Hannah and I recently did a guest lecture at the University of Virginia. In this 10 minute excerpt, I swear a little, make fun of Bono, and probably piss off small retail shop owners. Deal with it. It’s the truth.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Best types of business for a mobile lifestyle? Products are better than services. I tend to do a whole bunch of service businesses, but products are better than services, because a product you make it once and sell it a bunch of times and every time it makes money. A service? You or somebody you hire, which a lot of times is the case in my case, has to actually be there.
So, as much as you may think that being a rock star or a movie star might be a really great life. When U2 showed up down here put on their little tootie fruity show? Bono had to show up and sing. When you pay your money and go and see U2. Four guys had to fly in from Ireland and put on their little shiny pants and get up there and flop around, but every time they sell a cd they don’t have to do that. It’s a very different model, products versus a service.
The internet is better than physical. If you’re going to sell something, sell it on the internet. Don’t sell it physically. Physically you have to show up and stand around. Physical retail establishments blow my mind. The idea that you have to show up every day at a place kills your mobility right away — you’ve got to open the door at 9:30 and close it at 9:30 (or whatever) and the whole time you’re just standing around just in case someone might want to buy a latte. Just in case. Two hours in the middle of the day, no one comes in? Guess what? You’re still standing there, or somebody you hire is still standing there. It’s just bad for mobility to have some sort of physical storefront or any kind of place that you physically have to go.
Commencement speeches suck. Then, there is this one. Speaking at a high school graduation, comedian/actor Patton Oswalt recounted being told about the “Five Environments”. Continue reading…
Traveling the world sans pants just got a lot cooler. Google’s Street View has always been a great way to see panoramas of streets from all over the world. Today they’ve added some great improvements.
Instead of having to inch along streets using those evil forward and backward arrows, you can now use their spiffy new “pancake” to get around. Check out this short video to get the lowdown.
New for North America is Vancouver & Victoria,which also includes Vancouver Island, the Okanagan Valley and the ski destination of Whistler. Also a big honkin’ guide about Texasis now out. It hits all the major cities as well as the Hill Country.
Interested in the Carribean? Check out the new Arubabook. Happy Travels!
Introducing Jeana Mitchell: Jeana is the mother of seven kids. An expert on crowd control and stretching a buck, she recently found the time to give our readers some terrific advice in the comments sections of our posts “The Slacker Parent and the Travel Friendly Child” and the “10 Essential Packing Rules”. We’re very pleased she has agreed to share some additional travel tips with Family Hack.
Vacation “packages” are set up for families of four. Having a family of nine can make vacationing on a budget a real challenge. However, it can be done! Here are some tips we have used to cut costs on our vacations without cutting out the fun.
1. BE NICE!
Make friends with the staff at the hotel or campground you are visiting. Tipping well once or twice will make you a friend of all the staff. Train your children to be polite and helpful to the staff. This goes miles if you are a large group and works on several levels.
The staff knows the area, and normally is happy to help you find great deals.
The staff knows if there are discount tickets behind the counter, and they do not have to make it public knowledge.
They will share if they like you.
2. SHOP LIKE A NATIVE!
Before getting to your destination, locate at least two shops you would like to visit. When you’re there, ask the shopkeeper if they can recommend any other shops…they can! They will also usually tell you which grocery has the best deals as well. Also, grocery coupons that work in California, will work in New York.
3. BUY A MEMBERSHIP!
For our family, the cost of a membership is roughly the same as visiting one time. Even if your family needs two or three visits to make up the cost, check out the fine print and see if your local museum, zoo, or science center has a membership program, find out if they are partnered with reciprocal facilities. If so, most will honor your membership and let you in free or at least for 50% off. Children universally love these places and they tend to be very different. As a bonus, most reciprocal facilities offer discounts in the gift shop as well. Check these websites for science centers and zoos that have programs nationwide:
Make a travel checklist on fun or brightly colored paper and use it. This gives you time to figure out what is missing and put it in the bag before you go. Personalize a checklist for each member of the family, leave a few spaces blank so kids can add their own items to the checklist. Pack the checklists in each individual’s bag so nothing is left behind. Continue reading…
We recently had the opportunity to talk with Dan Clements about his terrific new book, “Escape 101: Sabbaticals Made Simple” It’s an inspiring and practical guide to taking a career break without losing your money or your mind. Here’s our interview with Dan.
Family Hack: Some jobs seem easier to “escape” from than others. What jobs would you choose to put in your Top 10 for easy escapism?
Dan Clements:I honestly don’t believe that it’s about the job – it’s about the mindset of the person doing the job that determines how easy it is to get away.
That being said, there are some jobs that lend themselves to portability, or to periodic downtimes:
Jobs with structured extended leave programs
Teachers
Career jobs at a companies with established sabbatical programs
Jobs with global demand
Doctors
Nurses
Portable work
Writing
Design
Programming
Any other web-based freelancing
Jobs with a defined end
Temp work
Contract work
There are many others, but these are the ones that always strike me as the easiest. A lot of these are easy because they let you take your work with you. Many people will prefer the idea of taking a complete break from work, but the trend towards mobile work lifestyles is definitely worth considering as an alternative way to escape. Continue reading…
In this video I show you how I use a brilliantly designed and dirt cheap file holderto keep my active projects organized, in view and easy to retrieve. The system also makes working while traveling a breeze.
“Why do they call it homeschooling if we’re never home?”
— A favorite bumpersticker
I grew up (and was homeschooled) in a rural area, where it took an hour to get anywhere and an average of two hours to get the place you needed to go. My parents figured out in pretty short order that if we didn’t take advantage of our time in the car, I wasn’t going to have much in the way of formal education. Car time evolved into one of the most focused and structured part of my homeschooling life. In fact, I think one of my main motivations to get my driver’s license was to get away from algebra.
I’ll occasionally hear my homeschooling-parent friends lament a day of travel or errands as a day “lost” from homeschool. Of course, I find myself thinking “what are you talking about? That’s the best time to do schoolwork. Hey, the kids are strapped in; they can’t get away!” Of course, in all seriousness, homeschooling on the road does present challenges: reading and writing, probably the backbone of a lot of your school activities at home, are difficult, if not just impossible to accomplish in a moving vehicle; reading can cause carsickness, and writing with anything sharper than a crayon is probably a bad idea. But, if necessity is the mother of invention, these limitations should only inspire us to greater creativity. I’m firmly convinced that travel time is a great homeschool opportunity. Here are some good resources to jumpstart learning on the go. Continue reading…
This short video shows you a simple trick I use to “practice” a new language. If you have any trouble watching the video above, it’s also available on YouTube
UPDATE:
Our favorite way to learn a new language is by using the all-audio courses from Pimsleur. They are pricey, but they work.
You listen to a 30 minute lesson each day, then do the practice trick I spoke of in the video. Of course, audio won’t teach you to read so you’ll need another program if you need that. Here are links to the specific Pimsleur Spanishand French series’ we’ve used.
We are a family with three small kids figuring out how to travel the world, work from anywhere while home schooling our kids. We also blather on about life hacks, saving money and cool stuff we love. Snarky bios of each cast member are here.
Commencement speeches suck. Then, there is 
guide. It includes side trips to Gaucho Country, Iguazu Falls and Uruguay.
