Have you ever wondered what it would be like to trade the comfort of a predictable life for an adventure-filled lifestyle?
Meet Captain Jim Palmer and his wife Stephanie, who did just that. Jim is a serial entrepreneur, marketing expert, and an in-demand small business coach. For the last 30 years, Jim and Stephanie were practical and predictable, living a modest life in suburban Philadelphia where they raised 4 children. In 2016, Jim and Stephanie traded in practical and predictable for adventurous and exciting. They sold their home of 30 years to live on their boat full time and only then did Jim truly leverage his Dream Business to live his Dream Lifestyle.
You'll be inspired as Captain Palmer talk us through his philosophy of "living with less to experience more".
Visit www.GetJimPalmer.com to get in touch with Captain Jim Palmer and see how you can work with him.
Sign up right now for the Digital Nomad Kickstarter beginning May 6th and learn what you need to get started as a digital nomad!
https://austinandmonica.com/digitalnomadkickstarter
-----------------------------------
Join our Facebook Group Digital Nomad Start-Up Circle if you're interested in living nomadically, growing your online business, and forming a community of like-minded people.
Get our FREE 85+ Ways to Make Money While Traveling guide!
Connect with us on Instagram by following @austinandmonica
Visit our website: AustinandMonica.com
Enjoyed this podcast? Subscribe to our show and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast. Your feedback means a lot to us, thank you!
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to trade the comfort of a predictable life for an adventure-filled lifestyle?
Meet Captain Jim Palmer and his wife Stephanie, who did just that. Jim is a serial entrepreneur, marketing expert, and an in-demand small business coach. For the last 30 years, Jim and Stephanie were practical and predictable, living a modest life in suburban Philadelphia where they raised 4 children. In 2016, Jim and Stephanie traded in practical and predictable for adventurous and exciting. They sold their home of 30 years to live on their boat full time and only then did Jim truly leverage his Dream Business to live his Dream Lifestyle.
You'll be inspired as Captain Palmer talk us through his philosophy of "living with less to experience more".
Visit www.GetJimPalmer.com to get in touch with Captain Jim Palmer and see how you can work with him.
Sign up right now for the Digital Nomad Kickstarter beginning May 6th and learn what you need to get started as a digital nomad!
https://austinandmonica.com/digitalnomadkickstarter
-----------------------------------
Join our Facebook Group Digital Nomad Start-Up Circle if you're interested in living nomadically, growing your online business, and forming a community of like-minded people.
Get our FREE 85+ Ways to Make Money While Traveling guide!
Connect with us on Instagram by following @austinandmonica
Visit our website: AustinandMonica.com
Enjoyed this podcast? Subscribe to our show and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast. Your feedback means a lot to us, thank you!
Hello and welcome to the profitable Nomad Couple podcast. This is a show where we share all of our secrets about building a sustainable location independent lifestyle.
Speaker 2:We're Austin and Monica. We're a digital Nomad couple here to help you develop an entrepreneurial mindset, ignite your passions and develop a purpose-driven online business.
Speaker 1:Get ready for weekly insights and inspiring stories to empower you to live life on your own terms.
Speaker 2:So are you ready to unlock the Nomad mindset and embrace a life of limitless possibilities? Let's dive in. Okay, welcome back everybody. We have a super awesome treat for you guys. Our good friend, captain Jim Palmer, is joining us on this episode today. We have all sorts of juicy stuff that we want to get into with Jim. But, jim, we're going to turn over to you right off the bat and we would love for you to give us just a little synopsis of your story. We're going to dive into everything in more detail, but just give us a little overview of who you are, what you do, what you're doing right now.
Speaker 3:I am an entrepreneur, also a business coach. For the last nine years, my wife Stephanie and I, we raised four kids, we had four grandkids. We sold the house in 2017 that we had for almost 30 years and we decided to go on a big adventure for one year. So we bought a 50-foot yacht having never driven a yacht in my life, you know with a thousand horsepower of diesel, and then the next thing you know, we're out in the ocean. We thought our first trip would be going in the ocean up to Rhode Island to see one of our kids, so, anyway, the fact that we're still here doing an interview was pretty amazing. So that one-year adventure, guys and I'm sure you can relate to this that one-year adventure quickly became our lifestyle. We loved it and we had an expression. Stephanie said we've gone from reliable and predictable to adventurous and exciting, because we did everything. Oh, we had the insurance, we went to school boards, we had all the stuff you're supposed to do and then, all of a sudden, we're on a boat, like, who does that? And so we did that for five years, guys, and just about a year ago, as you and I are talking now, we decided to sell the boat. We needed to spend time with family.
Speaker 3:Steph's dad was failing and you know all kinds of reasons, not the least of which was diesel fuel went up to six bucks a gallon last summer, so my big boat got one mile to the gallon. That was kind of painful, but yeah, so when Stephanie, I'll probably skip it all a little bit, but Stephanie was in kind of a really high-stress job, which is when she left my being self-employed. I can work anywhere as long as I got good Wi-Fi, and so we decided to do that, and I'll tell you what I know you can appreciate this. That's why we got along when I had you on my show. The adventurous bug, the traveling bug, the exploration bug, whatever you want to say has just bit us hard. So we've been right. Now I'm in an apartment. I'm 65 years old, I'm renting an apartment again. But we didn't want to buy a house, we don't want to be grounded. At some point pardon the expression we'll have our grandma-grampy house, so the grandkids will come and take care of us and stuff.
Speaker 3:But right now we are counting the months, which is about five, until our lease is up and we bought a 37-foot motorhome and we're going to tour the country. And we've kind of traded. I no longer have to be concerned that I always have five feet of water underneath me. I just have to be concerned I don't go under any 13-foot bridges.
Speaker 2:Now you're looking up and set it down.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I love that story and I love just your guys' sense of adventure. Like I just feel such a kindred spirit with you guys and I love. That's why I love talking to you. But walk me through a little bit more like what that decision was like to sell your home of over 30 years. I mean, obviously we were established, you had friends in the community. What really went into that decision?
Speaker 2:To tack on to that question is it something that you guys had always looked forward to doing, or what did? You like about the blue.
Speaker 3:We, I mean. So we had two boys and then we had twin girls, and so I don't know the total length of time going to school, back to school, meeting with all that stuff. It seems like a blur now. It's so far in the past.
Speaker 3:But Stephanie, I mean truly for the last three years of her career, she'd leave about 6.30 in the morning, come home at 6.30 at night and she'd say to me I'm just going to lay down for about 10 minutes and then I'll make dinner, and then 10 o'clock I'd wake her up, say let's go to bed. It was really difficult, it was starting to affect her health and everything. That's what I have to quit, I'm going to leave. And one night she came home and she walked in the door and says we need to go on a big adventure. And I'm like what does that mean? We're going to go to Red Lobster or what are we going to do?
Speaker 3:I had no idea and we, honestly, we sat on our couch with our two laptops or iPads or whatever, and we're like can we live on an island somewhere? Do we travel for a year? All these things. And we had a 30 foot boat which we loved. We were on that boat every weekend in spring, summer and fall. And she said what if we live on a boat for a year? And of course I said the famous draw is lying. Well, we're going to need a bigger boat because 30 feet is not big enough to live full time.
Speaker 3:And she said well, why don't we do it? And to me it's like well, being an entrepreneur, I am not averse to risk. Take the shot, live your life. The other thing I forgot to mention was when I was 41, I was diagnosed with cancer and for almost a month I didn't know if my chances of being alive in five years were 80, 20 or 50, 50. And when you're thinking about that, let alone a month, but for a day or week, you really get clear. I mean I wasn't even thinking about my lifespan like, oh, I'm middle-aged, no, I'm not, you never, you don't. But all of a sudden it's like I might not see my girls graduate high school. It hit me really hard.
Speaker 3:But so there's a lot of things that went into it where we just wanted to live life now, because, whatever you put off, I mean we all know somebody, whether personally or you've heard the stories of works his whole life or works her whole life and face plants the day before she, he or she retires. And so we decided to do this now. We're going to do this big adventure now. The financial planner we're working with says if you guys put it off for even one or two more years, you'll be in much better shape. No, we're going to do it now, we're just going to figure it out. And then I had to investigate all these different hotspots so I could keep working. But, monika, I know you're going to appreciate this. Stephanie was so great with the line she goes. We made a decision to live with less so we could experience more.
Speaker 3:As a matter of fact she had that stenciled on the wall in our new RV because it was so cool.
Speaker 1:I think I should put that on my wall.
Speaker 3:That's fantastic Well if you think about it, it's like we, like everybody else, we had this house and if there was a blank space, oh, let's put something there. Oh, that corner cabinet. We just acquired stuff and it felt suffocated.
Speaker 3:We had an acre and a half a lawn which I took forever to cut, and then the trees come down on the winter. I was so tired of that. We had a pool in the backyard. I didn't want to deal with any of that, and the more when we shed our stuff. A lot of our stuff got into storage because we thought we'd do it for one year.
Speaker 3:Three months in, when it became our lifestyle, we said we got to go back and get rid of that stuff because, I don't know, maybe 180, $200 a month for a big storage unit. I said if we do this, even for two years, our stuff's not even worth that. So we, you know, and I said I didn't even like the couch you put in the living room. It's not even comfortable. I know it looks good, but who sits on that thing? So we got rid of it. We donated a lot of stuff to charity and some women's support groups that were part of, and we shrunk down all the way down to a 10 by 15, which is literally a 100 year old kitchen table. It was my grandmoms pictures, just the stuff you can't get rid of. So that's our smallest footprint possible. I will tell you, I've never thought of myself as a minimalist. I didn't even know what the term meant, but I know now. The less stuff we're like when we think of buying something. No, we're not. We don't even shop anymore because we don't want stuff.
Speaker 2:It's amazing how easy it is to accumulate things. We were only married, I mean, when we were living in Brexburg we were going to college. We were married for like a year and a half when we were still going to school, and the amount of stuff that we found when we were moving in our apartment or in our little home we're like I don't even know where a lot of the stuff came from. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 3:Well, steph, because I know marketing really well Stephanie says to me when we're going to sell the house, she goes I bet you could sell this house and we could save the Realtor Commission, which is kind of like the gauntlet. Well, we ended up selling the house ourselves, so that worked out, but she spent the summer well, I'm working. She spent the summer getting it ready for sale and she goes into the basement and pulls out a crock pot that we were given for a wedding gift and there was another new one upstairs. So why did we have that one in the basement for 20 plus years? I don't know, but it's stuff like that.
Speaker 3:And literally when we moved into this apartment, we had to buy some things. We shopped on Facebook Marketplace. The desk I'm sitting at right now cost me $35. And when I move out of here, it's gone right. We don't just. We want to go out and experience. I want to travel the country. We want to, of course, wyoming Montana, the you know great lakes. We want to see that before my kids take my license away 20 years, but so that's so.
Speaker 3:It is all about the adventure and, as Stephanie used to say, we didn't buy a boat to live in a boat, which some people do in their boats, like never leave. No, we live in a boat so we could travel and pull into every small town up and down the coast. And now we definitely don't want to live in an RV, but it's the best way to see the country without pulling into a motel and going to restaurants all the time, so that's why we're doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. I love that this whole thing started like it was Stephanie's idea that she brought to you, and it sounds like you didn't need a whole lot of convincing.
Speaker 3:You know I joke around and it says it was really God's idea. Because if it was my idea that we live in a boat and it goes horribly, I'll never hear the end of it. So it's really her idea and it went magnificently. But so it was her idea and, no, I didn't need convincing. She still tells the story that I said what if we live in a boat? She says within 1.9 seconds, jim made an offer on a boat. No, I lost. I grabbed on that idea and I started looking and we found the boat. Everything I don't know about you guys Everything fell into place the minute we started.
Speaker 3:The ball rolling got the house sold literally inside of a month for a great price. I found the boat. It was only two hours from us. Everything just fell out and we needed to. I didn't want to move on the boat in the winter and we had a big 90 pound lab that we rescued and we didn't want to. We couldn't sign a lease. Stephanie found us. The guy had a farm like 15 minutes from where we lived and he took the side of his barn and put in a little. He just built a like a one bedroom studio apartment and he rented it by the month. It had cable so I could work and it was a farm so our dog Blue could just go for walks. And so we moved in there December and we moved out in April and onto the boat. So everything just fell into place for this adventure.
Speaker 2:Good man. That's. That's incredible, and I love what you said about like taking a risk, and I feel like a lot of people have. I know a lot of people who have that same feeling that you expressed about wanting to experience more. I think you guys need a trademark that phrase, by the way for sure. Live with less so you can experience more.
Speaker 1:Yeah your wife's the designer, have her make some like kind of poster.
Speaker 3:It's got to be in Boston wood or something.
Speaker 1:No kidding.
Speaker 3:It's shop.
Speaker 2:But, like, I know so many people who have that feeling inside of them like they want to experience more. But because they don't know exactly what the steps look like to get there, or they don't know what it is they want to do, or you know things like that there's so much unknown for people and there's so much risk or at least there's so much perceived risk they stay in their little box that they made for themselves. And one thing, like one thought experiment I love to walk people through, is what's the risk of not going out and doing that? You know, if I was sitting down with you and chatting when you were having that conversation with your wife, what's the risk of not selling your home and buying a boat? Like, what are you going to miss out on in your life? That's right, because you don't do something that you don't. You know every step of the way to get there.
Speaker 3:You know, it's very. I wrote six books and then, after we moved on the boat, I thought I was kind of done with that. I wrote another book called Just Say yes, which is what we did for this idea, because in business there's people who want to be entrepreneurs I call them entrepreneurs but yet they don't have the courage to pull the trigger because of the what ifs. What if it goes wrong? What if I lose money? What if I embarrass my family? What if I lose my house? I don't know what ifs? All the what ifs are what I call dream killers. And I read this book, guys, and when we decided to live in a boat, both of us started reading books about people that lived on boats. We thought, how novel. Well, it's not really that novel. Other people do it right. And I was reading this book. It was a guy who lived on a sailboat for like 25 years. He wrote books and he wrote music, so kind of a self-employed guy supported himself. And I'm getting near the end of his book and he says you know, a lot of people dream of living on a sailboat sunrises, sunsets, romantic beach, you know, boat drinks, all this stuff. Well, there's a lot of stuff that goes wrong and it's expensive. Let's not kid ourselves, and he says so a lot of people that want to pull the trigger they wonder about what's going to happen if I run aground, if I run out of fuel, if the boat catches fire or all these different things. He goes yeah, but what if you figure out a way to solve every problem, overcome every challenge? What if you don't sink? And what if you run aground and you call Cito and they pull you off the reef? And what if you do all this? And then you have the adventure of a lifetime and you find out you're a badass boat captain. But it only happened because you said yes and I thought, wow. So I actually, when I wrote my book, I signed a copy and I mailed it to the guy because I said you were the inspiration for me writing this book, because in business you think about what could go wrong. But yeah, what if it goes right? Now, the truth is, you guys pulled the trigger, we pulled the trigger, and not everybody has the courage to pull the trigger.
Speaker 3:I think it's great that we're trying to inspire people to step up, because the one thing that we, stephanie and I, are both in agreement on is we don't want to get to the end of our life and have regrets. You know, we've all seen those videos or we read when they interview people who are at their end stage. Do you regret anything? I regret nothing other than other than what I didn't try to do, because now it's too late and there will be a time, like we had to take away my grandfather's car. I literally had to help my mom do that. We, steph's parents, we had to. You know, there's things you're going to do when you can no longer do that, or hire somebody to drive you around. I don't want to do that, but you know there's going to be a moment where you realize it's not safe or practical to do it. But now we can do it. And you know, I just, I just believe and maybe it's the entrepreneur in me I'll figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, when we're out in the ocean and an engine went down and we're in five foot seas, which is when you're moving is fine, but as soon as you stop and you're like a cork in a washing machine, I got violently ill, like in about 10 seconds, and I had to call seats to and they had to come tow me in and I had to get a mechanic. We figured it out. It was a $2,000 day, very unpleasant, but we figured it out and that's part of this whole adventure that we went on.
Speaker 2:Well, it's really no different than like owning a home, like what if you know? What if property tax rates change? What if you're the foundation of your home cracks and you have to get it fixed. What it like? We had a friend who was going to come visit us the other weekend and she had to delay our trip because some water line or water heater something broke and her basement flooded Like stuff.
Speaker 2:like that happens all the time, whether you're living in the house a boat, RV, whatever, so you're going to have to deal with things no matter what.
Speaker 3:That's just part of life. Now, you know it's funny, though, and I don't know if you guys had this experience, but when we started telling people there was no gray area, half of our family, friends, neighbors said that's really cool, and the other half said that is freaking nuts, you're not going to do, you know, don't do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, actually, like what the reactions were like from your kids and your neighbors. And you know you had to establish yourself in a community. So when all of a sudden you were like, hey, we're going to go live in a boat where they like they're like off the rocker. What did you think Like? What was the reaction?
Speaker 3:I think people were just as I said, but then the more we did it, even just when they thought we're doing it for a year is fine. And then, you know, we started doing the YouTube channel and then, literally on the anniversary of our one year, moving on the boat, we did a live from our Marina and we talked about here's what we learned, here's the good, here's the bad. And people were very like keep going. You know, we hear things like oh, we're living through you or experiencing it through you. Keep sharing the pictures. Steph was really great on Instagram when we're traveling, okay, it's 6, 30, the sun's up, we're on the move now, and then she'd share the day and it was people, I think, enjoyed that and they liked it. Again, not everybody's going to do that, but not everybody's meant to leave a paycheck and health insurance and vacation and start a business. So, yeah, yeah, all kinds of all kinds of people who have different tolerances for risk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so true, before we kind of move on into your transition on to land now, I do want to ask you what would be your advice if someone came to you and was like hey, like I'm thinking about this boat thing, like what would be the one thing you tell them?
Speaker 3:Be pr. Well, everything you heard is true. So boat is breakout another thousand, or it's a hole in the water that you pour money into. It's all true. You know, we went two or three years on this and so bad. Then also we had a ginormous repair, unexpected. It's all true, but again, like you said, in our house we replaced the roof, the central heating system, so there's expenses. I think the thing which changed for me initially was I would tell myself I'm not a mechanic, so I would have mechanics come fix things. Well, back then, at $125 an hour, it's probably more I suddenly learned how to fix things.
Speaker 2:You became your own mechanic real quick yeah.
Speaker 3:I got really good at a lot of stuff. Now I can't tear apart an engine, but I can take care of almost everything else, and those skills of transfer to an RV, rvs and boats were pretty similar in that way. So you got to be able to dive in and you've got to be able to handle some unexpected things With boating. One of the unexpected is the weather. So if it kind of looks okay, but maybe not, and then in my first year I would literally walk up and down the dock and look for somebody who looked like an experienced boat captain.
Speaker 1:Are you going out?
Speaker 3:today, and one of the expressions we learned from the boating community we became part of was either the man or the woman would say well, I own half the boat and my path is not leaving today, so I don't think you can go without me. And so we realized it takes two people to be comfortable in order to leave. So the thing is there's so much learning. I'll tell you something else, and I know we're considerably older than you guys are at this point, but our minds are so active and we're active. We're constantly moving, walking around. And now in the RV, if I got to go from the front to the back and back and forth, it's like a mile. I'm exaggerating, but there's a lot of activity physical. But in the boat we had to figure out our route and where we're going, all this stuff. So we were really cognizant of keeping our minds active, because a mind that gets sedentary could spur on dementia or something.
Speaker 2:Oh for sure I'm so curious. What is it like working on the boat? So you had to figure out your whole Wi-Fi setup and how to get that. And then did you have client calls or meetings that you had to do from the boat. How did that all work? I'm curious about the logistics of working on the boat.
Speaker 3:Well, seven years ago, so it was about a year before we moved on the boat. I don't want to say semi-retired, but I only do calls with clients on Tuesday, wednesday, thursday. Personally I wanted to do that and I got my business in a position where I could do that. But also, when we moved on the boat made it very convenient. We can travel Friday through Monday, sometimes be out on anchor, but usually Tuesday, wednesday and Thursday I'd want to be at a marina on a dock that had plug-in power and closer to cell towers. Couple times we would be on anchor. But I got this. There's an app where you can find the cell towers. I said, okay, we're going to anchor here because it's like two miles from a cell tower, and I literally did a webinar at night on the boat on anchor. It was pretty cool. I was pretty dope I felt cool about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had no idea how to justify so. That was the biggest challenge. The other probably the second challenge my wife would argue it might be the first is it was very hard for me to focus because I'm sitting in our salon, as they called it, windows around, and I'd hear a boat come in. Of course, I just love boats. I'd look up oh, that thing's beautiful, and me no.
Speaker 1:I can't run with my clients.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it was fine. When you went into the salon or what would be our living room, there was a couch on one side, two chairs. We took the two chairs out and made room for my desk, because I'm not a laptop guy, I can't sit there like this tiny little space. So I had my desk on the boat and that's where I worked. I also think it kind of helped me be in the work environment to have a, even if it was a small little desk in a corner office. So it was fine. But you know what? That is sort of what paid the bills too. I needed to work right.
Speaker 3:So, we figured out a way to make it happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you don't mind me asking, austin and I stayed on a yacht for his, was it?
Speaker 3:your 25th birthday, or something.
Speaker 1:And we found like an Airbnb yacht and we stayed there. It was really small. We were way up in each other's business all the time. So talk to me about what that was like for you guys, how you guys handle that tradition transition and what that ended up doing for your relationship.
Speaker 3:The good part is you couldn't run our boat with one person. Technically you could, but we drove it from up on top in the bridge and our boat was 50 feet. It had a bedroom and a bathroom up front, a bedroom and a bathroom in the back, in the salon kitchen. So it was good size.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's probably the bigger than the one we were on then.
Speaker 3:Yeah, In addition to and rightly so, that's what we wanted. We didn't want to be like rubbing shoulders every time we walked somewhere. So the other thing about the design of that boat was I could be inside on work calls and Stephanie could be sitting at the dinette in front of me she's off camera or she could go sit up top, she could sit on the back with the back deck, she could go for walks or do whatever. So we weren't like we were together almost all the time, but it was fine. And I mean, when the COVID lockdown hit, our life didn't really change. Yeah, we were together on the boat, 24, seven anyway.
Speaker 3:But the other thing as far as the relationship, we had to work together. So getting the boat out of the slip and then, even worse, putting the boat in the slip if there's wind and current, and you know you got a dock on one side, you got your neighbor's boat and the other and she's got lines going. So we had headsets. We would talk to each other on wireless headsets so we're not yelling, because she could be somewhere on the boat and I couldn't see her. So we, you know, we did have to learn to communicate. We'd have to plan routes. Where do you wanna go? How far do you wanna travel today and all that became kind of second nature, so I hope that answers your question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I feel like traveling and starting a business together has been like the best thing for Austin and I in our relationship just to have a common goal to work on together. It changes everything.
Speaker 3:That's true, you know when. So, when I was working out of our house and she'd go to work, I think we may have had more conversation at night, assuming we weren't like exhausted, tired, but how was your day, what did you do? Well, we didn't really have any more. How was your day? Conversations for five years because we were together all the time right.
Speaker 3:So we might find other things to talk about, or we just didn't talk because we knew everything. I don't know if that sounds weird, but it wasn't like we weren't talking because we were mad. We just I knew how her day was, she knew how mine was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we understand what this like, yeah, and I feel like it opens up for deeper conversations.
Speaker 1:you know, cause you're not just trying to cover the basis, oh, like what even happened today. Now you can like dive in a little deeper, like how are you feeling? You're like what's going on in your world? You know, it's totally different.
Speaker 3:And she started talking about, you know, maybe six months or a year before we pulled the trigger and sold the boat. Maybe we're getting done. I mean, we went up and down the coast five different times from Rhode Island and the final time we went all the way down to the Keys. So I mean we did some serious traveling and it's like, well, we just going to keep doing it. You know, can't really go somewhere else. We were talking about maybe doing the great loop, but again it was just too awkward with the price of fuel and the Canada's border was locked down for a while. So that got weird. And then, you know, with a family situation, we thought everything's just pulling together. We had a great trip to the Keys that was like the crescendo, so to speak. Spent three months down there, it was beautiful, and then we made it back. The first person who came on our boat bought it. So again everything fell into place.
Speaker 2:Perfect, that's awesome. Yeah, so is that the farthest you traveled on your boat down to the Keys?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was 13, little over 1,300 miles from our home port in Maryland, and then it was about 350 miles from our home port up to Rhode Island, where one of our kids lives. So you know, that's how far we've traveled. Cool that's awesome.
Speaker 2:So the transition from the yacht to the RV. You've talked about diesel, like the price of fuel. What else did you guys decide? I know you guys talked about visiting family more. So family has more landlocked, I guess yeah.
Speaker 3:As a matter of fact, just last week, as we're doing the recording, we drove the RV to Rhode Island and we took our two grandkids for a week camping, which was really fun, awesome. Yeah, it was like the week before school started and there was no more summer camp or this and the other things. So we're helping out our daughter and her husband, Plus we wanted to show the grandkids what it's like to camp in an RV. It was super fun.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it's interesting that prior to moving on the boat, we would get together with family, and I mean like when everybody's together, what? Maybe Thanksgiving, maybe Christmas, maybe Easter or some special event, and it's like the whole family would come together, noise, food, blah, blah, blah and then everybody leaves. You really never really had, in some cases, a good conversation, at least not with everybody. But now when we'd go or somebody would visit us, like Stephanie's sister, she flew down and her same thing with her brother and traveled with us for a week. So she got to experience what it's like to wake up early and then we'll go out and travel, we might anchor, we'll pull into a marina, we'll go out to dinner, we'll just make something on the boat. She got to experience that and, by the way, that caused the bug exploration bug to bite her. She is in a van a, b class.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, she's out in Oregon right now Buy her others to do something similar. It's so contagious you just need a little taste, is all it takes, yep.
Speaker 3:And all the stories we told, I know. When she was getting ready to leave, probably about almost two months ago now, she started getting really nervous and she was she's by herself actually. But she has learned so much just listening to her just last week oh, my fridge it works on 12. She didn't know what 12 volt was versus running on the generator and this, that and the other thing. So you just learn and she's feeling very accomplished, whether she does it for another few months or a few years, she did it right. She yeah, oh, it's really exciting, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:That's so awesome. Oh, my goodness, I feel like we could talk to you all day, though I'm sure you have so many good stories to tell from all your adventures.
Speaker 3:You know what we? We people ask us all the time do you miss it? And we do. It's interesting that we miss the lifestyle more than the boat. The boat was. I love my boat, I mean, oh my God, jimmy, I do love my boat. I took really good care of it, but we loved the lifestyle that that boat gave us. Sometimes we'd be in marinas in the summertime. We'd always be up near family, but again more like an hour and a half from where most of our families, but they could come down and we'd have fun days or weekends. But A lot of times Sunday night people would go home that were on their boats, weekenders, and people that would get their boats out on trailers, and then Stephanie and I would be so quiet on a Sunday night, almost the only ones in the marina just looking out at the water watching the osprey just all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3:And yeah, so we missed the opportunity. We're sharing this, actually, with Stephanie's sister. She says, yeah, I spent two weeks with their older sister, but now she's on the move again. She said that was us. We'd pull into somewhere, it'd be fun, we'd explore oh, it's a nice little town. Then after about a couple of weeks, maybe a month at the most, it's time to go. So we'd say, pull in the lines, let's get on down the river, you know, and go find somewhere else. It's not meant just to sit still, we wanted to explore and to see things. So, yeah, we missed that. Great, I can't wait to get back to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what has done the line for you? So do you have a plan for how long you guys are going to be RVing? Is that just the? That's the cool thing.
Speaker 3:We never really had a plan too far in advance, and I'm talking like maybe a couple months. We have an idea, like we knew. For example, we're going to go to the Keys in the summer. So you could say well, you knew that. But what day are we leaving? Where are we going to go? We just kind of figured that out.
Speaker 3:Sometimes we'd be on the water thinking we're going to go here. In fact that's one of our videos on our YouTube channel and we're going to pull in here and go the rest of the way toward Norfolk, virginia, the next day. And then the weather was saying man, you're going to get 20-knot winds rolling tonight. I said let's keep going, let's do a very long day, get to Norfolk tonight. So we're not, because the big body of the Chesapeake Bay can swirl up very much like an ocean almost. So I said let's get out and get back into the intercoastal waterway. So things change all the time. But as far as what we're going to do, we know we're going to go south because we're in our apartment through January and we're in the Philadelphia area, so it'll be cold. So we'll start heading south. I mean, rv's got heat and air conditioning, everything, but we'll go south. My parents are in Florida, they're still around, so that'll be fun to see them and then when we come back next summer spend a little time up here with family.
Speaker 3:But we want to go explore New England Like I'd love to go all the way up the main coast. We watch these RV channels. People go to Newfoundland. I don't know if we'll do that, but the main coast, new Hampshire, vermont. I'd love to go to the upper lakes of New York, explore that whole region and again when we were far away on a boat.
Speaker 3:Of course it could take about a month for us to get down to Florida, so we need to get back. But we have flown up. For certain things we had to do or rent a car, but our RV moves and we also are towing our Honda behind us so if we had to get somewhere, we're never far, we're like six hours or so. So we can explore all of New England, the Mid-Atlantic states next year and then in the fall, when we would typically go south, we're going to go kind of down south and then through the southwest, I think, and then the summer months, which I think I don't know if that 24 or 25, then we'll come across the northern part of the country. I cannot wait. I'm telling you Montana, wyoming.
Speaker 2:South Dakota. You need to definitely stop by Yellowstone.
Speaker 3:That's where we're right now Yellowstone, all that's on our hit parade, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then the best thing is, when you make it over here, hit us up because we found some really cool spots around there.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'll definitely do that Maybe you guys will be somewhere in the states and we'll connect.
Speaker 1:That'd be super fun.
Speaker 2:One thing that Monica and I definitely want to do sometime, and if there's any other couple or people who we think would do it, it'd be you guys. We found this map of the continental United States, and it's one giant road trip, and it has 48 stops, one in every state, and so the idea is you can hop on and hop off any state that you're in, and this route takes you through major landmarks and major places in all of California. Really, it's just a continuous route, one giant continuous route.
Speaker 3:Oh, I got to find that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we don't feel so much like we got this punch list, or what are they called Bucket?
Speaker 1:list.
Speaker 3:Yeah, bucket list, thank you, when we got to go all the way. No, there's a lot of places we want to see, but if I never go to, you know, I don't know what state. I don't want to offend anybody. If I don't get to here, it's not the end of the world, right, there are many, many. Because somebody says I want to see all the national parks. Well, aren't there like a couple hundred or something? I don't even know. There's a lot, there's a lot, right, but there's probably 25 to 30 major ones We'd like to see those, but again, we'll just we don't know what the future holds. But this is sort of our loose game plan right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the cool thing about that attitude too is there's so many things that you would never find to even put on your bucket list If you don't go into it with this open-minded. You know, we're just going to see what we find kind of mentality, you know, like some of the favorite things we've ever done and the coolest places we've found we had never even heard of. We wouldn't have found it online, we wouldn't have found it by talking to people. We found it because we were just out exploring and we were open to what was in front of us and we stumbled across it and it was amazing.
Speaker 3:That was what the boat did for us. Like, we've traveled, you know, up and down Route 95 or something like that. But in the boat obviously you're on the waterways and what's on the coast, especially what's called the intercoastal waterway, are tiny little towns, original towns, and that's where we pull in. We very seldom, if we're like bogey on down to Florida or something, we say, hey, I think Bellhaven's pretty cool, let's go over there. You can do that when you're driving 65 miles an hour, but in a boat we saw all these gorgeous small towns. In an RV our preference would be to get off the highway. I know you got to do some highway, but I would rather be on secondary roads. It's OK with Stephanie and I if we go for a ride. I don't care if it takes me 20 minutes longer if I can be off the highway and just be and see something else.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of our mentality.
Speaker 3:anyway, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Oh, so fun. I'm so excited for your next adventure.
Speaker 2:Thank, you, it was so fun.
Speaker 1:Before we end this conversation, I really want to talk about the idea that there is no age limit or any lifestyle boundaries to traveling, because so often people talk to us and they're like, oh well, good thing you're doing it in your 20s, otherwise you'll never get the chance to do it again. So talk to me like what is your response to that kind of thing?
Speaker 3:If you're active. I mean it definitely helps to be active and in shape, right? You know just some of the RVing we've done already, and even in the boat world, but I think it's more in the RV world. You get into an RV park and everybody's like 75 overweight and moving around real slowly. That's probably a horrible broad brushstroke I'm painting with, but that's first of all. That's not our lifestyle. We're in very good shape, we work at being in shape and eating right and all that, but the thing is Stephanie's parents traveled literally the world way up into their 80s, right, and sometimes like, but they went and did it right Because they wanted to live life. So we really have great role models in that regard.
Speaker 3:I think you'll know I don't know, I don't worry about it, we'll know when the time is right, and I don't envision us being in an RV for more than two or three years. I just don't. I mean I could be wrong or we'll get something even bigger and nicer. I don't think so. I think we're going to see what we want to see and I would love to settle down close to family but maybe be near water and get a 25-foot boat that I could pull the grandkids behind a tube or something.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 3:We, just we, just we want to have fun living life. Can't stand just sitting around doing nothing. So we'll see what the next adventure looks like. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:I love your outlook on that whole thing and thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your whole story. I feel like you are a huge inspiration to anyone who has dreams and ambitions of doing something, but they're scared. There's some fear, limiting beliefs holding them back, and I think your story can help a lot of people in that situation.
Speaker 3:Appreciate that, and so one more thing I'll say is if people are worried about, well, I do need to make money. There's plenty of people who work remotely. If there was anything good that came out of COVID, I don't even hate the word anymore.
Speaker 3:But people learn to work remotely. Steph and I both work remotely now. We're not location dependent, so there are things that you can do. I mean, for growing a serious business is it's not a cakewalk, but some people just might want to bring in an extra thousand a month for restaurant money or whatever. So there's a lot of things you could do. The whole thing is do you want to do it bad enough and are you open to different things? Are you open to finding a way to make it happen? And if you've got those two components and you kind of short up with a little courage, go take your shot.
Speaker 3:The other thing and this is what we said to Stephanie's sister when she was kind of really doing that, the what if thing that I talked about earlier it's like what if you? Just you go to the West Coast, you see Tonya, their sister, and you do this and then you come home and by Thanksgiving you're done. You will have done it. You won't have regret and I don't. I think she'll still do it. She's really getting into it and exploring and she's getting part of those certain groups women who travel and different things. So who knows? But take the shot, because sooner or later, as I like to say. You're on the main stage right now. Sooner or later, the curtain's going to come down. There is no second act, so get a good performance in right now, while you have the opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, we have so many good quotes now from this episode, so many good things that you said. What's going to happen to your?
Speaker 3:social media.
Speaker 1:It's going to be all Jim Palmer quotes.
Speaker 3:And Stephanie Palmer.
Speaker 2:So we want to give anyone who's listening an opportunity to get in touch with you, to learn more about your story, to contact you, to read any of your books or anything. So what would be the best way for someone listening to get connected with you?
Speaker 3:Well, I'll give two. So getjimpalmercom. Getjimpalmercom that's my business website. You find all my books, everything there. But if people want to see what it was like on the boat, we have a YouTube channel. I forget, I think there's 45 videos there. We're not doing it anymore, but it's called Our Floating Home. Our Floating Home, just OUR, our. Yeah, so Floating Home was the name of the boat, so it was Our Floating Home. So just go to YouTube, put an hour floating home. You'll see us and some of our travels, up and down, things we went through, and there's a great video. We were anchored in Miami on a Saturday night, which was a horrible mistake, and New York has nothing on Miami and our anchor came loose in a storm and people are singing around oh, the stuff captured a lot of it on video. It was pretty crazy.
Speaker 2:Geez, wow, yeah, what an adventure. Holy cow, yeah, okay, well, we will definitely have those available for people. I want to encourage anyone listening to go check out Jim Palmer, because everything he does is amazing. We just love chatting with you, Jim.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. Austin and Monica, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was our pleasure. Thank you so much, Jim. Thanks so much for joining us here on the profitable Nomad Couple podcast. We appreciate you listening to us today.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed this episode, share it on Instagram and be sure to tag us. At Austin and Monica, together, we can inspire others to embrace a location independent lifestyle.
Speaker 2:And while you're there, we'd love to connect with you, so make sure you follow us for more tips and inspiration on living your dream location independent lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Until next week. Remember that you have the power to shape your own path. So stay curious, stay adventures and stay connected.