Hi folks, I'm with the legendary Jon
Butcher, one of the most remarkable
entrepreneurs in the world today, but what
is truly remarkable about Jon is that
he's the Chairman of Precious Moments, a
company that has done 10 billion in
sales over the last 30 years plus
started some 20 additional companies. Yet,
Jon lives a life filled with adventure.
He, his wife, his kids, his grandkids, they
escape for three to five months every
year to a different country. He takes his
kids out of school. He steps away from
his companies and I found Jon's way of
doing this remarkable because no one
else I know, who has children and
grandkids or 20-something companies, is
able to carve up that much time to
simply escape from it all, and the
purpose of this conversation with Jon
is to give you ideas on how you can do
the same, how you can fuel your life with
travel with adventure without buying
into any of the excuses regarding kids
or career. So Jon, the first question is:
why is travel and adventure so important
in the first place?
It's a great question, Vishen and
you've traveled the world extensively
like I have so I think you know, you
understand some of these benefits but I
don't think the average person out there
does understand how rich an experience
travel could be if you're really committed
to it. You learn history, you learn
architecture. You learn art, you learn
culinary skills, you learn different
religions, you learn different cultures.
Literally, the list is endless.
This is the number one with way that we
educate our kids. It's been one of the
number one ways we've educated ourselves.
But I think the most important thing
that travel does is it yanks you out of
your little day-to-day experience. You
get so used to the same routine every
day, right, like Groundhog Day. I think most
people can really really
relate to this, and what international
travel does especially adventure travel like
going to third world countries or
going to some of the more challenging
places. It yanks you out of your little
suburban life and plunks you right in the
middle of a new culture that has
completely different traditions than
yours and you understand that the rest
of the world is not America, the rest of
the world is not Canada, wherever you
live, right. And I just think that it adds
so much richness to your existence on
this planet. And another remarkable thing
about travel really is that the modern
science of happiness research says that if
you truly want to be happy, don't buy
objects buy experiences. And travel
gives you those experiences that
fuel your happiness in life. But you do
more than just travel.
I mean, I've heard stories about how for
three months to five months every single
year Jon uproots and relocates his
entire family including his grandkids to
exotic countries. You've done this in
Egypt for months, in Bali for months but
the question is, how can the average
person live like that? It doesn't seem
possible, given career, given our kids going
to school.
What's your secret? Well, here's the thing.
It honestly isn't possible for some
careers, like for instance, a lot of
chiropractors have been through Lifebook,
we work with a lot of chiropractors. We
love that profession. And there's a
profession where you literally have to
be present in order to do your job right.
You gotta put your hands on people. So
unfortunately, there are some careers
that are much more difficult than others
to pull this off. Now,
one trick that we found for
chiropractors that's interesting that you can
also apply to other professions is, maybe
you are chiropractor in Chicago and you can
find a chiropractor in Sydney Australia
that would like to switch with you for a
month. We've done some of that you know.
It's almost like Airbnb, right and
that's been really really cool. So there
are creative ways that you can do it.
That's a brilliant idea. Yeah, as a matter
of fact, I've thought about creating a
platform that would allow people to just
swap homes for a month or two months from
different countries because, you know,
that's just one incredible way to
see the world on almost zero budget.
Someone else is living in your house
you're living in someone else's house but
we digress, and if you can work from
anywhere, like I can. I've got my laptop.
I've got my cell phone. I can work from
anywhere. By the way, just to clarify, when
we go away for three to five months a
year I'm working, we're not on
vacation.
We're living in another country,
we're inside of another culture but I'm
still doing my work. I have to deal
with the time zone difference which is
great for me because it's three to five
months of no meetings, Vishen, 3 to 5
months of no phone calls.
Everyone's asleep, so I wake up and I've
got all my emails that I have to
address. I send all my emails and I'm
done for the day and I get to spend the
rest of the time with my family. It's
been amazing. So I think more and more
these days there are careers where you
are not tied to a desk, you're not tied
to a specific city, you can do your work
remotely and so I think we're going to
see a lot more in the near future people
picking up and just living their lives
doing their work in other countries.
It doubles the richness of your life.
Right, and in today's world,
I mean, with Slack, with email, with Skype
there is no reason why this shouldn't
be allowed. That's right. But
here's the most fascinating study I've read.
I was talking to Shawn Achor,
author of 'The Happiness Advantage' and he
told me about a study that was done that
showed that Americans who take all 10
days of vacation, right..Now, we often
think that the people at work who are
going to get the biggest promotions, who are
going to impress the boss if you work
for a company are the ones who are going
to come in earliest, stay latest and maybe
skip vacation.
Turns out that's not true. Turns out that
a study done, according to Shawn Achor, if
you take all 10 of your vacation days in
the US, you are thirty to forty percent
more likely of getting a raise than the
people who do not take the vacation days.
Maybe you are a little bit more fulfilled,
maybe you're doing your job a bit
better. Maybe you come back
completely fueled. There you go.
So, what advice would you have for people,
whether they are an entrepreneur or they
work for a company? How can we build this
into our lives?
Ok, so first of all, we've got to
assume that you are able to travel
and to do your work abroad, because if
you're not able to travel and do your
work abroad, it becomes more much more
complicated. But if I just had to guess
what the percentage of people who could
actually do that, I guess it's probably
pushing fifty percent these days, right,
and that could at least take maybe a
month and do their work in another
country.
Well, if you have kids that's a whole
different story and this is something
that, you know, when when our kids did go
to school we literally take them out of
public school for three to five months
of the year and go live in Africa or
South America or you know Southeast Asia.
And when we would talk about this at
dinner parties that this is what we
do other couples would look at us like
we just pulled off an absolute miracle,
right, like we just split the atom or
something. But the fact of the matter is
how Missy and my wife as the whole..I
mean, she's got this wired. She'd just walk
into the principal's office and she'd
say, here's what we're gonna do. We're
gonna go live in
Southeast Asia for three to five months,
so I'd like you to pull together the
kids' homework curriculum, we're gonna get
a tutor there,
we're going to do some Skype learning.
It's been different every year how we've
handled their education. And she's
been able to navigate that terrain and
we talk about this in the 30 day
challenge, the Lifebook 30-day
challenge. We go extensively into
this and really give some good tips
around this. But you know, one thing that
we've noticed is that when you walk in
with confidence, you're not asking
anybody's permission.
Why? Because you don't need to ask
anyone's permission to do what you want
with your kids. How we gave the US
government control over the hours of our
kids' days, that's beyond me,
right. So we don't let anyone slow us or
stop us down.
We're not pushy, we're not aggressive. She
simply goes in and says: "This is the
decision we've made and I would sure
appreciate it if you could pull together
the homework curriculum. I know it's
gonna take a little bit of time and
energy, that's why we appreciate you so
much and will work back and forth
with you to make sure they get their
studies done while we're in this other
country" and it's worked every time. That's
brilliant, and you know,
when I took your Lifebook program and I
learned about the importance of infusing
your life with adventure. How adventure
should be a goal that we set for
ourselves because of how satisfying it
is for the soul. For the first few
years, I couldn't do it because I
couldn't figure out how to escape my job.
I couldn't figure out how to pull my
kids out of school but when I set it as
an intention, as a goal, all of those
opportunities came to me, I figured it
out.
The key thing is make it a goal. One of
the things where Jon deeply inspired my
life is a couple of months back my wife
and I decided that for one month every
year we're going to relocate to a
different city, starting in 2017 we're
going to relocate to Barcelona, then
potentially Edinburgh, but it's easier
than you think. I found a way to continue
being able to work at my business through a
tool called Slack, you can get it from
Slack.com. It allows me to very rapidly
communicate with my people and make
rapid decisions. And that month that we
picked, so my kid goes to an American
school, so June is the holiday so we
simply pick the school holidays, so we're
not pulling our kid out of school
but we just take all of
June and we use that to relocate to a
city. Let me ask you a question about that.
I think this is going to be very useful
for our viewers here. So it's difficult
to think about leaving at first for
an entire month but if you go through
the discipline of figuring out how to do
that, what happens, Vishen..
I mean, literally people all of a sudden
come in to start to fill the gaps and
you realize nothing is gonna fall apart.
You're right, you're right. This is the
key idea.
Everything's going to operate fine in
your absence and you actually end up
better off than you were before with
more freedom because you have more time
to refuel. So this is the key idea. I was
afraid to do this. I was afraid to
escape my company for one whole month
because I'm the CEO of a company with
close to 200 employees.
I thought, everything is going to
collapse. These people absolutely need me.
What the hell am I thinking? This is so
selfish but when I made that a goal I gave
myself 11 months to figure it out and in
11 months I figured it out and it was so
much easier. Start with the goal. Once you
have a goal, your mind is an incredible
goal orientation machine. Once you
start with the intention, you start with
your goal, the ideas come to you, and the
ideas came to me. And not only that,
but my company started booming. It
turned out that I wasn't as needed as I
thought I was. Well, you let people step up
and you empower them to do extra tasks.
Right, and I figured out how to
automate things which I should have been
doing in the first place. You got it, so
that's one wonderful byproduct of
figuring this out. I will say this, I
can't think of any other single
parenting strategy that we have ever
employed that has added so much richness
to our lives as taking our kids for
three, four, five months a year to some
location in the world where they learn
another religion, another way of life,
another way of doing things, like you've
said before, they learn more at
the night markets of Kuala Lumpur or
the bazaars of Cairo than they're
going to learn sitting in a classroom
all day. It's been amazing for us. If you
can pull it off, I highly recommend it.
Thank you. So remember, travel and adventure
should be a goal.
It shouldn't be something you save up
for retirement for. It should be a goal
that you put into your life right now
and if you think it's difficult
Jon's story, my story should inspire you
to know that it is doable, and having
kids, having a career are no longer excuses.
The world has changed. So
start with the goal and then work your
way backwards to make it a reality.
But remember, travel and adventure
are important.
Nice. Thanks. Thank you.