Crossing the US: St. Louis, Hays - KS, and Literally Working from the Road

In this post, I chat through our journey between Tennessee and Colorado, stopping in St. Louis and Hays, Kansas. I touch on working from our beautiful hotel in St. Louis, reflect on conference goers and even show how I work while Kailahs driving.

Glo exploring the lobby at the Chase Park Plaza

The week’s journey: This was a crazy week. We left Gatlinburg, Tennessee on Sunday and arrived in Estes Park, Colorado on Wednesday night. It was an aggressive three days of travel, but we had an awesome stay in St. Louis at the historic Chase Park Plaza hotel. It was the perfect stopover, to see the famous St. Louis Gateway Arch (our second national park of the trip!) and grab a little Missouri BBQ. We were fortunate to get set up with a King suite at the Park Plaza, which had a living room (for the girls) and then a king bedroom for us. This made our stay VERY comfortable and much less stressful. We were also perfectly located next to a park and several restaurants (including a BBQ spot that we thoroughly enjoyed, called Salt and Smoke). Highly recommend!

We visited the Arch on our second day - mostly to cross it off our list - but were pleasantly surprised. Coming from New England (where Spring had yet to “spring”) the sprawling green grass and pink blossomed trees provided a perfect afternoon of lounging around and letting the girls roam. We also learned that you can take a tram up the Arch - we had no idea! Unfortunately the tickets sell out in advance, so we couldn’t go. I think that worked out for the better though because I saw the tram car model in the lobby and I’m pretty sure I didn’t want to cram my 6’ 5” frame into that thing.

The ladies yelling at me in front of the Arch

Following our stay in St. Louis, we headed further west, stopping in Hays, Kansas. We chose Hays, simply as a burn and turn location to break up a very long drive. We stayed at a relatively new Hilton Garden Inn. After going in with low expectations of this leg of our stay, I’ll be honest, I was pleasantly surprised. If for some reason you find yourself needing to cross Kansas, Hays is an easy and comfortable stop.

(If you want to see our exact route, with some extra content, head over to our route map!)

On to business: Since the majority of this 3 day journey was during the “business week”, I obviously had obligations to deliver on as we drove across.

“WWD” (please ignore that finger print ridden screen)

This might surprise some people, but sometimes I work while we are driving down the road. And I don’t mean work “offline” - I mean literally logged into the network on my laptop and/or on the phone, knocking out deliverables - going 70 MPH down the highway. I keep my connection through using my phone as a hotspot (or leverage a secondary hotspot if needed). I think most people would be surprised of the internet speeds I’m able to pull from the road - in many cases, faster than my house (Yes, Comcast, that is a shot over your bow).

Working from the lobby at the Chase Park Plaza

In comparison to “working while driving” (lets call it “WWD” from now on), logging hours at our hotel in St. Louis was much more convenient. Not only did we have the suite (with a desk), the hotel also has an entire conference center, with WIFI for guests. And if that wasn’t enough, St. Louis is a 5G Ultra Wideband city. I was pulling download speeds of 800+ MBPS through my phone, which in less-nerdy terms, is REALLY freaking fast for cellular internet.

A bit of reflection: One unexpected realization that I had while working remotely in St. Louis was related to the conferences going on in our hotel. Having recently left a “full time role” in corporate, I thought seeing all of these people dressed up, networking, eating, drinking etc., might make me miss the old grind a bit. But honestly, it had the opposite effect…

The girls were all waiting for me as I was making one last trip to our room, to get the remainder of our belongings (before hitting the road for Hays). I specifically remember riding the elevator down with a group of conference goers and for some odd reason, we were stopping at every floor. The doors would open and then shut. 9th floor, 8th floor, 7th floor…and so on. None of the floor buttons were lit up, and we just kept stopping. All of us just stood there on autopilot waiting for the damn thing to reach the lobby. Eventually I made a “this must be a really courteous elevator” joke (terrible I know) and reached across for the lobby button. As we zoomed down, I couldn’t help but think about how intentional every single minute of my days are. Am I a little overwhelmed? Sure. Feel stretched a bit thin at times? Yes. But I have a reason to get to the bottom of the elevator shaft…

***For the record, I don’t think all conference-goers are on autopilot and definitely don’t think conferences aren’t valuable. This was just an example that hit me “mid-stride” in our journey and really solidified some of my recent lifestyle design decisions.

Anyway, man…what a week. Travel, work, entrepreneurship, parenting, being a good partner…it’s been a challenging balance.

More to come next week as I talk through setting up an “air bnb office”.

Kyle

Lifestyle Design: Our new business, 70+ day road trip and workplace flexibility

What in the hell are we doing? I don’t like writing about “us” as the topic of a blog, but I wanted to at least update everyone on where we are at and what we’re doing, in case it helps others navigate unconventional lifestyles, lifestyle design, or alternative retirement. So what’s this have to do with “working from anywhere”? Well, if you can earn from anywhere, you can be anywhere…

I’m not sure when our lifestyle design obsession began, but it’s quickly gaining momentum. It started with a love for travel and new experiences. Slowly over time, we started to realize that we couldn’t travel MORE without changing our lifestyle (we both worked traditional “9-5s”). And then we had kids. It will likely come as a shocker to most people reading this (insert wink face here), but the thing about “9-5s” and kids, is that working traditional jobs doesn’t provide a ton of time to see them. Which frankly, kind of sucks - especially when you are passionate about spending time traveling (not to be confused with spending time, time traveling - ok, sorry - stupid dad joke).

So all of this led us to the question: “how could we earn income and do what we love, with the people we love?”. We knew right off that our lifestyle had three buckets of time - one for travel, one for family/friends - and then one bucket for earning income. So how could we fill each one equally?

Lifestyle design: This is where we ran head first into lifestyle design (LD). LD is all about defining what an ideal life looks like and then setting specific goals in order to achieve it. And for us, LD isn’t about “being rich”, or “retiring early” (both of which sound pretty great), but rather defining our day-to-day, month-to-month etc, so that we can optimize our time to earn income and be fulfilled. Since we already defined “how” we want to spend our days, (family/friends and travel), we can start aligning our financial bucket to support them. And that’s exactly what we’ve set off to do.

Alright, hopefully I didn’t lose you with that long introduction.

70+ day United States adventure: First and foremost, we just left for a 70+ day cross country road trip with our girls. We took our truck and we’re staying in hotels and short term rentals (like air bnb, homeaway, VRBO etc). Our goal is to see 11 national parks and over 20 states. We’re very grateful we get to do this with our girls and we’re going to try and see as many other friends and family as possible along the way. For the next 2+ months, our travel and family buckets will be FULL.

Earning from the road and working from anywhere: This is where our lifestyle design plan’s “rubber hits the road”. If we can’t earn income and fill the financial bucket, this trip could leave us with a pretty large hole in our pocket. And if we can’t sustain the lifestyle, it’s back to the proverbial salt mines (traditional 9-5s for us). So what’s the plan?

NOE Media LLC: We made it official! Nowhere on Earth will always be our brand, but we have set up an actual business entity named NOE Media LLC. Functionally, this doesn’t do anything more than allow us to open business accounts (for easy accounting) and protect us from personal liability. BUT officially, this means we’re earning income and making a “run at this thing”. So what do we do? We focus primarily on social media marketing for brands and offer the following:

• Virtual assets - Fully licensed (photos and short form videos) for websites, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube shorts and TikTok

• In-feed Instagram posts/reels highlighting brands on our NOE socials

• YouTube video marketing (product/location appearing within an ad at the beginning of our video OR featured within the video itself)

• Blog posts featuring the product/service/location (fully licensed for client use, or posted on our website)

• Social media management (Consult on, or manage social platforms for brands)

Know a hotel, or product/service that needs any of the above? Please have them reach out!

My flexible job change: In addition to the NOE Media LLC, we also setup a consulting LLC and fell under agreement to convert my current corporate role to a remote, contractor based position. While this will detract from overall income and benefits, this gives us much more flexibility and the ability to invest more of my time in our media company, travel and our family. It’s all a balance…

Additional investments: So that it doesn’t go un-mentioned, we place a heavy emphasis on planning for our financial future. Just because we’re trying to find a balance between our three “buckets” I mentioned above (travel, family and money), it doesn’t mean that we don’t invest our earned income in the real estate and stock markets. Because we do! It fact, this is the engine that will one day lead us to financial freedom.

Alright lets wrap it up: Well, that was a lot about us. I hope it sheds light on the “why” for “working from anywhere” (WFA) and the foundation for this blog. It is truly integral to our lifestyle design goals. I also hope that it helps paint a very realistic picture for lifestyle design and the power of WFA. It’s easy for people to promote these “pie in the sky” ideas, but we’re living it, learning from it and hopefully helping others along the way.

Thanks for reading - cheers,

Kyle

Selling our RV?! Lifestyle Design and Financial Independence

Selling the RV and RV office?!

Climbing the RV for sunset! (and wine)

After one of the most incredible experiences of our lives, driving across the country and back in 80 days, we are selling our RV and dismantling the “RV Office”. But why?

Kailah and I’s goals are based upon the idea of both lifestyle design and financial freedom. For us, the lifestyle that we are pursuing is spending time with people we love AND experiencing new places, cultures, and people. The only way we can accomplish that is to free up our time, by increasing our passive income, reducing our expense obligations and therefore becoming financially independent. Otherwise, the majority of our time will be spent hammering away at our jobs and grinding our way to a traditional retirement.

For those new to financial freedom, it essentially means that your living expenses are covered by passive income (like rental property, dividends, royalties etc) and you don’t need to actively “work”. This is unlikely the ultimate goal for us, as we enjoy managing our businesses, but we want to minimize the day-to-day effort and give us time back to explore the world and see our families and friends. We don’t consider ourselves true FIRE advocates (financially independent retire early - look it up here if you want more info), but we follow many of the same principles.

Top of RV sunset selfie in Paso Robles, CA

I’ll write a subsequent article on our financial strategy, but for now…that was a long winded reason for why we are ditching the RV. It isn’t financially reasonable long term, given our goals.

So what are we going to do? Stop traveling the US? As Selima would say “No way, Jose!”.

Once we get the RV sold (we’re consigning it to an RV store in New Hampshire), we’re going to take our time looking for the next vehicle. We’re leaning towards purchasing a much smaller Class B Campervan RV, which we’ll use in combination with “air bnbs”. This will give us the flexibility to stay and work from anywhere, keep our costs down and allow us plenty of space in a rental. As the girls get older, a Class B will become easier and easier to spend time outdoors as a family (not to mention it fits in our driveway and Kailah and I can sneak away for a weekend while the grandparents watch the girls).

For the new vehicle, we’re looking for a combination of the following:

1. Best RV for families (space for the girls AND us to sleep)

2. Used (better value)

3. Best price point (pay it off quickly)

4. RV office (we need space to work, even if it is only a few days a month between air bnbs)

5. Small (Can double as a second vehicle, fit in the driveway and allowed in all state and national parks)

“Dry camping” in Beatty, Nevada

This may not be a surprise, but the fall of 2021 isn’t an ideal time to buy an RV. The demand for RVs is so high that manufacturers literally can’t keep up the supply, so this might provide a challenge for us in finding a quality used model.

Our goal is to hit the road again in the Spring to explore the northern part of the country, which we missed in 2021. This will give us an incredible opportunity to keep growing our NOE content business and see more of this beautiful country.

So we have 6 months to find our new RV. Stay tuned…

Kyle