How To Travel The World Without Compromising Your Family & Career | Jon Butcher

Hi, folks. I'm with the legendary John Butcher, one of the most remarkable entrepreneurs in the world today. But what is truly remarkable about John 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 John 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 John'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 John 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, John, 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 can 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 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, 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 or 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 by 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, John 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. So, 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 got to 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've found for chiropractors that's interesting that you can also apply to other professions is maybe you're a 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.

Oh, that's a brilliant idea.

Isn't that cool? Yeah. As a matter of fact, I've thought about creating a plan 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. 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. And 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. They have to deal with the time zone difference, which is great for me because it's three to five months of no meetings vishen three to five 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 just. It doubles the richness of your life.

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 Sean 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 earlier, 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 U.S. you are 30 to 40% more likely of getting a raise. Interesting. Than people who do not take their vacation days.

Maybe you're 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?

Okay, 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 much more complicated. But if I just had to guess what the percentage of people that could actually do that, I guess it's probably pushing 50% these days, right? That it 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 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 is the whole. I mean, she's got this wired. She would 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 or we're gonna 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 going to take a little bit of time and energy. That's why we appreciate you so much. And we'll 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.

So true.

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 John 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, which is nice, right? 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 that 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 does your job, I mean, literally, people all of a sudden come in to start to fill the gaps, and you realize nothing's gonna fall apart.

You're right. Right? You're right. This is the key idea.

Nothing's gonna fall apart. Everything's gonna 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 empowered them to be. To do expert tests.

Right? And I figured out how to automate things, which I shouldn't have been doing in the first place.

You got it. You got it. So that's. 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 in 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. Beautiful 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, John'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.

Good call.

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.