How to Travel and Work Remotely

Top 3 reason’s why you should choose a remote work environment

1. The world is your oyster! You can settle or travel anywhere you want if the location provides you with the right materials and focus to do your job.  

2. Unlike those boring office jobs where you are working early in the mornings and leaving late in the evenings, you have the time to have a life! You will be able to enjoy your career while also having the free time to work on your favorite hobby, make memories with your loved ones, or give yourself a moment of self-care.  

3. Driving all the way to the office can be a hassle for employees. Some will have an hour taken from their day just from being stuck in traffic. Cutting the commute will also lessen those toxic emissions coming from transportation which will impact the environment positively.  

Additional resources

• Success Strategies For Remote Employees
• Tips For Remote Employees Starting a New Job

Transcript

Pete Newsome  00:09
Welcome, everyone and thank you for listening to The Hire Calling Podcast. I’m Pete Newsome and this is your source for all things hiring, staffing, and recruiting. I’m joined today by Patrick Sirmeyer, who’s been a friend of mine for a number of years now.

Pete Newsome  00:22
Patrick has been in staffing for quite a while, he owns two companies. He is currently president of Luxus, which is a very successful organization that Patrick is running in a very different way right now, which is why I begged him to come on and talk about it. So, Patrick, it’s great to see you.

Patrick Sirmeyer  00:40
Thanks, man, I went from being a podcast rookie I think since I’ve been on this trip here for less than seven months. I’ve been on a few different podcasts telling my story, so I’m excited to, chat with you and catch up.

Patrick Sirmeyer  00:53
I know we had a great conversation leading up to it. But yeah, my current situation where I’m at, although I live in Orlando, I’m right now in Santa Barbara, California.

Patrick Sirmeyer  01:03
Our family left, we left Orlando in June to do a one year, call it travel and work remote, all around North America. So this setting, I told you, this is like the 20th location that I’ve been to since June of 2021.

Patrick Sirmeyer  01:18
We’ve got nine more locations left before we end up checking back home. So it’s me, my wife, my two kids, my two dogs, an SUV, and a trailer behind us.

Pete Newsome  01:27
So I’ve been following you on social media, which is why I really wanted you to come on because you’re doing something that I’ll tell you I wanted to do badly. I know I shared that with you previously, when you first mentioned that you were thinking about doing it.

Pete Newsome  01:41
I missed my window, once your kids are in high school it becomes increasingly difficult to do something like that. They’re not as interested probably in leaving their friends. So you did it at the perfect time.

Pete Newsome  01:55
What led to the decision, let’s just start with x, I really want to talk a lot about how you’re running a business from the road. Because, you know, that it is its own thing for sure. What led to the decision to do it in the first place?

Patrick Sirmeyer  02:09
Yeah, well, it wasn’t, a short one, in fact, we took nine months to even prepare for the trip, just working out logistics, because it’s our kids are five and eight.

Patrick Sirmeyer  02:18
And you know, my son Carson hasn’t yet started public school, my daughter, Vivian was going to be in second grade. So you can imagine, we’re homeschooling her for this year, which is already a challenge in itself, where I’d say we’re not the best teachers, but we get the job done.

Patrick Sirmeyer  02:32
Before you know COVID 2020 say, March 2020, we had actually converted our business to be a fully remote business seven months prior. That was a huge learning curve in itself. I’ve always been in office, we had a large, like 4000 square foot office. And just like every traditional staffing business would do.

Patrick Sirmeyer  02:52
We converted remote, I had felt the itch to do it for a while, especially with all these hybrid kind of work offices, as we work in other places. And I learned a big lesson, I learned that I didn’t have the right staff for remote work effect, we actually lost a lot of staff people just didn’t like it.

Patrick Sirmeyer  03:08
You can imagine some folks, they don’t enjoy working from home, they want to go to an office. That was a kind of rebuild for us, and we did that. And then we had to kind of figure out what’s our model where we go from here. So as we’re kind of getting our momentum back again, of course, we have COVID 2020.

Patrick Sirmeyer  03:22
That was you know, for some people that was the accelerator for their business for mine, it really put us in a stance. So we were servicing industries that took a big hit, you know, we’ve done some collaborative projects with your company as well and we’re thankful for that.

Patrick Sirmeyer  03:39
We’re thankful for those relationships, but right now I think anyone who’s in staffing is probably seeing, if you’re not seeing the success of it, you’re at least seeing a lot of requisitions come through, I’ll say that, you know because there’s there are a lot of people hiring.

Patrick Sirmeyer  03:51
So when we were sitting in 2020, we just loved it. We love to travel, I mean, we probably take two or three trips a year there somewhere in Europe or somewhere with our family. We couldn’t do that, and so we started figuring out well, if we’re working remote, the kids are young, why don’t we try something that we just go across the country.

Patrick Sirmeyer  04:11
It started as a three month trip for the summer, then I thought well, I really would need six months. Well, then I realized no one really wants to rent my homes for six months. I put my homes up for rent in Orlando. And then I said you know what we’re going to go one year, this is a big plan.

Patrick Sirmeyer  04:27
We started mapping out every location on Google Maps, dropping pins. We started figuring out how long does it take to drive to each place. We started figuring out logistics of you know, what do we got to do.

Patrick Sirmeyer  04:37
I mean, you can imagine we went from two cars, sold one car, down to one. Now we’re a one car family just going across the country. It’s like everything else, it’s an adventure. So I’d say 80% of what we planned, is perfect. 20% we could not plan for I mean.

Pete Newsome  04:56
Pretty darn good, I mean you’re Clark Griswold times 50, with the time you’re on the road.

Patrick Sirmeyer  05:04
Yeah.

Pete Newsome  05:04
I’ve traveled quite a bit with my family over time and something goes wrong, seemingly within 15 minutes of leaving the house every time we go somewhere.

Pete Newsome  05:14
So with that said, what’s been the biggest surprise, so far? Did a lot of planning, but still, you don’t know what to expect when you step out on an adventure like this.

Patrick Sirmeyer  05:24
Well I mean, the biggest surprise, I think comes down to, in my opinion, it’s, you don’t know what it’s like, spending 24/7 with your family. Most people just don’t, they’re not doing that, you know, everyone’s going off to a job or going to school, you’re going get some time together, maybe some sports activities.

Patrick Sirmeyer  05:40
You know, most families would say, if we can get dinner together, that’d be amazing. Well, I now have 24/7 for a whole year and at my kid’s age, you know, they miss their friends. We’re having to be super creative, but the best part is that we’ve got a lot of adventures that you mentioned, on our YouTube page.

Patrick Sirmeyer  05:58
We’ve been documenting as much as we can, we were a little behind during the holidays. So we’re going to put out about four more videos in the next two weeks and then go from there.

Patrick Sirmeyer  06:08
The thing I’m most excited about even though it was a surprise was you know, this digital memory recreating on YouTube. We’ll all go back and we’ll watch these as kind of like the new age, you know, a picture book that I used to have as a kid, and that’s what we’re going to do.

Patrick Sirmeyer  06:21
I’d say ultimately, my biggest struggle right now is I’m up at like five in the morning working East Coast hours trying to help run our team. The good thing is, I’m off early. But you know, it’s an early start for me, I’ll say that.

Pete Newsome  06:33
yeah, so you’re doing something that a lot of people talk about. Very few will actually take the step and do it, myself included. And one of the challenges that always comes up, the kids, and the social aspect of it is one thing, but in the financial of it is yet something else all together. But you still have a business to run.

Pete Newsome  06:54
So you were running a successful business right after COVID. Since we talked a lot during that time, things changed. It would have been easy to stay home and just focus on that.

Pete Newsome  07:07
So you set the standards, and let’s make it even more complex than it already is. But you’re doing it so what? What’s the secret to that? Many people would want to know.

Patrick Sirmeyer  07:21
Well, I’m going to say the secret here are some things that I wasn’t really strong at the start, and I’ve got some good people around me. I’ll give some references to our Director of Operations, Joy Fullerton. She is the glue to our business in the sense that like, we had to realize that in a remote environment it doesn’t have the same structure.

Patrick Sirmeyer  07:38
Most people, I know who work in a sales or staffing environment, want to eyeball their people. Call it micromanage if that’s the word you want to use. But you know, you want to be able to, keep people on pace.

Patrick Sirmeyer  07:48
I think the transition that I had to make was going from a and I’ll give an example a, hey, we work 40 hours a week to no, we’re production related. Like we’ve got, clients that need an end result that want to hire and need our consulting advice through that process and we’ve got to do a certain amount of work to help get that outcome for them.

Patrick Sirmeyer  08:10
So then we started structuring our business into, hey, here’s what we need to do daily. Here’s how we go about it. Here’s what’s most important reprioritizing those things, and then we’re empowering everybody to just know that’s top of mind instead of just looking at the activity or how many hours I sit at the desk.

Patrick Sirmeyer  08:27
I ran a poll on LinkedIn, just last week, I had like 200 plus people run, take the poll, they said that they have felt that since they’ve been working from home, it’s a 50/50 split that everyone says they’re more productive. And some people say they’re working more hours, no one’s working less, which is unique. I thought for sure to be working less. I said, “No, everyone’s working more hours.”

Pete Newsome  08:48
No one is going to admit that on your poll anyways.

Patrick Sirmeyer  08:50
I guess not I figured that too!

Patrick Sirmeyer  08:53
So we’re going to try out the summertime actually Friday’s off or every other Friday off and see if we can make that work. I know, it’s been a big push for everyone to do that and we’ll see what hybrid format we can do with it. But for me, it was letting go of control.

Patrick Sirmeyer  09:06
I’m like most people, I’m just like a control freak. I want to know what we’re doing and when we’re doing it, and I don’t want any surprises, like, you know, most owners are. And this caused me to have a lot of faith, but have faith in everyone. Let’s work on the plan and let’s be okay with the outcome. Do you know what I mean?

Patrick Sirmeyer  09:24
We are faithful that the outcome will be what it is. We can only plan the actions, the attitude part and I think it’s taken us you know, seven months to get that mentality in there.

Patrick Sirmeyer  09:34
I think I told you I hired an outside coach, a sales coach, that’s really been helpful. I’ll give a shout out to him Casey Jaycox. But he’s a great guy who’s been impactful for me and all of our reps as well.

Pete Newsome  09:46
So is it fair to say that you probably wouldn’t have been able to take this step had you not already gone virtual prior to COVID and headed in that direction?

Patrick Sirmeyer  09:56
Yeah, I 100% believe so. I think the COVID situation was such a bandaid rip off. All of us probably should have explored some hybrid work from home options, but no one wanted to, it’s the way we always did it.

Patrick Sirmeyer  10:11
Or like, in my case, as a manager who wants to maybe micromanage in some cases like you go, “That doesn’t work for me.” I can’t tell you I will say it doesn’t work for me. There are companies that talk to you now say we can’t wait to go back to the office.

Patrick Sirmeyer  10:22
I’m thinking, “I think it’s the wrong move.” I’m not saying you have to go fully remote, but a hybrid for sure. And adapting those things, I think is the right play right now and not everyone has done it.

Pete Newsome  10:33
yeah, it’s an interesting time, because it’s becoming a competitive advantage in hiring and retention or disadvantage, depending on how you’re approaching it. There are going to be winners and losers from this.

Pete Newsome  10:47
The hybrid approach, in particular, I find I struggle with because one of the benefits of being remote is your workforce can live anywhere like you’re doing right now. That hybrid deal of your virtual, but you still have to come in two days a week.

Patrick Sirmeyer  11:04
Yeah, that’s right.

Pete Newsome  11:05
I’m struggling with that one a little bit because I’m not sure who wins in that scenario.

Patrick Sirmeyer  11:11
Well, you know, you referenced to me earlier, we’re talking that, you’re a big fan of the gig economy, and so am I. This is kind of a little bit of a movement in that direction. Our employees are full time employees, for us, and with benefits and all things that go with it. But I kind of view it a little bit of like the gig economy.

Patrick Sirmeyer  11:29
Everyone kind of almost has a project that they’re responsible for. They are responsible for the activity and the outcome of that project, and we believe that project will get the result we want for our clients.

Patrick Sirmeyer  11:39
That’s kind of the thing we’ve had to do, we’ve had to take the job descriptions of internal employees and refine them, As to like, here’s where you’d spend 20% of your effort in your day will be in this, 15% doing this, we didn’t use to do that in a breakdown of our job responsibilities.

Patrick Sirmeyer  11:54
As you and I mentioned before, the idea of smart contracts is that you know, in essence, it’s causing all of us to be a little more specific about defining what we need, why we need it when we need it, instead of just being more general.

Patrick Sirmeyer  12:08
I think that’s what being in an office kind of made us lazy about. Which is why we’re here for eight to ten hours a day, let’s do as much as we can do. When it’s like, maybe we didn’t need eight to ten hours, we could have done it in five or six.

Pete Newsome  12:18
There is a lot of ways, right? From your commute to getting dressed in a certain way. If you don’t have to and if you start chopping all those things down, you really are left with a relative few number of productive hours that are necessary to operate at the same level.

Pete Newsome  12:36
Now the hope would be you can apply those still work the same amount of time and then be much more productive, or you get the time back to enjoy life a little more, which is really the whole point.

Patrick Sirmeyer  12:49
I agree man.

Pete Newsome  12:50
So one of the things that I struggle with when I travel because I think about this every summer of just going to the beach, staying in a house for a month. I find when I am not in work mode, I quickly shut off and have a difficult time operating at the same level.

Pete Newsome  13:09
Even when I come back from vacation, it takes me a couple of days to get back. I think that’s probably a healthy thing to do from a vacation standpoint. Has that been a struggle for you at all to go from work to play mode? Yeah, almost every day having to switch back and forth.

Patrick Sirmeyer  13:26
It was, I think it’s like training a muscle. Now I completely understand, I do have a defined number of responsibilities I’ve chosen my day. I mean, the point being, anyone who can take the time to plan their day, know what their priority meetings are the priority responsibilities, and then put a hard cut off. Like we all say we want to do, but I’ve had to be forced to do it. You can handle both.

Patrick Sirmeyer  13:52
But you know, mostly it’s around 1:00 or 1:30 in the afternoon, we’re out adventuring as a family and seeing some great things plus the weekends. So it gives us the time we need but that morning time, like I’m very dedicated to the work I’m doing and Sundays I take a day off. But yeah, it was when we started it was a struggle.

Patrick Sirmeyer  14:09
I’m thinking about my little setup, but now I know, what’s the perfect setup for me at work. We rent a place to stay in I’m looking for at least a nook or somewhere I can work out of and I think anyone who was to start it would probably find it to be difficult just like vacation mode.

Patrick Sirmeyer  14:24
Once you get in the groove, it works itself out. I think more than anything, it gave me some mental discipline that I needed.

Pete Newsome  14:31
Well, clearly you had a lot of that coming in.

Patrick Sirmeyer  14:33
Yeah.

Pete Newsome  14:34
You run a number of companies. We’re only talking about the staffing companies today of which you’ve had two successful organizations, but I know you have other businesses that you run too so that discipline is already in place.

Pete Newsome  14:50
What do you think has been the biggest challenge for you in terms of adapting to the big shift? As it relates to work in particular though, the family and social stuff, you know, you’ve probably encountered your own set of challenges there too. But with work, specifically, what’s been the hardest part?

Patrick Sirmeyer  15:11
Um, the challenge for me is just something that was going to exist, whether I was working remote or not, and that’s patience. What I mean by patience is, you know, we’re in a service business and training someone up to do things to the level you want them done.

Patrick Sirmeyer  15:23
I’m coming to be okay with the idea that if someone can do something to 80% of the level that I believed in my own head, it should be done, that’s still pretty good. You know, and there are some key components, they’re like, we must do this. Maybe, if you don’t do it exactly this way, I’m okay with it.

Patrick Sirmeyer  15:39
My desire for perfectionism or my desire of being in control, and not having the patience is probably the biggest growth, I’ve had to have, I referenced Casey earlier.

Patrick Sirmeyer  15:49
But, you know, I was the kind of manager who I’m going to tell you what to do, you know, hey, here’s how we’re doing it, this is how we do things. I’ve had to really work and I would say, I’m good at it now, for sure, which is, I’m going to ask enough questions to help someone see the end result and help them kind of have their own collective idea.

Patrick Sirmeyer  16:09
So that brain wrinkle kind of works for them as we make that plan, but once again, it takes patience. I bet my entire life that will be a component of how I operate, that I’m going to have to keep working on. I don’t believe it’s ever going to turn into an automatic hey, we got this. But for me, that’s my biggest growth and probably my biggest struggle all the time.

Pete Newsome  16:27
Thank you and I share that in common. I know consciously that when helping someone, lead them to the answer, guide them to the point where they can come up with the problem solving by themselves, right? I mean, everyone wins when you do that.

Pete Newsome  16:48
But being a business owner and knowing, from the time I started my company, 16 years ago, I had always been an employee, and I always had someone else to defer to. At some level, there was always a backboard.

Pete Newsome  17:04
Then when you don’t have one, you have to adapt really quickly, to have the buck stop with you and make decisions on the fly, with no hesitation and no looking back.

Pete Newsome  17:15
What I have found over the years, and I think this is probably what you’re describing too, unintentionally if I’m presented with a problem, I’m just giving you the answer and moving on to the next thing. That is not ideal, and it’s not good for the development of everyone else around you.

Patrick Sirmeyer  17:33
It’s true, any good coach would say that you know, you’ve got to help lead someone to find the answer themselves through your guidance, but that’s a long road. Do you know what I mean?

Patrick Sirmeyer  17:45
Sometimes when you’re putting out fires, which I know a lot of small business owners like myself are doing, you wear five to seven hats. You’re putting out fires, you kind of judge your day, not by this progression made, but by how many fires you had to put out. And if there’s only a couple, you’re like, that’s a good day.

Patrick Sirmeyer  17:57
I’ve had days like that, you know, and that’s where my impatience comes from. Having this remote work, where there’s this veil, almost where someone can’t just come knock on your door, they can’t just like walk up to your desk, that is causing all of us, including myself that when there’s a problem, sometimes they work themselves out that happens when you just give it time.

Patrick Sirmeyer  18:18
Then sometimes you find the answer on your own by researching and thinking and coming up with strategies without having to always go to who you think the source is. Believe it or not, that’s probably one of the biggest benefits of remote work has been, you know, someone can virtually knock on my door through a zoom call, and I just virtually don’t answer, you know.

Pete Newsome  18:39
It takes a different level of effort now than it did previously when you could just walk by, an open door and stick your hand and say, “Hey, let’s talk about this.” And to some degree, I think we lose something by not being able to do that.

Pete Newsome  18:56
Every conversation now has to be planned and our new employees, in some cases, I haven’t even had one on one conversations with them. Where I don’t get to ask them about their weekend or, see them in the hallway or the elevator, so we do lose something.

Pete Newsome  19:13
I think what we gain is the need, like you’re saying, to really consider whether that call is necessary. Do I really need to ask for help? Or can I go and do this on my own? And I think perhaps a positive byproduct of COVID and what it’s brought to us, is a sort of autonomy in a good way.

Patrick Sirmeyer  19:35
Oh, yeah.

Patrick Sirmeyer  19:36
I would agree, I mean, it’s interesting. I don’t have any data on this it is just more of a theory. I could probably run some reports to find out but like when you consider people, the loss of the collaboration, live collaboration, you go okay, that’s a real loss with this remote work.

Patrick Sirmeyer  19:52
I believe in that and then you think of like just any issues, that we’ll call them HR related issues that might come up with internal employees and there’s a lot of them, I won’t get in the details. Anyone who owns a business knows what it could be.

Patrick Sirmeyer  20:06
If you put that on a weighted scale, I’m going to say that the amount of collaboration work does not outweigh the number of issues you may have had from working in an office and I’m just one person’s opinion. I’m a believer that the scales are tipped in the other direction.

Pete Newsome  20:20
Yeah, I’m with you. The benefits definitely outweigh the negatives for everyone individually in the way they get out of their life. I mean, it’s improved the way we get spent our time.

Pete Newsome  20:33
You’re now taking that to an extreme right now.

Patrick Sirmeyer  20:35
Yeah.

Pete Newsome  20:36
Which is great, so what advice would you give to someone who’s thinking about doing it? And I just know, there are so many people out there that want to take that step but are afraid for various reasons.

Pete Newsome  20:50
I think just the unknown, right, it’s not what we do. But you’ve been a trailblazer. So what advice would you give both from a family standpoint, as well, or planning. However, you want to answer that, but also from a national standpoint?

Patrick Sirmeyer  21:05
Well, the first thing I would say is, anyone in our industry or just in business, I think your first decision you have to make is do you want to be a solopreneur? Or scale a business? I asked a friend of mine who just started a staffing business last year. And so which one am I doing? Because I don’t know I said, I think you should define that really well first.

Patrick Sirmeyer  21:22
I said because you can do well for yourself in either direction and most people think scaling business is the only way to go. I said it’s not always the best, it’s not always the right move for you in your life. So I’d say first, make that decision, stick with your plan, you can always change it.

Patrick Sirmeyer  21:37
The next thing I would say is then start like, you know, asking other people like myself and just through their trials and tribulations, and start defining your roles more specifically, because you just can’t change on the fly as much as you do.

Patrick Sirmeyer  21:41
One of the things I’ve seen that most people discuss is an issue with remote work is, yeah we don’t have as many live meetings we did in the office but interrupted video calls or scheduled meetings because there are old managers who can’t deal with the idea of I’m not seeing my people. So they’re over scheduling too many meetings, and now they’re just looking at a virtually they think, does it keep them at bay for an hour that that was productive, and it wasn’t.

Patrick Sirmeyer  22:18
Actually just last week, I’ve been reevaluating constantly, how many meetings we have, what’s the purpose of each one. How long is each one and I combined a couple. I actually took a whole lot of our meetings out of our week, starting this week. But that was just me being conscious of it because I just realized that everyone wants to be more productive. So I would say those are the things to start with.

Patrick Sirmeyer  22:39
From a family perspective, something I wasn’t good at, but I’ve gotten better my wife is amazing is just setting really good boundaries. There’s a book called boundaries, but you can define boundaries as to like, hey, I’m going to stop at this time. It’s a hard stop. You know, I used to say this phrase, “Hey, give me a call I’m available if you need me.”

Patrick Sirmeyer  22:55

My wife would say, Why do you say that you literally are making a hard stop where you don’t plan to work anymore. But you’ve gotten in the habit of saying the statement. And she’s like, You should say the statement of, hey, I’m done for the day. If you wanted to reach me, we should have done it in this window. And we should have scheduled some meetings because we’ve got some planned events.

Patrick Sirmeyer  23:12
But you know, these ala carte calls constant all the time or cutting into my defined family time. I’m now practicing the habit of no, just saying, hey, I’ll be done at this time. I won’t be available anymore but we can call tomorrow if we need to.

Pete Newsome  23:27
Yeah, that’s an interesting thing, I like to say I’m never off. I go in to get my haircut, it’s always the same thing, I laugh. I don’t know why this particular experience is one that I think of, but they always say, if I go in on Friday afternoon, “So are you working today?”

Pete Newsome  23:45
I think I haven’t been off in 16 years. Because I really do feel that way and I have not gone to that place. You say you’re going to that place, can you really do that? How are you doing that? Because it’s easier said than done.

Patrick Sirmeyer  24:03
Well, the reason why I know I’m conscious about it, first of all, and go in that place is I had a really like deep thought a couple of weeks ago and I talked to my wife about it, which was, you know, I want to be a good example for our children. You know, I want them to grow up and learn some of the core characteristics, I think are important to become called a functional adult or someone who’s respectable.

Patrick Sirmeyer  24:25
All the characteristics and character traits that you probably want your children to have to being good for the world and learn work ethic and understand how to work through adversity. And I said to her, I said, “Well, they’re only five and eight”, which I understand they’re young, I said, but when I asked them, “What do you think I do?” Well to them, I type and I talk to people through a video.

Patrick Sirmeyer  24:47
They don’t see, I mean if you’re a professional athlete, you see your dad has to work hard to train or your mom has to work hard and train for a sport. They play the sport you get to see loss you get to see when it’s on a public scale. But like, from my perspective, I’m like, I don’t see that you know what I mean?

Patrick Sirmeyer  25:03
So I’m having to get conscious of like, discussing, Oh, here’s the difficult time I had today and the lesson I learned and kind of being vulnerable to my kids. Or, you know, cutting it off and then telling them to say, I’m not going to work anymore today, because today, here’s what I did I help these people do this, this and this.

Patrick Sirmeyer  25:17
I’m actually being like conscious to describe to them what I did today, and why I did it. And then what I’m spending my time doing now. I told my wife, I said, when I get home, I’m going, I don’t know, I’m going to sign up for something that my kids can physically see me do and train for or work towards, so they can see my struggles.

Patrick Sirmeyer  25:36
I can communicate with them like what I’ve had to do to accomplish that I, a friend of mine, and I are going to sign up for the, have you ever head of dopey challenge? They do this at Disney, it’s like a four day race.

Pete Newsome  25:45
Yeah.

Patrick Sirmeyer  25:46
5k, 10k, half marathon, or full marathon like that’s, that will be the most challenging thing I’ve done probably physically in my life, and that’s what I’m going to end up doing. Now I’ve got to be conscious, because otherwise they just say, Well, dad talks to a camera and he types in the computer, you know?

Pete Newsome  26:01
I know you run because I see your posts on that. I use to run, and I did the goofy challenge one year.

Patrick Sirmeyer  26:07
Okay, awesome.

Pete Newsome  26:07
So I did the half marathon back to back. But to your point that’s been I think it’s been 10 years since I’ve run a marathon and my kids don’t see that. My oldest was 12 at the time. And so she has some vague recollection of going to races and events and that sort of thing.

Pete Newsome  26:25
My younger ones, don’t. To your point, they’ve not seen that side of me. I think, you know, they see the pictures, they don’t believe it. They’re like, sure old guy, you know, you were in shape at one point, but good for you for doing that.

Pete Newsome  26:42
I hope you stick with it, even when you come back to reality, so to speak, right? Because it has to feel like vacation even though you’re working. It has to be surreal because you’re not home.

Patrick Sirmeyer  26:55
It does feel like vacation some days, other days, it can be a struggle. We’ve had some moments where like, we’re going home, forget it, we’re done with this. It could just be a day usually when we get to a new place. And everyone’s trying to kind of get their footing as to like, Okay, where are we in the space we’re staying in and you know, on top of each other, it takes a little while.

Patrick Sirmeyer  27:15
But then we start to have some really great moments. Some of these adventures we’re doing, we’re walking through some glaciers or you know, some amazing places, it’s, um, you know, we have to stop with you being conscious of like, hey, what are we doing and what’s happening here.

Patrick Sirmeyer  27:31
We’re having to explain to our kids, like, look, you can be can grow up and do this, if you like, it’s just, you have to make plans to be able to do that for yourself. I hope that what they take away from it is they have choices. Their choices are theirs, and they have to live with the consequences, but they also get the benefit of it too.

Pete Newsome  27:48
I love what you’re doing as a professional and I love what you’re doing as a parent too. You’re showing your kids, something that I think is not done nearly enough and something that I’ve tried to do not to the degree you are in this situation, but to show my kids that life is not about following a chosen path, a path that is chosen for you.

Pete Newsome  28:12
It’s about you know, maximizing your experiences along the way, and you are practicing what you preach with that. So I’m excited for you and I’m excited for your kids because they’re getting to experience something that very few will. They will forever be better for it, I truly believe that. I’m sure you realize that too.

Patrick Sirmeyer  28:33
Yeah man, it’s been great. I referenced Casey Jaycox, who I hired, he’s been a big impact as someone I’ve gotten become a friend with and is a coach in my life. He sent me this book two weeks ago, I’m in the middle of reading and now it’s called it takes what it takes by a guy named Trevor Moab.

Patrick Sirmeyer  28:49
I didn’t even know who Trevor was but unfortunately, he was young, he was 48. But he passed away this past summer, but he was the mental performance coach for Florida State, the University of Georgia, Russell Wilson, and Michael Johnson, the track athlete.

Patrick Sirmeyer  29:04
This has been an amazing book of just referencing, when you set a goal, your choices become limited. His whole theory here is like neutral thinking and it’s basically taking away these big highs and dips.

Patrick Sirmeyer  29:17
Which he believes that when you have your car and it’s in reverse, it’s going backward’s, you can’t just throw it drive, you have to put it in neutral first, you know, before you can get in the drive or else you’re going to have some issues.

Patrick Sirmeyer  29:28
Well, the same thing goes, he believes in practicing neutral thinking because negative thinking for sure doesn’t work. Not everyone can believe in positive thinking because that takes a long time to get your mind there. I’ve been adapting to some of these things and it’s been really helpful for us on this trip.

Pete Newsome  29:45
Interesting, you’ve learned a lot, you’re doing a lot, and you’re making it work. I think it’s just such a positive story for others to hear and hopefully, more people will do what you’ve done because you’ve proven that it’s possible. Not even a stretch, I think, right? I mean, once you’ve made the commitment to do it, you never look back.

Patrick Sirmeyer  30:10
I mean, the only thing I say is, I keep my hair short because I got a lot more gray hairs now than I did seven months ago. So that’s the only negative thing I can think about this trip has given me but otherwise, um, yeah, it’s been a fun time.

Pete Newsome  30:22
Well listen, I will let you get back to it because I know the kids are probably looking at you going, Hey, let’s go do something fun. So what’s on the agenda for today?

Patrick Sirmeyer  30:31
Man today? Well, one part of every agenda every day is taking them to the park to get the energy out. And then since we’re staying in Santa Barbara, and we’re kind of just getting towards Southern California, there’s a lot of beautiful areas on the coastline.

Patrick Sirmeyer  30:45
We love the beach in Florida, but the beaches here are just as beautiful. So we’re planning to probably go to the beach and spend some time there, which would be a great afternoon.

Pete Newsome  30:53
Oh, awesome! Well, listen, I will put the Luxus information on the show notes. But if someone wants to follow your journeys, how do they find you on YouTube?

Patrick Sirmeyer  31:03
Yeah, thanks for asking. So we have a YouTube page, which is called The Sentient Life, which is spelled like s-e-n-t-i-e-n-t. So I didn’t know the word we had to come up with it. But it’s a person who has the ability to sense and feel and we thought that kind of was indicative of like what we’re attempting to do.

Patrick Sirmeyer  31:19
Which is our tagline is disconnecting to find awareness, but you can find this in The Sentient Life. Our website is Thesentient.life and I think we’ve got about 28 videos total. Surely about 10 or 15 More to come.

Pete Newsome  31:32
Awesome, we’ll put that in the show notes as well. So Patrick, thank you so much for taking the time today. It’s been a real pleasure, and I look forward to continuing to follow over the next few months.

Patrick Sirmeyer  31:41
Thanks, Pete. Appreciate it.