Wet Wipes And Wine
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Wet Wipes And Wine
#14 When Educating Your Kids Is Not A ‘One Size Fits All Model’ With Richard Hart
What happens when the classroom walls dissolve, and the world becomes your educational oyster? This episode is a celebration of the maverick spirit of home education. From the decision to deregister our children from 'traditional' school systems to the exhilarating freedom of unschooling, we map the rich landscape of personalized learning. We're not shy to examine the misconceptions and hurdles, nor to trumpet the victories and unexpected joys, as I recount my own ventures into crafting a curriculum on the move and fostering entrepreneurship within my brood.
The narrative weaves together the fortitude required to embrace life's curveballs, the creativity to reimagine one's career trajectory, and the gratitude for each lesson learned along the way. Richard's anecdotes complement the journey, and together, we raise a toast – with wet wipes in one hand and wine in the other – to the beautiful chaos of parenting, the art of adaptation, and the collective wisdom that propels us forward into the next chapter in our own unique and wonderful ways!
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10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Quick, pass me the wipes. Hi and welcome to Wet Wipes and Wine, the podcast for parents who maybe want to live life a little bit differently from the norm. Maybe you want to travel more as a family or just explore new possibilities. The norm Maybe you want to travel more as a family or just explore new possibilities. Maybe you have family dreams you want to achieve, or maybe you just want to be surrounded by people who remind you that when life throws a load of parenting crap at you, that wet wipes or wine is usually the answer.
Speaker 2:I'm your host, nikki Collinson-Phoenix, and each week I'll be bringing you real life stories from my own parenting journey. I'll also be welcoming guests to share theirs, as well as introducing you to new ideas, thoughts, tips and tricks from my little black book of awesome people. Welcome to Wet Wipes and Wine. Too early for wine. This episode is sponsored by remote solutions, helping you create businesses that are location independent. For more information, visit wwwremotesolutionswork. All right, everyone. Welcome to today's episode of wet Wipes and Wine. I am absolutely thrilled to be joined by the fabulous Richard Hartley, who is coming to us all the way from the gorgeous Paphos.
Speaker 1:I'm great, Nikki. Thank you very much for having me here. As we were just saying before, it's not the best day in Paphos it's a bit cloudy, but we've been spoiled, so I'll take a day of cloud.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because it's not the best day, and one of the things that you shared with me, where we talked about you coming on the podcast, was one of the reasons you went to cyprus was because you were fed up of the weather, and so I went straight in with how's the weather and it's it's not provided me with that sunshine you know, yeah, exactly, and wearing a flip and I mean it's yeah, I mean we did move here because the weather and and you know, my wife's from russia, she's used to proper seasons and we spent three years in england she's just like I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1:I mean we had a place anyway and and it's like, well, let's move there full time, then, and just just do it.
Speaker 2:We did yeah, absolutely good for you. Good for you, and I'm been sharing the fact that I'm right now, as we're recording this, I'm temporarily passing through the uk and not appreciating the the biblical rain that we have at the moment, so I am very much counting the days to be hot footing it back to bulgaria, where my friends are teasing me with how beautiful spring is over there. It's just constant blue skies, lush green grass, and they're showing me all this stuff they're doing outside and I'm getting massive FOMO at the moment. So, richard, yes, he does live in Cyprus but, as you can tell from his accent, he is from the UK and you had an event company, didn't you, previously in the UK that was massively affected by COVID, which, as well as the fact that you wanted to go to you, were seeking a bit more of that all-round weather experience. The process of COVID and your business not only sort of generated a couple of things in it. You moved into home educating your children, and then the process with your event company obviously being hugely affected by covid made you re-evaluate the the whole finance thing as a parent and as a business owner, and I can hugely resonate with that. People who have either been in my world a really long time or are quite new, but but have heard some of the things that I've shared in the past.
Speaker 2:My kind of epiphany in that area was, ironically, as a chiropractor I damaged my own back. But you know, they do say that sometimes you need to experience the, you know, the same journey and I think in the long term it made me a better chiropractor because I could actually say I have been crawling on my hands and knees in pain. But that back injury forced me out of work for a year and I was the main income and we very nearly lost our house, ended up living off credit cards trying to maintain things. I had three months savings.
Speaker 2:I was kind of like, if I bust my leg, I got six weeks in a plaster, six week of physio. If I bust my wrist, never at any point did I have one year's worth of income and that was the most. I never, ever want to go back to that place where I'm thinking, holy shit, is my? Are we about to lose the house that I've owned for years? But I'm struggling to pay the mortgage on now? Is this what it's come to all? Because I thought I had this really well-paid job because it was a very well-paid career.
Speaker 2:I'd worked hard for that career yeah, exactly it was only good when it was good, and when it wasn't good it suddenly became catastrophic. So I had my wake-up call, you had my epiphany and you had your epiphany with covid. That hang on a minute. Our business models, in whatever format, or our sources of income, are actually quite high risk because we have all of our income eggs in one basket.
Speaker 2:So off the back of that, you started making some changes which have now very much been kind of your.
Speaker 2:Your focus, your goal, your passion in life is to now enable other people to embrace home educating, but in a way that allows them to feel that they can also still financially support themselves, because it is something and we're going to come on to how you do that and some we're talking about some of the discussions we can have in a minute is there is a big question, because I want to break this down into different parts.
Speaker 2:I want to talk about home educating in a minute, but there is very much a part in home people who want to home educate who can't quite work out well, how can I be educating my kids and working that jumble, and so I want to move on to that as well, which will lead us into. You know, if people are listening to this right now and they're thinking that's what I want to be doing, we can enable them, through your experience and your knowledge and all the amazing things you're up to, to give them some pointers and kind of next steps of what they can do. But firstly I want to talk about home educating. I want to ask you before you went into the world of home educating so I said to you before we pressed, pressed the corner, I had a few interesting things coming up lately, before you went into the the world of home educating and actually experienced it, what was your thoughts about?
Speaker 1:I had no idea, it wasn't something I'd even considered. And you know, my oldest daughter is nearly 21, she's at university, she's from my first marriage, she's been all through the school system okay, so that's that's. That's sort of by as I've seen that that side of things. When COVID hit, she was she was at college and you know it was really difficult for her and she ended up redoing that year actually, and my little boy. I've got two children, two other children who are an eight-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter, and my little boy alex. He was two terms into school. He started school he was four years old. Now that was something that shocked my wife because she's from russia and they don't start until they're six or seven years old in russia and in fact a lot of european countries the scandy countries own yeah, even in bulgaria.
Speaker 1:So she was shocked, he was he was expected to attend school anyway at that age. And you know, when Covid hit, we pulled him out and they were sending the work home and we were looking at it and thinking we're not doing this. This is ridiculous. Why, at four years old, is he having to sit and and and do any of this stuff? But what's the point of it? And and we figured, okay, we'll just treat it as a nice long holiday, we're just going to ignore all this stuff. And and you know, at that stage we still weren't sure what we were going to do.
Speaker 1:And and he went back to school in the September but we just noticed that his behavior got worse. It got more erratic. He was screaming when he came home, just stressed out and we just decided no, that's it. So we just pulled him out completely from school. I think one of the things is a lot of people don't realise actually that the default in the UK anyway, if you don't register your child for school, they're not expected to attend the default situation is home education. It's only when you register your child and you get them into the system that it then becomes any kind of an issue. And so we wrote our letter to the headmaster said we're withdrawing him from school. Can you let the LA know? And that was it. And we never heard another thing from local authorities. Even I don't know why we sort of feel blessed that we didn't.
Speaker 2:We didn't either. When we decided to go travelling, I was really nervous about the whole um, oh my goodness deregistering, because you know you're connected to home education, other facebook groups I am too, and you know. Bless you see some people that I get absolutely through the ringer for deregistering their child, whereas, whereas I sent them an email and said my son will not be starting reception class, thank you for the position, but we won't be accepting it my daughter, who's now 12, but she was 10 when we left my daughter's withdrawing I sent an email please confirm receipt of this. I got an automated response and never heard another word to this day I've never heard another thing from them.
Speaker 2:So I feel I mean, in a way, I feel really grateful. But you know I'm not being done put through the ringer, but it is interesting why it is. It's very different, I think, different local education authorities. I mean, we're only speaking about the uk, but it's true, I know, for me, when I was about sort of my assumptions around home education, before I even even considered doing it, and my reasons were doing for doing it were because we were, we were leaving to go traveling, so we, we couldn't be in school, and I'll be straight up front and say I thought it was a standard education. I, you know, and I'm going to be the first to put my hand up and say how wrong I was and how, but at the time, being completely ignorant and completely naive, I thought how on earth can a parent educate a child because they're not a teacher? That was it and it's in its ignorant assumption. That was, that was what I thought.
Speaker 2:And then, when COVID came and I had to, you know, we started being told we have to home educate. I got a little bit excited. I was like, oh, we're going traveling, I get to have a little play at this home education. See what it's all about? Like a bit of a practice run before we go traveling. So I made this really fancy timetable. I mapped all this stuff out we're gonna do. I was basically recreating school. I said to my daughter well, on the Monday we're gonna do this, this and this, and literally within about two hours we were fighting. You know, she was 10, she was refusing to do anything, she was kicking back on everything because the truth was I was mum, yeah, and I was not the teacher, and she didn't see me as a teacher. And so it became, whereas Rafe, my son, he was four at the time, he was still in preschool. So you can still just have quite a lot of fun with his learning, but with learning I was trying to be a little bit more, you know, recreating of school and she absolutely kicked back and I was like, okay, this is not going to work long term. We're going to have to look at alternative strategies in there, and I just want to touch on some of the things that have happened recently. I haven't prepared you. I want to share that.
Speaker 2:I didn't tell Richard at all what I wanted to talk to him about, but I think this leads us into people's perception of what it means to not have your child in a inverted quotes traditional mainstream school, and I've been really interested in understanding what my ignorant assumption was prior to my own experience, which I now recognize and we'll talk about after that. I recognize how wonderful home education is, but actually recently our travels have attracted quite a bit of media attention and we've been featured in a few media. Things made, uh, sort of national papers in the uk quite a lot since january and it's been very interesting. I know they say don't read the comments. I know they say don't read the comments, but you know I I have to just dip my toe in to see the comments and I have to be honest, I haven't experienced anything that has been deeply trolling or offensive. But what I have experienced, and I've seen so much, is the sheer assumptions around the standard of education that my kids are receiving, because we are choosing to do it in a different way and I know one of the things that you feel very passionate about is parents having the freedom to educate their children in the way that they see fit.
Speaker 2:So for us, obviously we wanted to continue educating our children. We do want to educate our children, but we needed to find a way that was location independent. So Rafe is home educated completely, but we use some of the online platforms. We use workbooks and obviously, because we're traveling, we use some of geography and history and culture for wherever we are. Lani does live online lessons with one of the online learning platforms because, as I mentioned, it became very apparent we were not the teachers. She needed to have a separate entity who was a teacher. She thrived much better on live lessons than self-directed learning, so they both learned very differently. So we chose the live online learning for her. So they're still very much learning maths and English and all that stuff, but they're also getting the benefit of lots of other of the kind of world schooling side.
Speaker 2:And it's been really interesting reading the comments and the feedback from our staff about how we are. Home education is is substandard education. We are selfish parents. We are destroying our children's future. Our children are never going to come to anything. We are literally, you know, because they assume we can't. They won't take exams, so therefore they won't potentially have any kind of qualifications and and one of them was with the Daily Telegraph, which actually did a whole podcast episode on the feedback from it. Rightly or wrongly, I assumed that people who read the Telegraph had always been. You know quite educated people.
Speaker 2:Again. Maybe that was another assumption and I was really. They really there was over 200 comments and I would say 150 of them were negative towards our choice to not have them in mainstream school. What's your experience? What's your thoughts? What's your thoughts around like people's perception? You're home educating. You now work in the home educating arena. These are the people you serve through your work.
Speaker 2:And I look at my son and my son is working. He would have been, I sort of felt for you when you talked about your child as well, when you talked about your child as well. I believe. I believe that if my son had gone into mainstream school, he would have been quite disruptive. He is. He's not some kind of child genius, but he's quite bright and so, as a result of that, we and being home educating we've able to shift his learning level according to what he needs. So he's six, but he's learning at around an eight to nine year old. Now, obviously, if he'd have been in a traditional school the pet, the teachers are very fixed as to what they can teach in that curriculum for that school year and I feel that he would have been a kid coming back crying. He would have been coming back miserable because I'm bored and probably being labeled disruptive. What's your thoughts all around your own experiences? When you decided to home, educate and work in this arena, we had no preconceptions as to how we were going to do it.
Speaker 1:So we, the way we figured it, was that Alex was four. I was five when he eventually left school, because he was, he was a young boy. He would you know if, if we weren't getting it right, we felt it wasn't working he could go back into school in the next year or two and no harm, no foul, he'd soon catch up. Yeah, what we actually found was it was just absolutely magical. I mean, we, we practice unschooling, so we don't have any set routines, we don't have any set lessons. We follow his interests and my daughter, her, her interests. So whether it be, you know, obviously at the age of five or six, it's dinosaurs or it's volcanoes and you know all that sort of everything's a learning opportunity. So, in terms of museums, we lived on near the sort of the jurassic coasts in the uk, so we were able to go there and and see dinosaur bones and you know that sort of thing, and it's a really magical process when you watch them learn.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that that I've discovered is that and that was a real surprise to me and it and this is the thing yeah, we don't teach our kids to walk, to walk or talk, do they just do it. And yet, even that they're not capable of learning how to read or how to add up or how to spell. And yet I've. You know, both my kids are bilingual, my wife's russian. They're both. They're both completely fluent in both languages. Alex reads fluently in both languages. He's never had a lesson okay, and two different alphabets as well. He's never had a formal lesson. You know, my wife reads to him in russian.
Speaker 1:I read to him in english and he was just picking up books and and making the sounds and figuring it out for himself. My daughter's five, she's already. She again, without our us stepping in, she's already picking up books and because she sees him doing it and she's like now she's reading and I'm learning russian on duolingo. So that helps as well, because we sort of all learn together. You know amazing and yeah, we did a bit of water.
Speaker 1:We spent three months in Mexico last year as well. We saw the butterfly migrations up in the mountains of Morelia. We saw whales off the coast, literally a few meters from the boats. We saw the breaching and you can't. You can't buy those experience. You can't give kids those experiences in school. My son came back from Mexico. He's been learning Spanish on Duolingo for the last year, completely of his own volition, because he wanted to communicate with people we met out there and all this sort of thing and people's perceptions.
Speaker 1:It's, it's ignorance in a lot of cases, and that would have been me probably five, six years ago. If someone asked me are you going to home educate your kids, I'd be like well, who am I to educate my children? I'm not a teacher. But the fact is no one knows your kids better than you do and no one knows the way that you know. You were just saying that every child has a different way of learning and school just puts them into a box and expects them all to learn the same way. And yet when you're home educating, you've got the freedom and the luxury to choose the way that fits your child the best, and some kids like regular, structured lessons, others don't. I mean alex. He can't sit down for 130 consecutive seconds, so to be sat at a desk all day would absolutely kill him, you know. But when he finds something that he's enthusiastic about he's really into.
Speaker 1:He will sit for hours. At the moment he's just getting into minecraft, you know oh yeah, we've moved on to pokemon.
Speaker 2:At the moment, anything that's pokemon, but I. But I hear you. You know that rave can lani can sit and learn. She does like her structure. She really doesn't do well with self-directed at all, she would just switch off.
Speaker 1:Rafe's actually really good at being self-directed but for about a maximum of 15 minutes. I would say to the people that sort of look at home educators and go. Just what are you doing? Take a look at where you're sending your child every day to learn. In school. They're forced to sit at a desk for hours and hours each day. They're all forced to learn the same way. If they fail to get a piece of paper, you know they sit an exam. They've just got to regurgitate. All they have to do is memorize information and regurgitate it.
Speaker 1:There's no room for critical thought, and this is the whole of the education system, isn't it? It's just there to produce wage slaves. That's all they want is people that are obedient, not critical thinkers that will just follow orders. I mean, the school system is partly based on the prussian military training system and it hasn't effectively in over 100 years. Wow, you know? You've got a figure at the front of the class that tells the kids what to do, but the hand up to go to the toilet, which is degrading, honestly. Why not just?
Speaker 2:it is when you picture it like that, going around about you know schools and prisons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've got kids that they're in a cage all day. They're in able to exercise. When the bell goes off, you know they all serve their food the same food at the same time. There you've got an authoritarian figure that's telling them what to do, and it's even in america. The buses are even the same that is it is.
Speaker 2:It's true, it's true. And it takes me back. I remember my own schooling, when I was in high school. Back then we had primary, middle and high on the Isle of Wight. And I was in middle school and I was in top set for German and I really loved learning German. But the high school I was going to didn't do German. They automatically put me into top set French.
Speaker 2:But I had no clue of the foundation of French and I sat there for two years just at the back of the class just blagging my way but feeling really disillusioned by all this. I had no clue what was going on and I went to the teacher and I said look, can you put me down? Please put me down to a lower set, because I have no idea what's going on. And I've got my gcse exams, you know, next year, and I don't have a clue. And I remember they're telling me they couldn't move me down a set because it will affect their statistics and their figures and I had to stay. So in the end, actually on the day of my gcsc exam, I refused to attend the exam because I I decided I would rather have an ungraded on my paper than a fail because? But? So I just didn't turn up, there was no purpose.
Speaker 2:And I always remember thinking you know, I, I, as a pupil, I willingly stepped forward and said please help me, but I was going to mess the figures up. And then I remember my a levels and I had originally wanted to be a vet, but I had quite a lot of personal loss and all sorts of stuff that went on in my my a levels and it just wasn't going to happen. So then I didn't know what I wanted to do, because that's all I'd ever wanted to do. And so I decided well, I'm going to have to leave school and get a job, because I'm not going to go to university and just do anything for the sake of it. And so everyone is doing their A-levels and they're all filling out the UCAS university application forms for those people out of the UK, and I get hauled in in front of the head teacher why are you not? Why are you not filling out these forms? And so I explained you know, well, I, I don't know what I'm going to do. So, therefore, I'm going to go out into the world and work and earn and have some life experience and re-evaluate what I want to do and he was furious with me, absolutely furious, because I was messing up their stats of the kids that were going next to university.
Speaker 2:There was. There was no actual concern about my own welfare or my own. You know, if my child did that to me now and said you know what, mum one, I think having a gap year, I think all kids should have a gap year if they're going to go to university, get out and see the world. But if my child said to me do you know what, mom, actually I'm going to put the brakes on my original plan because I'm just not sure this is what I want to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to say how mature thinking that is, that you have done that, and then, and a little bit, like you said, about sort of the the route that people have. One of the things I always saw as well and I remember from high school that you know, when I think I mean I juggle 50,000 things, but if I had time it's something I feel quite passionate about is when kids are reaching kind of the time when they're looking ahead to careers and whatever there's. I can never yet see a pathway where schools are going.
Speaker 2:how about you start your own business? So yeah, we've just taken a little break from today's show so that I can tell you a little bit about global trailblazing, our ultimate online youth club for young and intrepid global trailblazers aged 5 to 14. A place for them to learn, grow, connect, give back and have fun with fellow trailblazers from all around the world. They can complete fun learning quests and earn badges from any of our six core learning banners, which are life skills, kindness and compassion, purpose, travel and adventure, innovation and the world around us. They can make new global friends, hang out online, maybe hop on a video call or work together on quests through our bespoke social network. They can get access to amazing live workshops and support disadvantaged children around the world through our Global Trailblazing Foundation. This is truly the global club your child needs to be in, so let us help you nurture their path in life to find it in their own unique and wonderful way. Why not try us out for a month and see for yourself? For more information, just visit wwwglobaltrailblazingcom. Wwwglobaltrailblazingcom.
Speaker 2:It's all about going and getting a job. I don't get me wrong If you want to be a doctor, you've got to go a pathway to being a doctor, you've got to go certain ways, but in general there doesn't seem to be the encouragement of the other pathway, which may be the entrepreneurial pathway. And I look at my kids now. My kids have got stuff. You know, my kids are six and 12. They've already got products on Amazon. My daughter's walking out a business on Vinted right now. You know, I'm massively supporting the entrepreneurial side and I think again, for me personally, looking at it from a home educating point of view, I think what? Also, I've seen that because of the mentality of people who are wanting to home educate our children, we don't see hurdles, we don't see limitations, we just see this expanse of possibility. Because there isn't classroom walls, no, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, moving on to what you do now, which is around, you know one of the things that a lot of people do, like you talk about people that are nine to five. You can have easily have somebody who's nine to five or somebody that's one in their own business, etc. And they're thinking you know, actually I do want to remove my child. The thing is, what we're seeing now, or what I'm observing now, is that there's children parents are wanting to remove their children from into, or move their children into home education for so many different reasons, and it may be for the child's benefit, the parents benefit. It may be that the school system is failing them if they have additional needs or anything like that, or bullying, or there's so many different reasons why parents or a parent would say do you know what actually I'm gonna? I'm gonna bring you back home.
Speaker 2:But one of the fears that comes up is around well, how the hell am I gonna earn? So that parent who's in a nine to five, who's sitting there going my child is struggling. My heart is telling me, get them the hell out, get them home, but my bank balance is saying that's not going to happen. Or somebody who's trying to run a business and go. How on earth am I meant to educate when I'm sat here on my laptop trying to run my business, what one of the things that you're really passionate about is? Helping people see that they can do both? Can you explain a little bit more about what your work involves now, what, what you're doing in this area? Because I think this is going to be there's going to be parents listening to this right now you are going to be thinking this is me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how the hell do I even start?
Speaker 1:again, it's none of these things are ever easy. Okay, if you want to do something like this, you're you're trying to break out traditional systems effectively and and you know everything's designed to really stop us from doing that, because the living's gone through the roof and everything else. So you know everything kind of, in a sense, is against you. But equally, there's never been a time of greater opportunity. You know, we have the internet, we have social media to promote yourself, and I mean for me personally. Over the last few years, I've done a number of different things.
Speaker 1:When I, when I lost my business I say literally as soon as COVID hit I had an event management business. The hospitality industry was decimated at that time it really was and, to be honest, I've been looking to step out of that for a while. Anyway, I'd had the business for 15, 20 years. I've been in events since I was in my late 20s. I'm in my early 50s now and it gets harder work there. There's 16, 18 hour days on site not as easy to do in your late 40s as they are in your 20s and I started off actually looking at cryptocurrency and what you know what the possibilities were around that and investing in that. Then I I kind of moved on from that. I began coaching people in in cryptocurrency and and how they could make an income from it passively. And you know crypto, it's been through a rough ride the last couple of years. It's just beginning to sort of wake up again now. I've also been involved in network marketing because, again, you know, these are things that you can fit in kind of around your around your day, around your your schedule and, as I mentioned before, now I'm working with a friend called michelle foolia and we're working on courses to help teenagers and teens and tweens become entrepreneurs. So, you know, there's been a real variety of of things.
Speaker 1:I think you have to be willing to be flexible, you have to be willing to to constantly, constantly learn yourself as well, and you have to be organized is the other thing. I mean, like I say, we don't have a schedule for our kids. Okay, so my wife and I tend to tag team. She's, you know, she's at home a lot of time as well, and I'm an early bird I'm up at five in the morning, that's just me, so I get probably three hours of work done before anybody's even out of bed, you know, and it's finding those little pockets of time. Um, in fact, in my group I've recently done a series of interviews with about 15, maybe more parents talking to them about what they do in terms of of work and how they fit it in around their families, and we've got all sorts of you know. We've got people in around their families and we've got all sorts you know. We've got people in there who are married. We've got single mums who are still earning and world schooling, because I I see a lot of single mums going.
Speaker 1:I don't know how I can do this, but there are people doing it. You can. You can do this. You know I'm nothing special, but I'm prepared to work hard and graft at what I do. And you know collaboration collaborate with other people as well and talk to other people. Build your own communities. I mean, again, that's what I've done. I've spent the last three years building a community, and it's something that anyone can do, you know.
Speaker 1:Look at what your passions are.
Speaker 1:I mean, one of the things that I did when I was starting out, trying to get ideas, was I did the, the ikigai process I don't know if you you're familiar, so it's a japanese word and a few years ago there were these researchers who went to this island, the island of okinawa in japan, because they're huge.
Speaker 1:They had the most incidences of centenarians of people over over 100, than anywhere in the world. And they were asking these people, well, why are you living so long here? And they found it wasn't just diet and healthy lifestyle, but these people had a purpose, and Ikigai is about finding your purpose. That's what it means and it centers around what your mission in life is, what your passions are, what you can get paid to do, and you just go through a process answering these questions and then you circle the top two or three in each sector and then you move on to the next part of the process and at the end you come to like four different things. For me it was travel, it was cooking, it was education and the fourth one I can't remember.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting. I think I've been doing that by default with all my coaching clients for the last five years because I've always been so when I look at my process. So when we wanted to travel, I needed to check. I was a chiropractor, I'd been a chiropractor for many years and you can't really, you just can't do that on the road. Unfortunately, it's not the easiest thing to do on the road.
Speaker 2:I'd also run my own businesses in the UK and abroad and so I went into business coaching and business mentoring, health and wellness professionals who were struggling and I did that for for a long time, having courses and membership and group programs and products and books and all sorts of stuff. And then gradually I went into e-commerce I do. Previously I had done a bit of network marketing. That was before, before travel. I dabbled in some network marketing and then I started moving into.
Speaker 2:As the travel became far more the mainstream thing, not the health and wellness, I started moving more into the parenting and the travel space and shifting. But I'm still in products and digital marketing and all of this stuff and so it does really, really evolve. But one of the things you know, now I'm a remote working consultant and strategist, so I help people who want to travel specifically find out what they can do to work online. But all of that coaching and mentoring was a lot around finding your thing, your thing and what. And a lot of people would just say, well, you know, what's your what, what are you good at with something like that, what you know what, what could you? Uh, what are your skills?
Speaker 2:and I've always been very much like one part is what's your skills the other part is what's your experience and what just floats your boat, what makes you feel happy, what fills your belly with fire, you know, and and so because finding what it is you're going to do needs to have all of those bits involved to to finding your purpose.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to look at that, because I think you wrote it without realizing I've been doing a bit of that yeah yeah, yeah, dude, dude so, but it is true.
Speaker 2:I'm a great believer that, yes, this isn't easy. It's not easy to to step away from what we're conditioned to do or from what you may, it may be your norm, okay, and it would be absolutely wrong to say, oh yeah, yeah, we're, we're living the life we're leading through luck. No, we're living the life that we're leading through sheer grit and determination to live. Yeah, to live a life that is different to what a lot of people will be living, because we wanted something different for ourselves and for our families. Does it come with challenges? Yes, life's challenges still travel with you wherever you are in the world. We still have bills to pay.
Speaker 2:We still have to do that and we're looking at ways to work in ways that involve you needing to be a bit more creative. I hate the cliche cliche, but thinking outside of the box, look looking at things differently, and I am a great believer that if you do want something, bad enough you'll you'll stick with it because you're so focused on the goal that you're working towards, or the dream or the vision for you and your family's life, in whatever that looks like yeah that you'll keep going with it because you know that's what you're trying to create and unless you know, obviously the winning lottery it would make life a lot easier.
Speaker 1:The majority of lottery winners end up broke after a few years anyway.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what actually they do when you read, read about it. It doesn't necessarily bring them joy, but I would take a million. I'd take a million. Don't need the full Euro lottery, but I would gracefully accept a mil if it was going for sure, for sure. So, yeah, the whole thing is, it is very much around.
Speaker 2:I think it is a time thing as well, isn't it? You do have to be quite good with your time and, like you say, getting up early, I'm an early bird. Sometimes if I've got stuff I may come, but I may get back on my laptop after the kids have gone to bed. Me and my husband do tag team and I do very much appreciate and respect the fact that if you are a single parent, you may have to do things slight slightly differently. What I would say I don't know what your thoughts are which is that since covid, the world has opened up even more to the online space and and and in my work now, helping people find their thing that's online, so they can travel almost every job. Now there is some kind of obviously you can't if you're hands-on, as in chiropractor or doctors, you know certain things, but there is an online, remote working version of so many different jobs I did this thing a little while ago on my Facebook page was like random jobs, and one of them was this tattoo designer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, random jobs, right right, that people don't think about. And someone is a tattoo designer, so they love tattoos. They can't physically travel around doing tattoos, so what people do is they pay them to design their tattoos that they then will take to the tattoo artist to do like there's. There's this crazy I put together. You talk about your ebook. I put together an ebook on my thing, my website 540 jobs you can do anywhere and and I did it and it's across like 15 different industries and some self-employed, and it was very much to help people and I wanted to make it a really big number to say like there's so many possibilities. If you're willing to consider even your own job, you might. You might be able to work from home. You know, a lot of the times it may be that, even if you're employed, you might be able to have a conversation with your employer and say is there a way?
Speaker 2:well, is there a way?
Speaker 1:during covid it was forced on a lot of people, wasn't it? So there is a way. It's just whether the company's willing to allow that to continue, because I think was it? Amazon recently forced all their employees that were working remotely to go back to the office, and a lot of very unhappy people go back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, used to that and yeah, I, I always found it really weird. I mean, like, say, having been self-employed and being very self-motivated anyway, I always found it strange that companies wouldn't trust their employees. I mean, you can tell if the work's not getting done, surely so you know, and if that's the case then you pull them back in. But otherwise, just three hours a day commuting.
Speaker 2:I used to commute to London like an hour and a half each way every day, three hours a day, and if you can save that and you get that time back as well, as you know, it's just yeah yeah, I got asked to go on to good morning britain last year for a debate so much to do with the councils in the uk, where they were getting a higher increase in number of employees who wanted to work from the coast, wanted to work from the beach, and they wanted someone who would agree why they should be allowed it.
Speaker 2:And then they had some guy who was off of the apprentice, who was the against, and at the time I happened to be working in Turkey on a beach. So I was like they contacted about 16 different people and I got the gig and it was really interesting because one of the things I was trying to explain to them as well in essence was actually, if your employee is happy, they will be more productive. Like this, in the simplicity of it tell your employee to come into the office where they clearly don't want to be because they've asked you if they can work remotely or allow them to work remotely.
Speaker 2:You're, and therefore they were going to be happier you will have more productivity.
Speaker 2:You know, the essence of it was that you know, happy employers are more productive employees. You know, and it's very simple, I feel like I can sit and talk to you for ages. It's almost like forget it. I said to you at the beginning. I said we have loads to talk about. We have so many things to overlap. But what I do want to do is I know that these conversations that we've had today are going to be really relevant to a lot of the people who are listening today. So what I would love to know is if people want to connect with you away from here.
Speaker 2:You've got an amazing Facebook group that I'm sure you are going to welcome with open arms If people want to just come and hang out in your world and explore this, and it is called the. Homeschool Freedom Club and you're going to see that right now the link will be on the show notes under this podcast for you to go to. And so if you're thinking I want to homeschool but I want to actually look at the the how, that, how hell I do this financially, go and get yourself into your no, you're welcome.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. This is really passionate for me to do. You know, I want people, whether whether they just want to home educate, if they want to travel I don't know what they want to do my mission is that you know this parenting journey is is design it in the way that you want to do it so you have a wonderful experience for you and your family. And if it does happen to include home educating but a barrier is the income side of it, then go and hang out with you and and learn learn from you absolutely well, want to do it as travel.
Speaker 2:Come and hang out with me too.
Speaker 1:I'm all over the travel bit as well yeah, I mean between us, freedom it's all down to the choices that you make. Okay, and you can choose to step into this world, and you can choose to maybe be out of your comfort zone for a while and and and just just get into it and inverse yourself in it. But unfortunately, a lot of our choices are underpinned by money, okay, and if you don't have the money, you don't have as many choices, and that's just a simple, a simple truism for today. So you know, just just get out there if you know, even if you're afraid to do it, and even if people are telling you you shouldn't, they're not the boss of you, they're not raising your kids, they're not in your shoes. If they're not in your shoes, don't go away in any.
Speaker 2:I was going to be a brooder, yeah, yeah. And the thing is, there will be people that will tell you you're nuts. There will be people that will tell you I'm sure that you've got people that when you said we're going to pull, pull the kids, we're going to do this life, that went. What on earth are you doing? When I certainly started saying to people I'm going to take my kids out of school and get hitched up a caravan and go bugger off around Europe indefinitely.
Speaker 2:They were just like are you insane? Now they have seen my children and they have seen our life. They have a very different picture, but unfortunately, people make massive assumptions without actually looking at the bigger picture, which actually is. Maybe your kids are going to thrive as a result of the choices that you're making for their education. Richard, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with me today. I really, really appreciate your time and for sharing all your knowledge and your wisdom and your personal experiences as well.
Speaker 1:I've had a great time, you know. It's been a real pleasure to join it. We could have gone for probably another good hour or two at least, so well exactly, exactly, but we won't put that on you people.
Speaker 2:Go and go, go over and join richard's group and go and be in his world and learn more about this stuff, and you're already in my world, which is wonderful. Thank you so much and and much love to you wherever you are in the world, and we will catch up with you again on the next episode of wet wipes and wine. Take care now. Bye, thank you.