 |
Conversations Among Masters (CAM) Conference... pivotal conversations with other master coaches that led us to embark on our NGA! |
WOW… what started as a fireside discussion between us while virtually attending a four-day coaching conference in the spring of 2021 has resulted in our evolution toward an entirely new lifestyle!
We call it our “Next Grand Adventure” (NGA!) and the past six months has already provided us with a host of new perspectives and reflections leading up to it's implementation.
So what did and does 'NGA!' entail for us? Well for starters it was a decision to sell our home, along with most of our possessions and to pursue a nomadic lifestyle (at least for a couple years). We had been grappling with the difficulties of living through a pandemic along with everyone else - it had been a tough eighteen months. Ironically though, those circumstances provided the opportunity for both of us to not only finetune our careers, but to do so in a unique way; by becoming "Digital Nomads” - a phrase we learned after making our decision.
While the pandemic has provided nearly everyone some hardship, in our case it also provided a push to evolve our business models to online platforms (i.e. Zoom, Teams, Cloud Computing, etc.). When the world began social distancing in March 2020, Phyllis’s coaching business increased with clients tapping into her expertise and perspectives much more readily through digital technologies such as Zoom. For Jerry, it wasn’t such an easy transition at first because his consulting business was based on experiential teambuilding and leadership development… AND… after the business world stopped holding its collective breath by the fall of 2020, Jerry had also evolved his training modules to an online format to meet the client needs for evolutionary strategic planning and more innovative team building dynamics in a remote format.
 |
| The back yard view of our first NGA "base camp" for six months |
Some of the past reasons for not acting on selling the house centered around each of us finishing our respective educational degrees. By 2021, they had both officially been completed. Also by then, we were running virtual businesses, so location was no longer relevant. At the same time, pent up demand exploded the housing market in our area. We began debating how and where we would live if we sold our home… along with all the standard home considerations, options such as buying an RV, purchasing a “tiny home” or even renting a home were all put on the table.
All these ideas had merit, but the foundational question of 'where' had not (and still has not) been answered. We knew that we needed to explore locales and communities as locals to determine where we would eventually become part of a community again. As with many answers, the most obvious and eventual solution was right in front of us – full time housesitting around the country.
 |
| Jer with Phyl after walking at his NLU graduation... Phyl still awaits her walk in London for her graduation! |
After settling into the realization that we had made the decision to in essence become “homeless,” we began the logistical process of putting our home up for sale, getting PO boxes for our mail, changing vendor invoicing and began the process of selling our furniture and boxing up a limited amount of our personal items. (more on that process in a future posting!)
We discovered that most importantly, we needed to process our emotions as we let go of most of the material items that had defined our personal and professional lives… our furniture, office equipment, paintings, awards, old photos, etc. It was, and still is, a deeply transformational process for both of us as we review how we had defined ourselves in the past – and more importantly, how we are evolving.
So, when we became immersed in our annual coaching conference’s expansive virtual workshops in the spring of 2021, our daily discussions came back to our previous thoughts of traveling more of this great country. As we sat on the porch taking in the natural beauty that surrounded us, our itch to travel as well as our long-time desire to sell our house became the central topic for the week.
We knew that one set of our friends only spent half the year in their Illinois home and the other half at one of their other properties... so we decided to pose the question of renting their home for half the year while we began searching for "sits" across the nation in areas where we wanted to spend more time. To our delight, our friends were elated that we would occupy their home as they had been paying various vendors to come and check on things in their absence.
 |
| Living "in the cloud" as digital nomads with our personal/professional PO boxes |
Comments