Pivotal People
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Pivotal People
Pausing Life: How One Family Found Meaning by Traveling the Globe
Charles Achampong shares his family's transformative experience taking a seven-month global sabbatical and the valuable life lessons they gained by stepping away from their structured lives. His book "Around the World in Family Days" captures not just their adventures across eight countries, but the profound insights about presence, connection, and finding joy in simplicity that can be applied to everyday life without leaving home.
• Following a dream sparked during their honeymoon in Brazil 13 years earlier
• Planning and saving for 10 years through intentional choices like cooking at home and limiting extras
• Covering 75% of flight costs through loyalty points and offsetting expenses by renting their home
• Transforming travel into education by creating country-specific learning binders
• Using real-world experiences like market haggling as practical learning opportunities
• Discovering that happiness doesn't depend on material wealth in places like the Philippines
• Learning that "you don't need a passport to pause" - finding presence in everyday moments
• Building "failure immunity" - not immunity to failure but to its emotional impact
• Creating connection through simple actions like neighborhood traditions
• Approaching travel not to "see everything" but to deeply experience each place
Find Charles Achampong's book "Around the World in Family Days" on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and connect with him on Instagram @aroundtheworldinfamilydays or on his website charlesachampong.com.
Order Stephanie's new book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential
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I would like to welcome Charles Achampong to the Pivotal People podcast. You are going to love hearing from Charles. A good friend of mine listens to this podcast and she came to me a few weeks ago with a book and she said Stephanie, you have to read this book. And so I did. It's called Around the World in Family Days, written by Charles. He's written a fascinating book about a journey that he did with his family young kids and wife. They took, I believe, seven months out of their structured life to explore the world. He did what so many of us dream about. He didn't wait until he was too old to do it. He did it and it's fascinating.
Speaker 1:But the reason I really wanted to have him on the podcast was not just to share that story, which we're going to do today, because it's fascinating. But what's neat is that his book is not about getting us to step out of our lives and go on a big trip around the world. His book is about sharing what he learned by doing that to help all of us improve our lives and appreciate our lives more right where we are. And he has a great format of the book. We'll talk more about that later. The full title of the book is Around the World in Family Days. Get it, not 80 days, but family days. What we learned when we left it all behind and traveled the globe, wow. So, charles, thank you so much for taking your time to come on and share your story and share your learnings. I can't wait for everyone to hear it.
Speaker 2:Stephanie, thank you so much for having me join. Thank you for the warm welcome. Great introduction. I'm excited and thank you for welcoming me to your community.
Speaker 1:Well, you're welcome, and before we get started, I always like to ask if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself. All I know is that you've written this book and I've read your bio, but tell everyone who you are, who you do life with, where you are, what is it that you do during the day?
Speaker 2:the basics of Charles is it that you do during the day? The basics of Charles? Sure, yeah, so I am a speaker, I'm a writer and someone who, I would say, used to live their life in constant motion, always chasing the next milestone. And I spent the last 20 years or so chasing purpose in the public, private, not-for-profit and philanthropic world and I realized even meaningful work can wear you out if you don't stop to breathe.
Speaker 2:And last year my spouse and I we made the bold decision to hit pause and take our two daughters on a global sabbatical.
Speaker 2:We traveled across eight countries and four continents, not necessarily just for adventure, but to slow down and really kind of reconnect with one another.
Speaker 2:And the journey didn't give me all the answers, but it gave me the space to ask better questions and finally listen to those answers of myself as well. And so that experience became the heart of my book, as you describe Around the World in Family Days. And you know it's been sort of the core of what I've been focusing on now since we've returned on the trip, talking about the transformational power of pausing, and so now I really focus in on teaching ambitious professionals how to build powerful pauses into their day so they can start living more fully and stop living on empty, and that's where I spend the bulk of my work, speaking on stages and working with a wide variety of corporate audiences and and other individuals who are looking to really build more pause into their day. So that's what I've been focusing on and, uh, it has been a wild adventure I've. I'm a proud spouse to a, a great partner in crime. Janice, my, my wife, and two lovely daughters, cassieie and Ayanna, who are age 8 and 11, were based here in Toronto, in Canada.
Speaker 1:Toronto. Okay, yeah, wow. So what I liked about your book is that you structured your chapters kind of country by country and shared your experience. He has a great sense of humor. It's entertaining to read. But at the end of the book you had I love structure like this you had, you know, a section of key takeaways key takeaways not just about the country but about the learning. And then I liked you had key questions, key questions for us, and then a section of pausing and reflecting, and we'll talk more about that later. I have an example of a chapter, because I think for folks this is not a book to make us envious of someone who got to take seven months to go travel. This is a book that really lifted me up and said hey, you know what, maybe I don't want to travel for seven months. I actually don't, charles.
Speaker 1:You know, but I appreciate it, yeah, but I do like your key takeaways and the pause and reflect pieces.
Speaker 1:I am going to do many of the things you suggested in my regular life so yes well let's start out because there are people who are listening who are like, hey, wait a second, this family trip, how did I mean? We have to know. I want to know how did you think of this? Who thought of it first? How did you guys agree on this? How did you prepare and plan for it? Tell us a little bit about the nitty gritty of those details.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. So the idea, stephanie, really came up during our honeymoon in Brazil, of all places. So this is what 12, 13,. I should know this now. 13 years ago, 13 years this year, we had just huffed and puffed our way to Corcovado Mountain. It is the mountain where you have that iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro with its outstretched arms looking down on Rio. It was one of those rare moments where you feel tiny and infinite at the same time. And as we stood there, sort of catching our breath, a man with an oxygen tank slowly made his way to the very top, and every step that he was taking was very deliberate. You could feel the grit. And that's when Janice turned to me and said like wow, travel really is a privilege.
Speaker 2:And that line stayed with us and I think later in the evening she turned to me and said one day I want to take our future kids on a trip around the world. Now, to be clear, right, we had just gotten married, we had a mortgage, we just purchased a house, we had new jobs, no kids, and we honestly, we barely knew how to combine our phone plans together. So here she was planning this global sabbatical with our imaginary children. And I kind of just blinked at her and said I'm sorry, what did you say, right?
Speaker 2:But that that idea lodged itself in our being, in our hearts, and we didn't leap at it. We let it simmer a bit and let it marinate for a couple of years and then, you know, life happens Kids, work, school pickups, activities, forgotten lunches, and somewhere in there we realized that we weren't living. We were living, I would say, more efficiently, but maybe not as deeply. We weren't unhappy because we had a very fulfilling career, feeling, you know enjoyable community that we lived in. But our days started to blur. Days were full, but the meeting was kind of thin, and so we were always moving, but not always moved.
Speaker 2:And, if anything, that whole experience in the last couple of years really was a wake-up call for us to say you know, we need to reclaim our space, not just for travel but for more presence with each other and ourselves. And you know, we figured, if not now, then when? And so that was really sort of the catalyst for the idea of my wife planting that seed and me thinking, oh my goodness, like, how are we going to pull this off? What are we going to do? But we sent in plan, we put in plan a motion or a plan that allowed us to think 10 or 12 years down the road for us to actually bring this into fruition. And I am internally grateful to her for planting that seed and allowing us to pursue this journey on the trip around the world with our family.
Speaker 1:You have a whole chapter talking about how you financially prepared for this. Yes, I think it's really important. You know you didn't win the lottery. No, it would have made things easier though. Right, it would have made. But I mean, people are like you know, if, if I got, a big windfall.
Speaker 1:I could do that If I won the lottery, if I had some surprise inheritance, I could do that. You didn't have that. I loved your practice. I love the whole thing about budgeting and planning and saving all of that. So could you tell us a little bit about the specific things that you and your wife did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think after our honeymoon, the light bulb moment, we sat down and said, okay, if we're serious about this, we have to start acting like it. So we put together a 10-year roadmap. It wasn't. You know, here's a hotel we're going to stay in when we're in South Africa. It was more like how do we reshape, you know, you know, shape our lives. So this dream feels more doable in the future. Right, and so we chose to live without a car. We cooked all our meals at home, we kept our kids at one extracurricular activity, so no gymnastics or piano. You choose the thing that you want to do. We got disciplined with our loyalty miles. In Canada, with Air Canada, they have an aeroplan program, so we started accumulating miles through that and in the end, about 75% of our flights were covered through points. Right, and I think you know the real magic was also, just before we left, a neighbor we had found out needed to rent out our home for the exact period that we would be on our trip. They need to do a renovation and, ironically, we know a lot of the neighbors who've turned from friends into you know, sort of extended family or a neighborhood, but we had never met this family, this couple as well, and they were doing an extensive renovation and the timing just worked out perfectly, and so we were able to rent out our house, which is able to cover, you know, our mortgages and our expenses back at home as well. We booked early, so once we knew that we were going to pursue this dream in early 2024, we locked in flights and places and months to stay, months in advance. That saved us thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2:You know, I'd also say people think about starting something like this and they start. You know you have to start with a decision right. Don't wait until your calendar or your finances or your in-laws all align on this thing, right, because that day may never come. I think you have to really look at committing to the dream. Then you start making small and intentional and everyday deliberate choices to really align to that bigger vision of what it is that you want to do. And you know, for us it wasn't.
Speaker 2:When people hear about the trip, they automatically think like, wow, you know, you guys put something together and you're going. If this has been a 10 year plan in the making, it's not something that we just thought of spur of the moment. And so when you do those, you know you think about the bold leap you want to take and you think about the quiet trade-offs that we wanted to pursue that dream while you're grocery shopping and maybe contemplate perhaps we don't need that third or fourth streaming service. So it was all those deliberate choices that we made to cut back on costs and leverage the fact that we happen to be living in a city Toronto, the largest city in Canada had a lot of lucrative career opportunities. So, you know, by helping to progressively increase our income and keeping our costs low, we are fortunate that we were able to set aside our savings and keeping our costs low.
Speaker 2:We were fortunate that we were able to set aside our savings towards that dream of taking our family on a trip around the world. And really, the last piece I would say too, is just from a career perspective. I was very grateful, and very fortunate too, to have jobs that allowed me to travel extensively. So not only accumulating miles as I was traveling for work, but also just being able to also, you know, part of the plan to be able to scope out some of the potential places that we'd be able to travel to as part of my own work taking me to these places as well. So all of that really helped to inform sort of the perspective that we were able to take and decide on which places we were going to travel to.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for going through that. I found that so fascinating because that can apply to just about any dream, if you think about it far enough in advance and you say honestly, these small changes I'm a big believer in, like cooking at home. People don't see what they spend on food outside the home and on an annual basis.
Speaker 2:You do that over 10 years.
Speaker 1:You got a pretty nice trip around the world right there.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Exactly, I mean we live in a microwave generation where people want things instantly right and so it's hard for people to kind of condition themselves to long term. So it's it was we're long term thinkers in terms of how we work and we just saw the dream in the end and really tried to make it happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the second piece which truly fascinated me was okay, as a parent, you said your kids right now are eight and 11. So they would have been what seven and 10?
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And oh my gosh, I'll just confess, when our kids were seven and 10, we just thought everything they were involved in was so critically important. You know that little league. You cannot miss a season of that, because how in the world are you going to get on the Atlanta Braves if you miss?
Speaker 2:a season of that, because how?
Speaker 1:in the world? Are you going to get on the Atlanta?
Speaker 2:Braves if you miss the season of second grade.
Speaker 1:Little League? Yes, oh my gosh. And what if they get behind academically? And what if? And so you actually timed it so that you started your seven months at what I would consider the beginning of second semester, so holidays, and then you had that whole semester plus the summer, and then you got your kids back in school, so they really only missed one semester.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1:But, Charles, tell us how you did their education while you were traveling. I thought this was so wonderful.
Speaker 2:Honestly, no, there's so many different things that worked to our advantage. I mean. One was we had a secret weapon. My mother-in-law is a retired educator and a lover of all things learning, and so someone who refuses to let a child go unenlightened, so she's very much someone who built these beautiful travel binders, one for each of our daughters for each country that we visited, to allow them to answer questions like what is the government structure, currency that they use? What is the exchange rate? What is one's value in the country? You know how is daily life different in this particular country versus the country that you happen to be coming from?
Speaker 2:So we tried to do what we could to turn every place into a living classroom. Plus, I think that, because of the shift to online learning post-COVID, their teachers were on board right, the girls sent postcards from each country that we traveled to, and their classmates were able to follow along on the map as well, you know. But I think the richest learning wasn't necessarily the binders. It was the moments such as navigating the metro systems or, you know, being able to watch our girls apply whatever math lesson we happened to learn or talk about earlier that day and applying it to haggling for souvenirs or food in the market in Chiang Mai in Thailand. Right, it was nice to see them learn to be apply their learning again and again and again, right, so we didn't just teach them geography, we taught them how to grow roots and wings, I think, at the same time and give them that lived experience of the fact that the world is a much bigger place than the city or the neighborhood you happen to spend a lot of your time in, and so I was very grateful from that perspective and really I mean again grateful around the fact that we were able to take every experience and apply it to their own particular learning and their own particular experience as well.
Speaker 2:So I think that was a fascinating experience. If anything, the biggest challenge was returning back and the fact that, although the world was their classroom, it was having to adjust back to being in a desk and the formality of putting up your hand and all those different things that they had sort of learned to. You know, learn to move away from was now something they had to go back at home. But, you know, it's amazing how you become a product of your environment, and they've been able to weave what they've learned into their own sort of life in terms of how they've changed and are far more curious and inquisitive and willing to fail and try things and fail again, and that's something I don't think I necessarily saw in them before we had left on the trip, and it's a beauty to see that now in them as as young, as as preteens or even just young kids.
Speaker 1:That just is the reason to take the trip. Yes, that is just, is the reason that, to me, was so beautiful. I was like oh my gosh, why didn't we do that? Well, you also had I love to write, I love to read. You had them keep journals.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So you know, their writing exercise would be writing about what they were learning, which is so great. It'll be fun to hear your daughters, when they're adults, talk about this experience when they're older because I'm sure they will reflect and say oh, wow, I can remember that this is what I learned. Your book is organized, as I said, by country, but you kind, of have a little bit of a theme with each country.
Speaker 2:So I'd love it if you could give us some examples of where you went and what you learned from that country so many key learnings, you know. I think about my time in Ghana. So my parents, both from Ghana, our ancestral lands, sort of trace back to Ghana and I just think about the time and the importance of family and connections and of being still and being present and the opportunity of being able to spend time with my parents in Ghana so they spend six months of the year in Ghana and the other six months of the year in Canada and for my kids to be able to be there, to be able to trace their lineage and their heritage to Ghana and to be there and to have my parents explain, you know, places that they grew up, the trouble that they got into, so that opportunity of being able to sort of experience that and seeing the importance of family and connection. It was really important.
Speaker 2:I think about Jordan and hospitality and how hospitable and welcoming and how engaging everyone was and you know the fact that they were so welcoming of us strangers. Every time we went somewhere they'd always invite us into their home for tea, right, and just that enjoyment of being able to see the simplest simpleness of life and the enjoyment of life through Jordan, or being able to spend time, you know, in the Philippines, and just the warmth of the people there as well. It's a country that is so understated and so unassuming, but again, just the joy that people have in the simpleness of their life and the fact that they don't have a lot you know, many of the places that we travel to in areas were quite impoverished and to see just the joy they had with the little that they had, you know, I think it provided us a different perspective of you know the fact that in many cases we saw the reoccurring theme was poverty. Life is not meant to be endured, it's meant to be experienced. And so from that perspective, it's more from the fact that you know things will zig and zag, right, and you'll have your ups and downs and it's almost, it seems, like it's okay.
Speaker 2:And you know, in Western world, you need to get to the next thing, you need to get to the next thing, you need to get to the next milestone, for a lot of the places that we traveled to was more than you know. Regardless of what happens, we're just going to enjoy the experience. Things go wrong. We're going to appreciate the lesson that we've learned from things going wrong. When things go right, we're going to rejoice and enjoy what we have, as opposed to thinking about how can we recreate this feeling again by getting something more or attaining the next level. I think that was really the reoccurring theme throughout the overall experience, you know, and also that we enjoyed the, you know, the unexpected and just the beautifulness of the people and the surroundings and the scenery that we had to take advantage of as well.
Speaker 1:What were the countries you went to?
Speaker 2:So we started off in Australia and then off to New Zealand.
Speaker 1:Oh, just if I could interrupt you for a second. Something cool you planned your route based on nice weather.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, we followed the sun, that's right.
Speaker 1:Talk about that. That was so brilliant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we wanted to make sure that each of us was packing a, so we kept, you know, our luggage and the things that we're bringing to a minimum, and so each of us all four of us brought a carry-on suitcase and a backpack, no more, no less. And so, in order for us to do that, we need to follow the sun, and so we ensured that we went to the southern hemisphere when it was typically cold in the northern hemisphere. So we started off in Australia and New Zealand in January and February, and then we made our way through sort of the equatorial area of Philippines and Thailand and Singapore. We went down south to enjoy the safari of South Africa, spent some time seeing family in Ghana, enjoyed our time in Jordan as well, in the Arabian desert, and taking in Petra and Wadi Rum, and then we also kind of wrapped up our trip in Albania, which often sort of piques a lot of people Albania. We also kind of wrapped up our trip in Albania, which often sort of peaks a lot of people in Albania.
Speaker 2:Why did you choose Albania? Right, it's one of these up and coming countries in terms of the fact there's not a lot of tourism there. Very affordable, very beautiful, great people, very interesting in terms of the stoicism that they have there. And then we spent a little bit of time in the UK before heading home. So those are the countries that we had sort of made as part of our time. As part of our trip, tried to spend about a month in each place and we scratched the surface, but for us it wasn't necessarily trying to see as much as we could in each place, it was about finding a few key places and just really embedding ourselves into the communities and the cities and the locale of those particular countries so that we could really enjoy our time there.
Speaker 1:Now, did everyone speak English, or do you all speak other languages?
Speaker 2:So kids are learning French in school. So I grew up speaking English but also learned French in school. So English and French, I would say. There's the traditional language in Ghana, called Chi, and so I understand it better than I speak. I found that when I was speaking it in Ghana, they often could tell like no, no, no, no, no, you're butchering our language, please speak English to us. Right, and so there was a bit of a humorous aspect of that as well. But no, I think those so English and French. And then my youngest, or rather oldest, daughter is learning Spanish, and so we didn't get a chance to use that, but I think in a future trip that is the plan to be able to use figure out, if we can let her both of them practice both their French and their interest in Spanish as well, but that predominantly everyone spoke English as part of our, our trip, or we figure things out by pointing and grunting and doing the usual things as part of the overall experience and having a few humorous uh experience as a result of that.
Speaker 1:I was personally amazed at the overall cost of your trip. I'm sorry to keep coming back to cost. Yes, of course, but I thought it was brilliant Again.
Speaker 1:You planned for it, you rented your house, which I think people can do through something like Airbnb. Yes, you could rent it so you were able to cover your expenses at home. You were smart and strategically stuck with one airline, got all those. We all know you can get exponential points if you were miles, if you play the game right, if you educate yourself, all right, you save 75 in your flights by doing that. So what was?
Speaker 2:your overall cost of the trip. Yeah, so we spent about 115 000 canadian dollars, so I guess roughly what would that be Maybe about $80,000 to $90,000 US for the seven months that we were on the road. Again, a significant portion that was offset as a result of loyalty points, as a result of renting out our home through a realtor while we were gone as well, and just as a result of saving money over the last 10 to 12 years that we've been putting together the plan. So you know it is doable. And again, I think the biggest thing that I often try to emphasize to people is that you don't need a passport to pause. You can find pauses in the everyday. So those are all important aspects as well. The trip, yeah, from that perspective. So it's important for people to keep an open mind in terms of what they're looking to, to pursue or what they're looking to garner.
Speaker 1:So I said one of the chapters. I've just used your example of going to the Philippines. Okay, so, you've already told us that the people in the Philippines are very welcoming and hospitable and didn't have much, so here's. So here's an example, so you read a short chapter. Here's a quote that he had about it. Perhaps the most poignant lesson we learned during our time in the Philippines was that happiness and generosity don't depend on material wealth.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay. So then key takeaways. He has three. I'll read one. One was embrace simplicity. Embrace simplicity, Appreciate the joy in simple moments and interactions, recognizing that happiness often comes from connections rather than material possessions. And so the next section is key questions. So here's one I liked what moments of connection have you experienced in your own life that reminded you of the importance of kindness and generosity? You know you sit with that, you think about that, that we can all think of an example.
Speaker 1:And then you're like wow why am I not doing more of that? But then you had kind of a pause and reflect section. This is cultivating connection and you had practice, generosity, and an example of that was host a gathering where each guest brings someone new. What a simple and nice idea Break social barriers, strike up a conversation with someone you don't know well. It's amazing what we learn when we're curious about people, the people who we have walked by every single day on our walk with the dog for years we smile, we say hi, we don't know them at all.
Speaker 1:And then, I like this, build lasting bonds and one example is start a tradition in your neighborhood. And this really hit me because I've had an experience recently. I've talked about this before. I have this thing where I make chicken salad because no one does, and it's the one thing I really do well, by the way and I will make chicken salad and knock on the door of a neighbor I don't know well.
Speaker 1:I started doing this a few years ago. I was inspired by the author Bob Goff, who said it's noble to go across the ocean like a mission trip or something, but it's obedient to go across the street. So I started. I thought about a few neighbors who I've just known for years and years to say hello, but I don't really know, and they're brave and maybe they think I'm weird. You do risk that People think you're weird. Well, I knocked on the door of every. I did this with four neighbors in my neighborhood over time. They're all older than I am and I can honestly say they are now all dear friends. Multiple, multiple visits since then, but it was the initial. I'm going to take the risk of seeming a little weird. They all invited me in for a visit. You sit down for a visit and now they're at the point Stephanie, you don't have to bring chicken salad. Well, yes, I do, I have to bring chicken salad.
Speaker 1:I have one of those friends who have an 87-year-old woman and my neighbor. I'm 61. She's my mother's age and every year I've taken her to lunch for her birthday. A couple of years ago I said okay, you know what? Which? She's very social, charles, she just loves people. I said would you like to go to a restaurant or would you rather that we have a couple of your friends over to my house for lunch? I just live up the street. Okay, ladies, I made it nice. You know when I say put out the dishes, the China, it takes no more effort than the regular plates flowers from your yard and do little bookcase.
Speaker 1:If you put on the little piano music in the background, it's just amazing how those simple things make it seem like it's nice, but it was really not much effort and of course you know what I made. I made chicken salad but the ladies came and it was, you know she delighted in it. My 87-year-old friend delighted in it, and everyone enjoys being invited to something. So, we did it again this year and I'm telling you because it's fresh in my mind we did it yesterday. She added more people to the list.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, so now we have 12 ladies.
Speaker 1:And you know what I did, charles. I had my camera, my phone, and I just took pictures. I just observed people connecting with each other, people genuinely happy to see a gal they hadn't seen for a while, and I thought that is so easy. All I had to do I already told you put out some plates, pick some flowers from the yard, make some chicken salad, put on the piano music in the background, and you've created a place for people to connect with each other. And I thought this is not hard. And guess what? Who was the one who enjoyed it the most? Me.
Speaker 2:They're beautiful. What a great example Wow.
Speaker 1:Your idea of what if you did that and you said everyone brings someone new?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes. So, anyway, thank you so much for just getting and now that's a tradition, so I'm a Barbara. You got to live another 20 years because we like this party.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. That is such a great example. I love that example. Love that. You know that is such a great example. Oh, I love that example, well done. I mean, look at the people that you've met now. The feeling that you not only have, but the feeling that your friend Barbara now has your neighbor down the street, like that, is so magically, it was so simple, and the joy that you brought to her and to yourself. It just makes you realize how much more we are all the same, that human connection that we all strive and we all crave right, and that's, for me, that was the whole purpose of this trip. You know, to be able to have that sense of connection and I did not to your point earlier, I did not want this to be an experience where I was going to write a book about.
Speaker 2:We went here, we met this person. We did this like, so what? Your eye sector is, like me, showing you the equivalent of my vacation pictures. Your eyes start to glaze over right. For me it's the meaning, the so what? What can I give to you from my experience and my story so that you can apply that in whatever way that makes sense to you in your life. It wasn't about me telling you that you need to go on a trip around the world. No, Take what I've learned and apply that to your own life, and I love hearing that. A story that you've shared is magical, wow.
Speaker 1:And so this is really why I encourage people to get your book because it is I only read a couple bullet points that I will incorporate. There are so many others, there are so many great insights in here and it's a very easy book to read. By the way, Of course, I think you need to include your itinerary with all the places you stayed to make it easy for the rest of us.
Speaker 2:It was that balance between how much information do I share and how much do you really want to know all that. But you know it's something. There are future versions or iterations. That other is based on feedback. I've received that that I plan on updating and maybe providing a renewed or a 2.0 version. So we'll see. Time will tell.
Speaker 1:He could be the Rick Steves with meaning, Rick Steves with good insights. So people want to know where to find you. I will put this in the show notes. But for people who don't like to go to show notes, could you? Tell us exactly where to find you and what additional kinds of things we can get from you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so of course, my book Around the World in Family Days. You can find that on Amazon or Barnes and Noble and et cetera, et cetera. You can find me on my website, charlesachampongcom, or on Instagram at Around the World in Family Days, so you can find me there, or on LinkedIn through my profile at Charles O'Champong, and again, looking for opportunities to be able to take the themes of the power of pausing or, how you know for us, our experience of being able to build our failure immunity through travel. So not necessarily being immune to failure, but being immune to the feeling that failure has on you. So building your failure immunity and talking about those types of topics to different corporate audiences on a wide variety of stages. So I would love opportunities to be able to continue to take that opportunity and really sort of share those messages from those experiences as well. So that's where you can find me and those are the types of things that I'm looking to engage with people on.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you and I just want to thank you for taking the time to share this with us, for writing this great book and having a couple of laughs.
Speaker 2:Of course. What's life like Otherwise? If we don't laugh, then life's too short.
Speaker 1:I'm going to enjoy it. Yeah, that's right. You have a great day.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much. Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Me too.
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