bar downstairs from where apartment is and we can hear a lot of English every night and so we actually had some friends over last night for dinner and in our apartment and we were walking them downstairs and there was this group of people just sitting there and so I just walked over there and I said so what's going on here and they were like ⁓ we're expats come and sit with us and I was like wow there's a whole nother group and so it's just the more we're out there the more people you meet and it's it's enlightening speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-3: I think what happens, first of all... Going back then to what when you I think Jason what you described is that you start feeling pain over living the life the same life every day every day every day One day becomes a week becomes a month becomes a year and then you say At New Year's Eve you say now it's gonna change and nothing happens, right? And and it's fun that you for me as a mentor that you say it's a project that your Instagram account is a project too because you're both project managers So you run it as a project, but you know all projects have the all projects have a goal speaker-1: Thank speaker-3: Right, so you have a clearly defined goals and that is what most people miss in absence of clearly defined goals people become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until they ultimately become enslaved by it right and That is that is what happens. You just become enslaved by it some of us like me I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired. It was not fulfilling anymore. I Guess it was a little bit earlier. I was in the 40s I went through a divorce and I just said it has to be more to life than this. I had the salary I had the career I had everything just like Thank you. But it was just so boring, right? And it was not fulfilling. And then it changed, right? All these endless meetings and no control of your own calendars. You said Jason is like, yeah, it is go back to back from back to back meeting to meeting. And then you have to work Sunday night. You sometimes I post every Sunday I post on LinkedIn. And I just write, so you sit here Sunday night as well again and again and again. Why do you do that? Why don't you break free? People are so stuck, so they don't dare. That is why I think it's really cool. and why I mean first time we met for a burger it was like we were we were sitting there for four hours talking speaker-2: We did, I was like, they said lunch. I think we're into dinner now. speaker-1: But we realized we had so many things to talk about, right? We had so many commonalities to share and it was easy. speaker-2: And I think that's actually something that we're finding the more travelers that we meet the more people that have taken the leap that there is that like mind and I think maybe there's a path for people to follow to try to figure out how can they too do it and so it's kind of it's wonderful to see a lot of people making the jump. speaker-3: I think it's important, life is about freedom. speaker-1: Yeah. No, what's, what's, ⁓ you know, inspiring for us to see since we've started our channel and we have all these followers now is, is that we see that we're inspiring people. Is to inspire us. It's just like a cycle of inspiration. speaker-2: Right. You speaker-1: Because you you get a comment like that that says oh you've really inspired me to to really look into this or to go to this place or or you know and now I feel like I can actually do this right those are the kinds of things that really like pump you up and make you feel like you know what this is this is worth it you know what we're doing sharing our lives with people yeah it makes it worth it speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-3: And you did it. ⁓ A lot of people say, well, I wish I could do that, but I don't have the time or I don't have the money. And that, to be honest, it's just an excuse, right? Because you can and you sold everything, which was my plan originally as well. Then we decided to keep the house. So then we started our business to finance our lifestyle. Right. And there are so many ways to living a life that fulfills you. Right. And I think what happens is exactly what you experience to is that one thing is that you inspire other people, but also that your goal works on you as well. So you change. Right. You change. When we look at Ellen said that when we looked at pictures of ⁓ you when you were back in the States in the hamster world, I mean, you have changed so much. Right. It's a totally different energy. It's a totally different look, right? You are more fit, you smile more and everything. And that is how it is to live the life you truly want. We don't say that you have to do exactly like us, that you have to buy a sailboat and sail around the world. Not like you sell everything and just jump. But find a way to start to create your freedom. I think that is where we can inspire people. It is possible, right? It is possible that it is effortless all the time. No, it's not. Sometimes it's hard. We were five days illegal. In Montenegro. speaker-2: Right? speaker-3: Luckily we didn't get arrested, but we got the fine and it was... The fine was 600, but if I paid cash it was only 400. speaker-2: Let's see if it's the thing you're missing. speaker-3: Thank you. My golden mistake. speaker-2: How else can we do this? speaker-0: Do you ever regret doing this? I wish I didn't sell the house, wish I didn't... I would like to go home and spend more time with the children, Do you have some regret at all? speaker-2: for me it's different from do I miss owning stuff and from do I miss my children? ⁓ I miss my children every second. ⁓ Luckily we talk a lot. Sometimes it's not talking about great things. Sometimes the car's not working and I cherish that even, that they're still calling us about that because that's happening a lot lately. ⁓ But for me, I haven't missed owning anything. I thought I was going to. The couch that we had specially made or the rocking chair that we've had, know, that our oldest son grew up. I haven't missed it. It's, there's memories of it, but it's so freeing to not have all that stuff. I don't know about you. speaker-1: Yeah, was a little surprised about how easily I was able to disconnect from work. As soon as I quit work and quit working, I didn't think about it at all. I thought that I would be in this different head space where maybe it's like I'm kind of struggling with, dude, where's that part of my brain functioning now? I'm not having to think through problems every day. We're not the same types of problems. ⁓ a little surprising that I didn't miss that in the least. Now I am still sort of looking for, know, how do I, aside from what we're doing with traveling and the social media, how do I, you know, sort of make myself complete, right? I'm still kind of working through that. I think that's a process that doesn't happen overnight. ⁓ so, you know, but that's different question from do we miss things? ⁓ I would say I don't miss much. It's kind of weird. Like once you don't have things, you don't really miss them anymore. Especially if you're like traveling the world, right? That's an easy way to take your mind off of the things you used to have. speaker-3: Yeah. ⁓ speaker-0: Hmm. speaker-3: Because we become what we think about, right? So when we have a house, Ellen and me, we still define us as house owners, right? But you always become what you think about and now you are world travelers, right? You change your self-image, right? Because we get stuck with all the things and all the old and maybe the most important thing in my perspective is just do it, you know. Don't be afraid. You will figure it out. Trust yourself, know, trust the universe, whatever, trust God. If that is wrong with you, Just trust, know, just jump. Bob Proctor said that jump and you will learn to grow wings on the way down. speaker-2: That's exactly right. know, and I think, I think one of the things is, is that as we were getting rid of things, it hurt because we felt like we worked so hard for them and are we going to miss them? And then we let it go and we realized all that energy and holding on to everything that we thought we needed is now being used elsewhere. Now we have the freedom to literally think about anything else, but fixing the, you know, the, pergola in the backyard or, you know, cutting the grass in the front yard or you know any of those that was a big reason to sell as well you know we just decided we don't want to worry about those things when we're living our dream life on one side but we still have the responsibilities on the other speaker-3: Sure. speaker-1: I think another thing that has made it a little bit easier for us to make decisions like this, and we tell this to our kids too because we want them to experience things, is none of these decisions have to be permanent. You can always go back. If you go and you try something and it's not what you think it is, that old life is still waiting for you. You can go do that if you want. It's going to be a little bit different, but you can still go back and do that or you can find what else is there. if you haven't tried something, you don't if you're gonna like it or not. And I've sort of conditioned myself to think about when I hit a decision point like this, think a year from now, think five years from now, will you regret that you didn't try that? Like I've sort of conditioned myself to say, you know, the feeling of regret for me is worse than the pain of trying to make that decision right now. speaker-2: There's risk everywhere. speaker-3: Yeah, there is a risk everywhere and the biggest risk is not to do it, right? Because you don't... and you will never... and then the cost of regret is lifelong while the cost of doing it now is just fear and overcome and then you grow. speaker-1: Exactly, yes. speaker-2: And I think it's that fear of failure, the fear of judgment, lot of, some of it was like, what if people are gonna think we're crazy? know, what if it doesn't work and we come back? But you know what? Our friends would be like, welcome back. That would be it. speaker-0: you speaker-3: But you mean you have the personality where you don't care that much right because the goal is more important than what other things right and that is important a lot of people they fall back what would others say and then people ask me what will other things I say they don't right most people don't think about you they think about themselves all the time right yes don't worry about that then the money thing fix it right find a way like Jason said how I mean now that you are in in in a flow in a good flow when you free up I'm sure you will find new ways that will fulfill you right If that is to start up your own business, if that is to do something completely different or you start up a movie company or whatever it is, right? You figure it out. Right. I have ⁓ an affirmation every day. Everything I touch becomes gold. I always find a way. It's all up to me, but that is the fun part. Yeah. So, well, we highly appreciate you a lot. And just to meet you. That was Elin. And she said we have to meet these people. Right. speaker-0: We have to meet them! speaker-2: I think if the restaurant hadn't closed on us, then we probably would have still been there talking. speaker-0: Probably. And we were planning to go and visit you in Albania as well, but... speaker-3: We were not recommended doing that because of the sex of the boat, right? Because there are no marinas there. But we are going to Corfu now, and you can just jump. speaker-2: can see you from our apartment. We can see you from here. But I think that's what's amazing about travel is that ⁓ even though we're making friends everywhere and everybody kind of splits and goes off in their own way, the world is becoming much smaller for us. We're watching, we're realizing that, it's not a big deal to say, well, let's meet again in the next city. ⁓ so it's been a lot of fun just opening the opportunities for us. ever did decide to go back, we're going back as different people. You know, we're coming back with different ideas and different ⁓ perspective on everything. And so I don't think you ever do go back to that same job, you know. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-2: I don't think we could, right? We broke ourselves. speaker-3: That's okay because you have to kill the old you right you you take away the old model you kill the old model you burn it down and then you create a new model and then is how you a new life you don't change what you have you just Transition it to something new that is the most effortless way to create something new is just to do it, right? Then you have to dare to give up what you have at least most of it Okay. Well, thank you. It was great having you on board ⁓ In this podcast ⁓ and let's stay in touch and see where life brings us. speaker-2: Yes, thank you so much for having us. speaker-1: It's such a pleasure to be with you and to meet you. speaker-3: Thank you. To round off, since this was a To Your Success podcast, if you want to work with us and if you want to have help to do the same thing as Jason and Nancy, if you are an actor and you need a good coach for your action, then Nancy is here. And if you want help to do whatever you want, we are here for you. ChrissyJohnson.com. Connect with us on the Let's Talk button and everything we do is to your success. Okay, see you soon. Bye bye. speaker-0: Thank you speaker-1: If something in this episode spoke to you, it may be a sign that you are ready for a different kind of life. Krister and Ellen work with a small number of high achievers who feel it is time for their next chapter. If that feels like you, you can apply for a private clarity call through the link in the show notes. Until next time, to your success.