“I wasn’t planning on it. I wanted to take off the summer to be with my kids, so I did. I didn’t do anything profound.”

“But that’s exactly what’s profound about it – that you don’t even think it’s a big deal.”

—

Here’s how it worked.

When kindergarten ended and the kids went on summer break, so did I.

First, we enjoyed an Orlando staycation week.

We sang our favorite Encanto songs around Disney.

We slipped ‘n’ slid in the backyard.

Then, we packed our camping gear and headed west.

We spraypainted cars at Cadillac Ranch.

We rented bikes in New Mexico.

We jeeped through southwestern Utah’s trails on 100-degree days.

And then cooled off at the local rec centers.

We ate glamorous dinners while BLM-camping.

We collected treasures and mosquito bites along the Colorado River.

We cub-wrestled and cuddled in the tent every morning.

We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches along creeks.

We cartwheeled through the Salt Flats.

We tagged along to mommy’s work conference in Boise. The girls still talk about the closing party, which was luau-themed.

We earned Junior Ranger Badges from lava rocks.

We hiked around Jenny Lake with my 30-pound “backpack.”

We watched the geysers from Old Faithful Inn.

We cub-wrestled and cuddled some more.

We collected wood for campfires.

We held our noses around the stinky mud pots.

We had snowball fights in July.

We rodeo’d in Wyoming, and stayed afterwards to get the clowns’ autographs.

We meditated among fallen trees in Wyoming, my 6-year-old’s “happy place.” Mine too, girl. Mine too.

We walked along dinosaur tracks.

We earned more Junior Ranger Badges.

We motorcycled through Sturgis.

We panned for gold, explored mines, and rode horses through the Black Hills.

We kayaked in Custer State Park.

We napped whenever we wanted to.

We smiled nicely for the camera.

We drank 5-cent coffee among the jackalopes.

We met up with grandpa and made him buy us all the toys.

We splashed in fountains in Omaha.

We stopped at public parks to get the wiggles out.

We celebrated our wedding anniversary from a children’s museum.

We forgot to make reservations and couldn’t actually go to the top of the arch.

We zoo’d and baseball’d in St. Louis.

We Varisty’d in Atlanta.

After 7 weeks, 20 states, and 7,412 miles, we were home.

We went back-to-school shopping and got our ears pierced.

Our 18-month-old FINALLY started walking. No more 30-pound “backpack” for mommy to carry!!!

We staycationed in Orlando some more.

A couple weeks later, it was time for first grade for the big kid, “Daddy School” for the little kids, and work for mom.

From 5 Weeks Off in 2021…

Last year, in the summer of 2021, my husband and I loaded our 3 kids into our Jeep for a 5-week road trip throughout the southwestern U.S.

In our 1998 Jeep with 275,00 miles.

With our 4-month-old son.

That seemed… normal… for us.

After all, we’d spent 2019 and early 2020 traveling throughout South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Surely we could handle tent-camping for 5 weeks.

My only regret: that it wasn’t longer.

… to 3 Months Off in 2022

I started planning my 2022 summer vacation an entire year in advance:

• scheduling all my client workshops and consulting projects for non-summer months;
• spacing out my online courses to allow for a long summer break; and
• politely declining all volunteer work (podcast interviews, guest lecturing, opportunities to review books and manuscripts, and serving on committees).

And then I took 3 months off.

And nobody minded.

I would say to prospective clients, “I’m not available over the summer, how about a fall training?” It was simple.

There were zero business repercussions.

Quite the opposite.

2022 has been the highest net revenue year yet for Depict Data Studio, despite working the least. Likely because I worked the least, and was the most focused.

It Took Years to Fine-Tune My Own Schedule

My 3-month vacation didn’t happen overnight.

It was 8 years in the making.

My first day of self-employment was September 8, 2014.

Ten days later, my husband turned 30, and he decided he was ready to have kids. This threw me off; we’d been married nearly a decade already (high-school sweethearts) and we’d firmly decided we were on the no-kids track.

After some convincing, I changed my mind, and our first daughter was born in 2015.

In 2015, practically overnight, I transformed from a typical DC-area workaholic into taking several months off for maternity leave. With lots of long-term contracts on my plate, this was no small feat. There was lots of planning. Subcontractors, adjusting timelines, submitting deliverables. During my very first year of self-employment, I was already working part-time. By necessity, not by choice.

In 2016 and 2017, I chose to take off Fridays to be with baby 1. We called them “Field Trip Fridays” and we visited every museum, zoo, and state park within a 2-hour drive of our apartment.

In 2018, baby 2 was born, and despite Field Trip Fridays with my two kiddos, my frequent work travel was taking a toll. I couldn’t stand to be away from my kids. There were lots of homesick flights to/from conferences and client workshops.

In 2019, we sold nearly everything to travel the world with our two kids. This felt logical at the time: Just bring the kids along as I taught dataviz in Guatemala, Zambia, Canada, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Korea… It was a grand adventure and my only regret is not taking the leap sooner.

In 2020, we hunkered down in Florida during the pandemic, fell in love with purple sunsets and palm trees, bought a house, and decided to try for baby 3. I knew I’d be working virtually for a while. It’s rough to be pregnant on planes, so I figured it’d be easier to be pregnant on my own couch during quarantine.

Despite years of Field Trip Fridays and frequent time off, 2021 demanded even more flexibility. Baby 3 arrived early. There were multiple hospital stays. I was grateful that I’d carefully crafted this part-time schedule, one percent at a time, over the past few years. It was another year of working part-time by necessity, not by choice, with the exception of a 5-week not-long-enough camping trip in the middle.

By 2022, it was time to go for it: The full 3-month vacation dream.

What’s In Store for 2023

I’ll continue working the K12 school calendar. When my kids are home from school, the Depict Data Studio office is closed.

I’ve already had to decline speaking at a few summer 2023 conferences. Most of these organizations also host virtual training throughout the year, so it’s simply a “let’s work together in the spring or fall” scenario.

I’ll try to find time for volunteer projects again.

It’s a tough balancing act: Spend a few extra hours on a blog post that a hundred thousand people will skim or speak in a graduate course to just 15 people, which is an intimate setting where we can really connect?

Both volunteering options help the next generation of datavizzers. I’ll probably focus on blogging as my primary volunteering outlet because it has the most efficient “one to many” structure.

Answering Your Questions

Want to work up to regular 3-month vacations and part-time work? What sorts of logistical questions do you have? Ask me anything.

The post How I Took 3 Months Off Work appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Dashboard is a tricky term; it means different things to different people.

In this article, you’ll learn how to:

• choose between various dashboard types (static or interactive, single or series); and
• deal with common dashboard challenges.

Lea Pica’s Present Beyond Measure Podcast

I recently had the chance to be on the Present Beyond Measure podcast, hosted by Lea Pica.

Lea is a seasoned digital analytics practitioner, social media marketer and blogger with over 11 years of experience building search marketing and digital analytics practices for companies.

You can listen to all of Lea’s podcast episodes here.

What’s Inside

Here are some of the topics we talked about:

• All about my journey into data viz and how I leveraged my skills.
• The poll that I use to start the conversation around data dashboards!
• Different perceptions of dashboards and the first steps for client conversations.
• The four types of dashboards and the steps in the planning process.
• The necessary software for dashboard creation and thoughts on the nuances between different programs.
• Tips and tricks for streamlining your data extraction process.
• Challenges that I have seen most often in the dashboard creation process.
• Unpacking the discussion around layout and chart types and my personal approach.
• My recommendation of an impactful book dealing with the power of text placement.
• Why I’m so excited about progress in the field of dashboard creation.

Defining the Term “Dashboard”

I asked Lea to give her definition of a dashboard (hint: there’s a million correct answers!).

Lea said,

“My definition of a dashboard is a single view suite of data chart modules, or data form modules, that are designed to alert a lay audience to the most critical business key performance indicators, business metrics, in a way that they can either make very basic decisions on their own or alert them to ask the proper teams to investigate those chains further.”

Whoa! That’s one of the most sophisticated answers I’ve ever heard.

Different Perceptions of Dashboards

Dashboard software programs are relatively new.

If you’ve entered the field recently, you might associate “dashboards” with specific software programs, like Tableau or PowerBI.

In the past, “dashboards” meant static one-pagers, like a printout or a PDF. For example, you might prepare a one-page handout of key metrics that would be printed and discussed at a board meeting.

How to Plan Your Next Dashboard Project

On the podcast, Lea and I talked about how to plan for your next dashboard project.

Step 1: Define the Term “Dashboard”

First, recognize that each team member has a different idea of the term “dashboard.”

Some people might want to dive in and build a dynamic dashboard.

Others might be envisioning a one-page PDF, or even some slides to discuss at a meeting.

Step 2: Static or Interactive?

Second, talk about whether you need a static or interactive dashboard.

Static means you need a meeting handout or a one-pager of key facts and figures. You could share the one-pager as an email attachment or post it on a website.

Busy leaders don’t have the privilege of time, so providing a one-pager is a gift. It’s like saying, “I’ve already dug through all the messy data, here’s what I think are the key findings for you in this neat, tiny, little package.”

Interactive dashboards (or dynamic dashboards) have drop-down menus, checkboxes, and buttons.  

We’ve all seen and used these dashboards, either on our computers or in our phone apps.

But, sometimes people don’t need or want that much information.

Technical audiences will probably appreciate an interactive dashboard, but non-technical audiences might appreciate a one-pager.

In the podcast, you’ll hear Lea and I discuss the mismatches we see.

Technical people like using interactive dashboards, so we make interactive dashboards. We have to pause and remember that our audiences might be non-technical, and they might prefer a static one-pager.

Step 3: Single or Series?

Third, figure out whether you a single dashboard or lots and lots of matching dashboards.

For example, leaders at a state education agency might need an overview of all the schools, aggregated together.

Principals would benefit from seeing their own school’s data.

Within a single project, you might need a single dashboard (the overview for the state education agency) and a series of matching dashboards (one per school for each of the principals).

Step 4: Choose Your Software Program

Finally, choose your software program.

Audience decisions should come before software decisions.

I’m a big fan of everyday software, so I tend to make most of my dashboards in Microsoft Excel.

Excel, PowerPoint, and Word are the common language among all the groups I work with, and I think people are pleasantly surprised to see how much Excel can do.

Common Dashboard Challenges

In the podcast, Lea and I discussed common dashboard challenges.

Designing Your First Dashboard

Getting your first dashboard set up is the hardest part.

If you’ve got a dashboard, I’d love to give you five gold stars, seriously.

You might have needed to hire new staff, attend training, or spend hours fiddling with that first dashboard. Celebrate your wins, vizard.

Making Sure Your Dashboard Isn’t Too Dense

Then, we talked about some specific design challenges.

The biggest challenge I see is volume, or how much we try to include in a dashboard.

I see a lot of dashboards that look very full. They’ve got so many charts. They’re bursting at the seams.

If that happens in your project, take a time-out. Try to remember which one audience this dashboard is for.

It can’t be for your boss, board members, the public, fellow staff, and your peers.

Each of those groups is going to need different charts, so if you try to fit everyone’s information requests inside a single dashboard, it starts to overflow.

Pick your one audience, and then prioritize the data points that your one audience needs.

Use Familiar Bar Charts, or Variety?

Another common dashboard challenge is choosing the right chart type.

I come from a research background, so my go-to chart type is bar charts.

I have way too many bar charts. My drafts are bar, bar, bar, bar. As I edit, I add more variety.

There’s a delicate trade-off between adding variety and sticking with everyday charts, though.

In the podcast, you’ll hear Lea say that she sees a benefit in using everyday charts.

“People immediately understand what they’re supposed to understand from seeing those [familiar] charts. There’s no learning curve, there’s no training gap,” Lea explained.

In the podcast, you’ll also hear me talk about a recent client. Their dataset has three nested levels (i.e.., categories, subcategories, and sub-subcategories).

We brainstormed several options for their dashboard: a tree diagram, sunburst diagram, and Sankey diagram. Together, we weighed the pros and cons of each approach: What does it highlight? How easy is it for someone else to understand? Is this the pattern we really want to emphasize—or not?

But another consideration is time and software options. Is it worth the staff time to develop those charts for the dashboard? Or do we stick with the usual bar charts?

Book Recommendation: I Am a Book

In the podcast, you’ll hear Lea ask me whether I’ve read any good data or design books recently.

I mentioned I Am a Book. I Am a Portal to the Universe by Stefanie Posavec and Miriam Quick.

This book has my favorite text placement of all time. The Nobel Prize for text placement! It gave me permission to use huge fonts, diagonal fonts, and even circular fonts. What a masterpiece.

The Future of Data Storytelling

Finally, Lea and I talked about the future of data storytelling.

“I can’t wait until I can stop talking about some of the topics I’m talking about,” I said.

“Let’s re-record this in 10 years and our dashboard conversation, I cannot wait for that to be a different conversation.”

I can’t wait to stop saying that some interactive dashboards should actually be static.

I can’t wait to stop saying that non-technical and technical audiences have different dashboard preferences.

I can’t wait to stop saying that the leaders and the doers have different information needs.

Your Turn

What does the term “dashboard” mean to you? Every workplace has a slightly different definition.

What type of dashboard do you need for your project? Static or interactive? Single or series?

What are some of the most common dashboard challenges you’ve seen?

Connect with Lea Pica

Website: leapica.com

The Present Beyond Measure Podcast: leapica.com/podcast

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/leapica

The post How to Plan for Your Next Dashboard [Lea Pica’s Present Beyond Measure Podcast] appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Samir Sharma is a data strategy and analytics leader, CEO and Founder of datazuum. He has a history of helping data executives and leaders craft and execute their data strategies. His passion for data strategy led him to launch the Data Accelerator Workshop and host the Data Strategy Show.

Watch the Podcast

Listen to the Podcast

You can also listen to the podcast here:

• Stitcher
• Apple Podcasts

What’s Inside 

Here are some of the topics we talked about.

Challenges Faced by Companies Trying to Visualize Their Data

Samir asked what are typical data visualization challenges that come up again and again. Ann said, “I think a big challenge I see with organizations is the people with data backgrounds, I think it’s so easy for us to forget that not everybody is a data person. I have to constantly remind myself, ‘Most people hate spreadsheets. They see it as a chore, and a burden, it’s just overly detailed and they can’t find what they need.”

While Samir serves as the bridge between business leaders and more data focused people, Ann noted that “if you’re trained in the weeds and details like I was, you’re never exposed to those business leaders. You have no training on how to work with those people necessarily.

Ann said she sees, “Organizations that will spend weeks or months creating the perfect dashboard or the perfect such and such tool. But they’ve never really tested it along the way. And they’ll get user feedback like, “I don’t like the colors.” Something really irrelevant but it just show the user is not really thinking deeply about the data because they weren’t engaged in the process.”

What We Should be Thinking About When Creating or Re-Designing Dashboards

“I see people assuming that developing a dashboard is going to take forever and cost a ton of money. That it’s going to be this months long process where they have to buy this new software program, they have to send their staff to training on this software program, they have to link all these data sources…”, Ann said. “They think it’s going to be this huge process so they think as long as this dashboard is taking forever, it better serve all of our needs. It better be this audience and this audience and this audience.”

Ann shared that during the planning process of each new project, she asks, “Who is this dashboard for?”

How to Learn More about Data Visualization

Samir asked what Ann’s advice would be for someone who wants was starting out in data visualization. Ann said, “I think a lot of us get wrapped up in tools, but there are so many tools available, more being invented. I think it’s really stressful, daunting, overwhelming for someone entering the field [to think], do I learn coding? Do I do the spreadsheet route? Do I do a drag-and-drop-dashboard route like Tableau or Power BI? There’s also the more graphic design route like do you specialize in Illustrator? Publisher? I think we feel like we have to master all of them and that’s just not possible. You’d spend your whole career just learning tools.

She advises to earn what’s out there and then specialize in just one tool. “I had this big crossroads maybe five years ago where I felt this pressure to go learn R. I just felt so much pressure and I just had to kind of let that go,” Ann said.

“The first step to getting started is letting go of this ridiculous, ambitious goal that we have that, ‘I’m going to learn every single tool, get certifications in it. I’m going to put all these skills in my resume.’ Just learn a tool and very, very comfortable and confident with that.”

Connect with Samir Sharma

LinkedIn: @samirsharma1

Website: www.datazuum.com

The post The Data Strategy Show with Samir Sharma appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Women in Data is an international non-profit organization started in 2015 whose mission is to bring women together for career advancement and an opportunity to uplift one another. They have chapters throughout the world and each hold quarterly symposiums that include enlightening talks, expert panels and networking opportunities. 

Co-presenter Rebecca Pop is the founder of Vizlogue, a data visualization and storytelling lab that offers training and consulting services. 

Watch the Recorded Panel 

What’s Inside 

Here are some of the topics addressed during the panel. 

• Can you share your personal journey and how you got started with data visualization? 
• How do you approach data visualization problems? When you are working on a dataset, do you have standard steps/best practices that you follow every time? Are there any key focus areas one should be mindful of? Ann said, “Something so important to know in advance, is whether your audience is technical or non-technical. Technical audiences are people who like data, who love opening a spreadsheet, and are in a data career on purpose. Non-technical audiences are the opposite. They’d rather hire a consultant or let another staff member handle it. It’s probably the last thing on their to do that they want to tackle (and they probably procrastinate!)” 
• Important aspects to keep in mind while working with data are data integrity and data ethics. What is your take on data integrity and data ethics?  
• For someone just getting started in data visualization, it can be overwhelming with the number of tools and courses available these days, what is your advice for beginners? Can you also share some resources? Ann said, “At first, learn the one-hour version of about 10 different tools, but then take a 10-hour training on just one tool and go deeper and specialize. There’s a lot of great courses out there.”  
• What is the future of data visualization? How do you anticipate data visualization to differ in the coming years? 
• Data visualization is a very competitive field, how can one stand out from the crowd and make an impression? Ann said, “Don’t worry too much about having to be the best at everything, I don’t think it’s even possible. Just pick one and play on the strength that you already have and make that public in some way… For example, if you like Tableau post a lot of visualizations on your Tableau public profile. If you like R, post to your code on Github and connect with other people.” 
• What are the key skills required to be successful in data viz? How important is the tool? Ann said, “Chart choosing [is so important]. Are you going to use a pie chart, bar chart or something else altogether? It’s very difficult to take a table, rows and columns of summary statistics and figure out what chart that is going to be. I think a lot of people go to the standards like pie charts or bar charts.” She added, “One activity that you can try for yourself is find a table of data, set a timer for 10-15 minutes and see how many ideas you can come up with in that time period. When I started doing this, I could only come up with a couple of ideas in a 15-minute brainstorming session. Now I come up with 15 ideas in that same time period.” 

Learn More 

Here are some of the resources we mentioned during the panel: 

• The 3-step process for sharing data with users through data placemats: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ev.20181  
• Ann’s favorite dataviz podcasts, which were mentioned in the Q&A after the recording ended: Explore Explain with Andy Kirk, Data Stories with Enrico Bertini and Moritz Stefaner, Data + Love with Zach Bowders, Data Viz Today with Alli Torban and Storytelling with Data with Cole Knaflic.

The post Women in Data appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Side note: If you’re on the fence about joining social media… Social media can be the first step towards forging long-lasting friendships with colleagues. Go for it!

In addition to her career as an evaluator, and her busy teaching schedule as a professor, Dana recently launched the EvaluLand podcast.

On her podcast, we talked about my unexpected shift from being an evaluator to a data visualization designer, along with my tips getting started working for yourself or teaching online.

Watch Our Conversation

Listen to the Episode

Or, listen to the episode here: https://evaluland.fireside.fm/8

Ann’s Trajectory into Evaluation

Here’s a recap of what we discussed.

Dana: I’m curious how you transitioned from evaluation and research work into what you do now?

Ten years ago, it was a really big deal to do anything besides a technical report.

That was the norm (and in some work places, still is).

At a conference, we stood up and said, “What if we have a technical report but we also have a one-pager for each of the 30 schools in this project? That way, each school can view their own data? And what if, instead of tediously copying and pasting from Excel to Word, we just write some VBA code to automate the process and save days of time?”

These concepts were groundbreaking at the time.

Fast forward a few more jobs, to when I worked with foundations. I would help train their nonprofits on evaluation, data collection, data analysis, and data visualization.

I remember thinking, “This is my favorite thing in the world! I like teaching more than I like writing the actual reports myself.”

I got to work on technical assistance projects about one day a week and realized I wanted to do that five days a week.

At the time, I was working and earning my master’s degree at night. Friends, family, and colleagues kept asking me, “What’s next for you, once your graduate?” I had no idea. I hadn’t intended on switching jobs. But people kept asking, so I kept thinking about it.

I remember telling my husband, “Someday, when we’re 65 and I retire, I’m going to do data viz training full-time!”

And he said to me, “But that’s decades away! You’re 28. That’s a long time to wait. You’re really going to put off your dreams for decades?”

And I thought, “I guess I should do this now. Why would I put my life on hold?”

I aready had a good job. It was risky to leave something good in hopes that it would lead to something great. I pulled the trigger, and seven years later, the rest is history.

Ann’s Career Shift: From Evaluator to Entrepreneur

Dana: I want to talk a little bit about how your career has shifted. What’s been the difference for you between entrepreneurship and independent consulting? How has that transition been for you?

My identity has certainly shifted over the years.

Way back, I started as a researcher who was going to do a Ph.D. program.

Then, I was an evaluator in salaried positions for a while.

Then, in my one of my first projects as an independent consultant, I was a one-woman evaluation team. At the time, it was perfectly feasible to work on the project all by myself.

My specialty, though, is data visualization. And there’s a huge demand for that. It got to a point where it didn’t make sense to turn down the data viz jobs that I’m passionate about. There was a natural transition where I began training evaluators on how to do data viz.

Then, a few years later, I shifted to, “I’m a data visualization designer.”

It was truly only a year ago that I shifted my thinking to, “I’m actually this ‘entrepreneur’ people talk about.”

I was in a book club of fellow data analysts who are self-employed. We’d read a book together every quarter. One time, we read Company of One by Paul Jarvis together. Paul talks about the value of staying small and nimble.

The measure of success used to be how many employees your business has. Paul presented new metrics of success:

• How much time do you have with your family?
• How profitable are you?
• How many hours a day do you have to work?
• Are you able to scale?
• Are you just being paid by the hour? So if you take an hour off, you don’t get paid? Or do you have passive income coming in?

I was so persuaded by the idea that small is great.

My setup now is very lean. It’s me plus a 5 hour/week assistant. I did at one point have up to 10 subcontractors, where one person designed the icons, one person created the report cover, etc. I was trying to coordinate all of it while I was traveling around the world teaching workshops. I’d be waiting in line to board a day-long flight to another continent, trying to clumsily thumb-type instructions to contractors to keep the projects moving. It was just too many details and wasn’t any fun. I focus on trainings now not only because I love it, but also to save my sanity.

I don’t consider myself moonlighting. I’m not a consultant or a freelancer. Depict Data Studio is definitely a company with a clear structure, processes, automations, and regular passive income. I have a workflow where I do this, and then my assistant does this. And we try to avoid as much manual work as possible, letting the tech do the tedious tasks for us.

How to Start Online Courses

Dana: I’d like to talk about your online courses and how you got into them. What’s your number one tip for somebody interested in doing this? I’m personally struggling with this because I teach and my university brings in income through the students who I bring into the program. So, I’m not sure how I should/could do this personally.

A decade ago, I started teaching about data very informally at brown bags for fellow staff members in my company.

Word spread that Ann knows this Excel shortcut, and Ann can take a spreadsheet and turn it into a dashboard fairly seamlessly.

It came pretty naturally to me and I just assumed it did for everyone else too. How lucky am I that it doesn’t, because I’ll be employed for a while that way!

People started asking me for help. I started blogging around the same time, and making very informal YouTube videos as well. I simply started YouTubing to answer the questions I was getting. I kept getting the same questions over and over, and realized there were thing everyone was struggling with. I didn’t have time to answer everyone individually as I was taking graduate classes myself and had a very demanding job.

I would go home at the end of a long day and I would record a little 2- to 5- minute answer to their question, and then post the video on YouTube. I loved doing that and found it so gratifying to teach. It feels really good as a service to the community to help other people.

A few years later, Chris Lysy from Fresh Spectrum said to me, “Wow, you actually enjoy being on camera. Most people hate it. Why don’t you make an online course?” I pushed back that I already had blog posts and YouTube videos. The software didn’t quite exist yet that would allow me to turn disparate YouTube tutorials into a planned course, and I’d never seen this done before. Chris planted the idea, and I thought about it on and off for the next few years.

I went for it in Spring of 2018. I made a complimentary mini course using my favorite pre-existing YouTube videos I already had.

Then, I started making full-length paid courses. I was translating what I’ve already been doing with clients in-person to a virtual setting Not everybody is going to fly me out to teach all 30 of their staff. Some people are self-employed, some people are based in other countries, some companies have staff located in multiple offices, etc. There are so many benefits to offering courses online. Participants can learn whenever it’s convenient for their own schedule.

From there, it just grew and grew, and I now have six full-length courses (which are each the equivalent of a two-day workshop). I offer Office Hours where students can ask me questions. We hold live sessions with guest speakers. We’ve built ebooks, handouts, and checklists. There are opportunities to submit work and get feedback. And, the early birds even get Swag Bags with t-shirts and stickers as a treat for signing up early. It’s grown very slowly, intentionally but slowly.

That being said, although I have six full courses now, that’s not a realistic starting point for anybody. I recommend people start exactly how I did: Make a very short courses that’s 30 to 60 minutes long on a topic you’ve already presented about (e.g., at a conference or staff meeting). Start with the audience’s favorite presentation that people love every time. Or, start with your favorite presentation that you’re really excited about.

Take that 30- to 60-minute talk and record it. Not all in one video, of course! Maybe there are four lessons inside your talk. Turn that into four shorter videos. You could give it away for free if you’re trying to build your email list. Or, sell it.

Recycling Content

Dana: I know you always talk about recycling your content and I’m realizing I don’t do that very well. I’ve got this perfect demonstration I did at a conference in 2018 on how to survey children. There’s really not much out there and it was based on my thesis. People ate it up! That would be a perfect one to maybe build up more but it could be pretty ready to go. That actually really excites me, so thank you!

I bet your slides are 90% done and you remember 90% of your speaking points.

I bet you have clear breaks in your presentation by topics where you can record this 10 minutes, this 10 minutes and so on.

You can make it interactive just like you do a regular presentation. Not just “Does anyone have any questions?” at the end, but you can say “Comment below the video” or “Try it out and come back and reflect on this here.”

I bet you could transform that talk into a recorded course in half a day. You’ve already recorded yourself online (through your professor position in virtual school this semester), and you already know how to do podcasts. It’s going to be really easy for you to do this.

Chris Lysy taught me about recycling content. At a past conference presentation, he was saying, what a shame that we all fly to conferences. We spend all this time prepping our presentation. We have amazing learning for a couple of days. We then go home. Learning doesn’t have to stop! What if we also wrote a blog post with key takeaways from our presentation? At a bare minimum, write a blog post. But you could make a video course based on that conference presentation.

Sharing Resources and Expertise

Dana: I wish more people would blog, create podcasts, and share their resources. The reason I blog is to share all of this. It makes me sad when people feel like they need to hoard their information and never share out of fear. I want to learn something and share it. Why should everybody do the same work over and over again? Instead, you can take what I’ve done and make something more of it.

There’s definitely a misconception in the consulting space where, if you share your perfect expertise and knowledge in a blog post, other consultants will steal it. Or, nobody will hire you.

I’ve had the complete opposite experience.

The more tips I share online, the more business I get.

One person from a group’s team will be on my newsletter list, have followed my blog, or maybe seen me speak. They want everyone else on their team to benefit and learn from me. So, when it’s time to bring in a speaker, they naturally reach out to me. Then everybody on their team gets to benefit, and I get to keep a roof over my head. I have never lost business over anything I’ve shared online.

I also think that sharing knowledge leads to so much life satisfaction.

One of my favorite books of all time is Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin.

It’s a financial book, kind of. But it’s really about life purpose and making sure that the limited days you’re alive are spent really well, and that you’re making the world a better place. That you’re not just consuming and giving yourself temporary happiness by buying a new purse or going on vacation. But, instead, you’re giving yourself lasting satisfaction by creating rather than consuming. Vicki Robin talks about how the tippy-top of ultimate happiness is achieved by giving to others and being of service to others.

And that’s why I love teaching, too. Because you clearly see the impact that you have on helping other people out. And, you get to stay in business while you do it. It’s such a natural path for me. I highly recommend teaching online. But just start small.

Shifting from a Scarcity Mindset to an Abundance Mindset

I used to have the scarcity mindset where, if I don’t accept this project, even though it’s not a good fit, maybe the client will never want to work with me again.

But then I transformed very slowly into an abundance mindset. My thinking is, “There’s plenty of work to go around, and plenty of people to help. It’s not like if you help somebody else, your career goes down the toilet. It’s not that. It’s just that you have this amazing network of really talented, hardworking people around you that you get to collaborate with.”

Merging Personal and Professional Ann

I used to have Professional Ann and Personal Ann.

Professional Ann wore suits and heels to work, and worked by the White House. Sure, I talked to my co-workers, but I wasn’t sharing my life with them.

Here’s Professional Ann:

Meanwhile, here’s Personal Ann, a Wild Child riding her Harley in the Salt Flats during her fourth cross-country trip:

It was a weird tension. I realized that at some point in my life I’d have to merge them and be myself all the time.

I finally got the courage to do that and share many things about my life. I share 90% of how I’m feeling on my InstaStories and don’t filter myself. Deven Wisner asked me, “How do you decide to share online? What’s your strategy?” My answer was, “I don’t think about it.”

The tipping point for me was that I started getting emails from other women in data. These emails basically said, “I was on the fence about starting blogging/speaking/etc, but I saw you doing it and thought, ‘I can do it too!'”

For about a year, I honestly hated those messages. I never wanted to be known. I just wanted to share data. It wasn’t a goal to grow an audience.

I felt really reluctantly placed on a pedestal.

I didn’t want to be this role model for women in data. I didn’t ask for that. But here I am. So, I thought, “Well, okay, I owe it to them to be a leader and be a role model. And to not just show the great parts of working for yourself, but also the not-so-great parts.”

Dana: I wonder if the sharing more of the personal side helps to humanize you more so that people don’t put you on a pedestal. I certainly don’t want to be on a pedestal. And every person I’ve put on a pedestal has toppled.

If you need somebody good to follow on Instagram who’s at the top of her career game but also is so real, I’d suggest Farnoosh Torabi. She’s a finance expert with a NY Times Bestselling book. On her InstaStories, she’ll share what her life is like as she’s getting ready to be interviewed on national television. Her makeup turned out weird, or her kids are throwing a fit and crying on the floor. Farnoosh is this amazing, professional woman who has so much expertise, but she’s also a real person. It just makes me love her more. I’m learning not just about finance, but what it’s like behind the scenes. The more she shares, the more I admire her for being herself online.

Teaching in the Virtual World

Dana: What kind of tips do you have for those of us teaching in this virtual world now?

I think there’s this misconception that every video has to be perfect if it’s recorded.

And that to be professional means you have perfect posture. Or you sit very stiffly and not move at all.

Early on, my speaking points were perfect. I wouldn’t use any casual language like um, so, or hmmm. I sounded like a robot! Nobody wants to listen to a boring robot. We want to connect with real human beings.

How to Be Natural On Camera

I’m a fan on planning in bullet point form, but I don’t recommend reading off a script.

I have tried multiple approaches including:

• “The show must go on.” You have one take! Keep recording even if you make a mistake. That’s what you’d sound like in-person, after all.
• Starting and stopping and starting and stopping, and then editing the recording afterwards to make it “perfect.” This takes five times longer!

I highly recommend recording everything in a single take. It’s more like teaching live. And, you’ll sound more like a real person. Embrace the hiccups and just deal with whatever happens.

Teaching Data Viz Around the World

Dana: I would love to talk a little bit about travel because I know you did travel a lot before COVID-19 hit. How did you get into it? How you did you do it? How did this process work for you? How can others with this dream of traveling either for or outside of work do this as well?

This could be a whole other podcast! Here’s the 30-second answer. I’m starting year seven of my business, but in year one we decided to have kids. (I started working for myself, and a week later my husband turned 30, and said, “I’m ready to be a dad now!” And I said, “No!” We were high school sweethearts, so we’ve been together forever, and kids were never in the plan. I came around, and we’ve never regretted it.)

I had all these great data viz trainings that I was traveling for, but I also just wanted to be home for bath time.

I felt like I had to pick, am I going to quit my job or be a stay-at-home mom?

We thought, what if my husband quits his job, and we sold our house and our belongings? It felt very logical to us. The family came along and we traveled for this perfect year until COVID flipped everything upside down.

What is Something in Evaluation that is Giving You Life Right Now?

Dana: What is something in evaluation that is giving you life right now?

I’ve got two.

The first one is evaluators who were never into cultural competence or racial equity are getting into it now and really taking the topic seriously due to the Black Lives Matter movement. That’s so exciting for me to see all of those ‘Aha!’ moments going on for people to recognize that white people have been really privileged for a long time and it’s our responsibility to do something about it.

And the second one is that, ten years ago, when I gave a dashboard presentation at a national conference, I had suggested also creating a one-pager to accompany a technical report. It was groundbreaking at the time. Luckily, that’s not the case anymore. I see evaluators making slideshows, one-pagers, infographics, and dashboards, and thinking so carefully about what stakeholders can actually use to inform decisions and make better programs. It makes me really hopeful to think of what’s next in evaluation.

Resources

Dana: Do you have any resources that you’d like to share?

My resource recommendation is my mini course, Soar Beyond the Dusty Shelf Report. It’s really a mindset course to get you thinking about what impact, if any, are your reports having now. And it’s not just reports, but infographics, dashboards, slideshows, etc. In the course, I give examples of what’s possible with reports, and share some tried-and-true tips like the 30-3-1 approach.

Your Turn

Comment below: What surprised you about our conversation? Do you have additional questions about careers in evaluation or data visualization?

The post Solopreneurship on the EvaluLand Podcast appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

In spring 2018, we started brainstorming about a lifestyle change.

My speaking opportunities were taking me all over the world—a dream!

But, meanwhile, I had a cute kid at home. And another baby on the way. I didn’t want to miss bath time or bedtime stories.

If only my husband and kids could come along on my trips, I sighed.

Sure, my husband had vacation time. But I traveled almost every single week. Sometimes I’d city-hop, speaking in two, three, or four cities consecutively before heading back home. I wanted to be with my family all the time.

Should I quit my job entirely? We considered it.

Should my husband quit his job entirely? We considered it.

We did the spreadsheet math a dozen times. My husband’s job came with benefits, a pension, and a top secret security clearance. Should he really give up his career… for mine? Would he regret it? Would he resent me? These were months-long discussions.

My job had unlimited earning potential. His didn’t.

His job had world-class benefits. Mine didn’t.

In the end, my job was more than a job. And his wasn’t.

Realizing We Could Live Anywhere

It took another year of planning until my husband resigned.

Why so long? Freedom can freeze you. With his job out of the picture, we realized we could live anywhere.

We considered staying put in our suburb of Washington, D.C. But after 30 years there, we were both ready for a change.

We considered moving back into our two-bedroom condo in Charlottesville, Virginia. We bought the condo as college students in 2007, and we had rented it out since then, paying extra until it was paid off entirely. It was tempting to move into our paid-off condo, be able to pay the rest of our bills simply off my YouTube money, and just sit around and enjoy life. We entertained this idea for months. In the end, we wanted a new adventure, and decided to sell our condo entirely.

There was also the key issue of my speaking schedule. It didn’t make sense to have a home base if I’d be in a new city every week.

I’ve practically lived out of suitcases for six years, and I’ve loved it. Some people need roots. Others need wings.

We considered full-time RVing. Who doesn’t love the great outdoors?? I dreamed about the national parks we could visit with our kids. We’d taken four cross-country motorcycle trips together in our twenties and the open road was calling. The only obstacles to RVing: I need 24-hour internet. And, I didn’t have the luxury of time to drive around from city to city; I needed to fly between cities.

We wanted to live like RVers… but without the RV.

In January 2019, we decided to become full-time Airbnb-ers! The plan was to travel wherever my job took us for at least two years—until our older daughter started kindergarten. We had the perfect window. We decided to go for it.

Downsizing Our Belongings

In spring 2019, much to our surprise, our rental property and our primary residence both sold within weeks of listing them for sale.

We sold, donated, and discarded as much as possible. We listed items on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. We held “indoor yard sales” in our garage on the weekends. We’d been downsizing for five years, since discovering minimalism, but still had so much remaining.

We thought about the handful of items that we’d be willing to pay to store for the 2+ years we’d be traveling, and pared our belongings down to a handful of favorites. My husband’s toolbox. Quilts our mothers had made for us.

We sold our motorcycles. Our bicycles. Nearly all of the kids’ toys (they’d developmentally grow out of those toys after two years of traveling). Couches. Rugs. Picture frames. Two TVs.

We sold my office furniture. My filing cabinets. That spare box of electronics wires that was sitting in the closet for years. I used the dining room table as my desk for two months.

We got rid of all the paper except the past seven years of tax-related papers.

We scanned and then discarded photographs.

We donated books to the library.

We filled an entire recycling bin with that seems-important-at-the-time-but-doesn’t-matter-years-later minutiae of bills and receipts.

We let go of high school yearbooks.

We let go of our own childhood toys and scrapbooks.

We didn’t have to get rid of anything. We could’ve shoved everything into storage. We were clearing our lives of physical and mental clutter to make space for something bigger and better.

We sold the mattress out from under us, and then slept on camping mats for a week.

I KonMari-d my clothes until my walk-in closet was down to carry-on luggage + a few bins of seasonal items for our storage unit.

I went from dozens of pairs of shoes to three: a pair of everyday tennis shoes, a pair of flip flops, and a pair of black leather shoes for speaking events.

I became free.

In April 2019, we waved farewell to Dakota’s preschool and said hello to “Daddy School,” aka #WorldSchooling,  which is the term for homeschooling that takes place in and around the world.

I set up my husband as a contractor of my business, and then paid him his old salary.

We practice-packed our Jeep to see whether our one-bag-and-one-backpack-each stuff would even fit…

… and we fit all our bags into our Jeep with space to spare. Phew!

We even had space for a box of books…

… and a bin of toys.

We survived carrying the world’s heaviest washer and dryer down three flights of stairs (with only one little knick in the drywall)… and into a trailer… and across town to their new owners.

We pushed carts and carried stuff and carried backpacks and carried babies x 1 million to get our remaining stuff into a 10x10x6 storage unit.

Then we closed the door to our storage unit.

We waved goodbye to our home.

And we drove away for the last time.

May 2019: The Beginning of Full-Time Travel

It was time for our biggest adventure yet!

We’d always loved Florida since honeymooning there years earlier. And who doesn’t love Disney? Florida was the perfect place to start our trip.

We spent our first five weeks in Daytona Beach, where I continued running Depict Data Studio from my “home” office at our Airbnb on the beach. I’d work during the day while my husband took the girls on field trips to nature preserves, museums, and libraries.

I managed a remote team of ~10 subcontractors.

I took days off so we could visit Disney together.

We watched the minor league baseball team on $1 beer nights.

We toured the local chocolate factory more times than I can count because they always give you free samples at the end.

We watched a SpaceX launch from our balcony.

Our four-year-old learned to hold her breath underwater in the pool.

We buried ourselves in sand.

We danced along the beach every night.

I got pickier about work projects to clear time for living. To my surprise, business boomed.

And I woke up next to my angels every morning.

We spent a week in Boise for a conference and a client training.

I flew to Indianapolis by myself for a quick 24-hour trip.

We spent two weeks watching the dolphins swim in the bay in St. Petersburg, Florida.

I finished building my Great Graphs: Design Principles course from the Airbnb during the day, and we relaxed in the hot tub at night.

We spent a week in New York while I was there speaking; fell in love with “Lady Liberty;” and still mimic her pose today.

We drooled on our chin in Central Park.

We went back to the D.C. area for my job.

We spent three consecutive weeks in downtown Atlanta while I was there speaking—our fourth trip to Atlanta that year—and took field trips to the most amazing aquarium we’ve ever been to.

We flew to Guatemala to teach data visualization.

In between my speaking engagements there, I partnered with clients to redesign their dashboards, infographics, reports, and slideshows.

I took a day off to ride horses up the side of Volcan Pacaya, and we roasted marshmallows at the top with our new German friend.

I took another day off to skip rocks in Panajachel.

We carried the world’s heaviest children through Tikal because there were just too tired to walk another step.

Our children felt their privilege. A few hours later, we got food poisoning.

We flew back to Atlanta again.

We celebrated my husband’s birthday in Zambia while I was there teaching data visualization. And then he got food poisoning. On his birthday.

We let the Zambian kids touch our girls’ “yellow hair” when they asked, because they’d never felt that texture before.

We flew from Africa to Canada so I could speak with a few groups there. I had–you guessed it–food poisoning. I excused myself mid-training… threw up in a trash can in the hallway… and went back in and continued teaching.

We celebrated our girls’ birthdays in Nova Scotia.

We rented a house along the beach, and roasted marshmallows in our fire pit every night.

My dad flew from D.C. to Nova Scotia to spend time with us for two weeks.

I designed and recorded my entire Report Redesign online course while looking out at the ocean.

I woke up next to my angels every morning.

We flew back to Washington, D.C. for work and to see family.

I got even pickier about work projects to clear time for living. To my surprise, business boomed.

My husband accidentally threw away half our remaining clothes.

In his defense, I accidentally put our dirty laundry in a trash bag… next to all the other bags of trash.

We went trick-or-treating in downtown Madison, Wisconsin while I was there speaking.

We hung out with Cole Knaflic in Milwaukee.

We explored childrens’ museums in Illinois while I was there keynoting a conference.

We drove to Chicago and I took a day off for exploring, and then we started our four-month-adventure in Southeast Asia. (!!!)

We packed the essentials. One carry-on suitcase and one backpack each, plus our stroller and baby carrier. We left everything else in our Jeep, which we parked at my dad’s house for the winter.

We enjoyed a stopover in Taipei.

We took the kids on tuk tuks on three different continents.

We watched Frozen 2–several times–at the movie theaters in Thailand.

We took them on field trips to museums and aquariums.

We ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together every day from food carts.

We learned Thai dancing.

We went to carnivals.

Fish nibbled on our feet.

We celebrated my birthday.

We celebrate Thanksgiving.

I designed and recorded my entire Dashboard Design online course in Bangkok from a separate Airbnb down the street.

We assumed we’d take weekend trips to Thai beaches, but stayed in Bangkok for an entire month straight, because it was that magical.

We went to Hanoi to teach data visualization.

We made best friends in every city.

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A post shared by Ann K. Emery (@annkemery) on Dec 7, 2019 at 2:23am PST

We washed our clothes and hung them on the balcony to dry.

Then it started pouring before we put the clothes away, so we re-washed and re-dried again and again and again.

I spent 30 minutes working up the nerve to cross the street to walk to work each morning because there really is that much traffic.

We spent a weekend cruising in Ha Long Bay.

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A post shared by Ann K. Emery (@annkemery) on Dec 9, 2019 at 3:38am PST

I took a day off work to explore the Golden Bridge outside of Da Nang.

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We made best friends in every city.

We spent our December evenings strolling along the beaches in Da Nang.

We soaked up the magical lanterns in Hoi An.

We packed up and flew from Vietnam to Japan.

We figured out Tokyo’s subway system, the most advanced public transportation system we’ve ever seen.

We bought hats and gloves, because after spending the past two months in Thailand and Vietnam, Japan’s winter was freezing.

We spent Christmas Day in Tokyo Disneyland. And then went back four more times because it was that magical.

We carried the heaviest kids in the world up the Tokyo Tower, because they were just too tired to walk another step.

I designed and recorded my Powerful Presentations online course.

I woke up early and stayed up late to speak on podcasts and do client consulting calls.

We scramble-crossed, and then scramble-crossed again and again and again because it was that magical.

We took a train from Tokyo to Osaka on New Year’s Eve so that we could see Mount Fuji out the window… stood the entire way because everyone else in the world was traveling on New Year’s Eve… and almost missed seeing Mount Fuji entirely.

We ate overpriced sushi on New Year’s Day in Osaka because none of the grocery stores were open.

We drank butter beer at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Osaka.

We cooked dinner on our one-burner stove.

We didn’t have an oven for our entire four months in Southeast Asia. We had no idea how to cook with the local ingredients. The grown-ups each lost 25 pounds. (Then we gained it back during quarantine.)

We got our adrenaline pumping in Japan’s reptile cafes.

We hung out with Garr Reynolds in Osaka.

We flew to Seoul and instantly felt at home in the Washington, D.C.-esque vibe.

We marveled at the enormity and sophistication of Seoul.

I recorded more lessons for Simple Spreadsheets in between client consulting projects.

Our four-year-old joined the scooter gang at the playground across the street from our apartment.

We marveled at the parents’ patience as they taught us to say Korean greetings.

We felt so at home in Korea that we considered staying an entire year and enrolling our kids in school there.

And then, as soon as it began, it was time to cut out trip short and come home.

In January, we had become aware of the virus when our trip to Beijing was abruptly canceled.

By early February, Seoul started shutting down. Our Airbnb closed, along with most hotels, and we had nowhere to go. Delta booked us an immediate flight home, we shoved our clothes in our suitcases, and left a few hours later.

We spent three weeks in Oregon to visit my husband’s family.

I recorded interviews with data experts during the day while my husband ran Daddy School and visited his grandma and cousins.

We flew to California where I keynoted a conference, making sure to visit downtown San Francisco for a few hours before we headed to the airport.

I led workshops in the Washington, D.C. area.

Then the world paused.

We hunkered down in Orlando where our healthcare plan is based. If/when we need a hospital stay during this hellish pandemic, it’ll be cheaper to be sick here than anywhere else.

I built Look Professional on Camera to share my behind-the-scenes tips for working remotely with only the technology that fits in a backpack.

I re-recorded Soar Beyond the Dusty Shelf Report.

And then we hunkered down some more.

I never had big dreams to collect passport stamps. It was simply more practical to bring the family around the world with me on work trips vs. be homesick and feel like I was missing everyday moments like bath time. So we may not be traveling anywhere exotic right now… but that was never the point.

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What It’s Like Not Having a Home… During a Pandemic

We had initially planned to travel for two years (until our oldest daughter starts kindergarten).

But, halfway into our journey, this chapter has closed.

Am I frustrated that the virus ended my dreams of traveling with my family? Absolutely.

Am I grateful that we had the opportunity to travel at all? Absolutely.

It’s difficult for any family to hunker down and stay indoors for months, but it’s even more difficult when you’re in a rental that’s not your own. I need basic things, like a desk.

With nowhere to go, we’re buying a house!

We envisioned buying a house in Florida after two years of travel, so our timeline has simply been pushed up a year.

Do you see the window above the garage? Say hello to the new Depict Data Studio world headquarters! I can’t wait to start remodeling the studio space.

My Goal

I’m not here to convince anyone to sell all your stuff and travel the world.

This lifestyle is a perfect fit for my family. It could be a terrible fit for you.

My goal is to open your eyes about what’s possible.

Five years ago, I listened to a podcast where the guests were able to live anywhere they wanted because they could work remotely from their laptops. I was exposed to the terms “geoarbitrage,” “digital nomads,” and “full-time travel” for the first time.  

I remember thinking, “Oh, that’s nice. For them. But that’s n/a for me.”

But then… surprise! A few years later, as we were brainstorming how to continue doing my traveling job and have quality family time, the solution was simple: Geoarbitrage. Digital nomads. Full-time travel.

It’s also terribly sad to close this chapter of our lives so abruptly, and I want to commemorate it before moving on the next stage.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you have health insurance? Yes, through healthcare.gov. It’s hella expensive, and was the #1 factor that kept my husband in his salaried job for so long. In the end, we decided that life is short. He resigned, and we paid for healthcare out of pocket.

How do you get mail? We pay for a mail forwarding service. There are dozens of companies that handle mail forwarding for nomadic families like RVers and cruise ship employees.

Do you have a driver’s license? Yes, we have domicile in Florida.

Florida—so you don’t pay state income taxes? And we get discounted Disney tickets.

Isn’t it expensive to travel full-time? No, it’s the same price as our previous life in a suburb outside of Washington, D.C. Some things are more expensive and other things are less expensive. For example, Airbnbs cost less than our old mortgage, and we don’t pay for any utilities since they’re included in the Airbnb fee. But healthcare is more expensive. I’m a spreadsheet person so I’ve tracked our household budget for years, and the overall cost of regular life vs. full-time travel is almost identical.

Isn’t it hard to travel with two young kids?? Sometimes, but they’ve figured it out. Kids are stronger and more resilient than we give them credit for.

Aren’t your kids… missing out??? Lololololololololololl what?

You look like you’re actually happy? Because I am.

It doesn’t seem like the pandemic has affected you much. No, aside from stealing my livelihood, cutting my dream of world travel in half, and fearing for the health and safety of everyone on the planet, I’m doing fine.

How did you figure all this out? YouTube and Instagram.

Wait, what? I still have so many questions. I share the behind-the-scenes details of what it’s like to travel and run a business in my Instastories: https://www.instagram.com/annkemery/

Was It Worth It?

I don’t miss our houses.

I don’t miss our cars.

(I do miss my bicycle! And my desk.)

I don’t miss the DVDs or TVs.

I don’t miss my pantyhose, purses, or shoes.

But I would’ve missed their childhood.

A few months of hustling to downsize our belongings… for a lifetime of dancing together on the beach. What a fair trade.

The post We Sold (Nearly) Everything to Travel the World with Our 2 Kids. Here’s What Happened Next. appeared first on Depict Data Studio.