A number of years ago Callie and I had a dream floating in our minds, like many people do, of living the life we have always wanted. We wanted to travel, to live in paradise, to get paid to help people and do what we love. But…we were also stuck.
Here’s the thing: Callie was working a corporate job in administration. My consulting business had stalled out and Callie had just given birth to our first child. A few years prior we had moved to Taiwan but had to return after seven months because we couldn’t make it work financially.
And now with a kid and our stagnant jobs, our dream of moving abroad and living in a warm tropical climate took a seat on the backburner. At that time, Callie decided she was going to go for her dream– to run her own business doing what she loved, which was teaching yoga. She later bought into a yoga franchise and opened up her very own studio!
I pitched in and within a year we had paid back our investment and gained valuable business experience. We developed a sales and marketing system that helped make our studio system into what it is today and I started consulting and training other yoga studios on how to make a 6-figure profit.
Along the way, we had a second child and were kept quite busy with running a brick and mortar business in addition to a consulting practice. Even though our yoga studio was doing very well, I was feeling a strong pull inside for something more.
One day, a member at our yoga studio told me she had just returned from Costa Rica. She owned a home there and said Costa Rica was amazing. She said it wasn’t too difficult to move there and urged us to move to Costa Rica as well.
A fire reignited inside me that had been missingfor a few years, since before we started a business and had kids. Later that night, I mentioned the conversation at the studio to Callie, and something ignited inside of her as well. All of a sudden, our dream came back to us! We were both excited again about the possibility of moving to another country, this time to the beautiful and natural oasis that is Costa Rica.
Intrigued? Stay tuned (“The Reality”) for part two of this three part series!