Beachside Banter w/Bee

Sailing, Coaching, and Personal Growth with Flo

• Bee • Season 1 • Episode 10

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What if transforming your life into a continuous adventure was not only possible but within your reach? Join me, Bee Davis, as I chat with Flo, an inspiring adventurer who left behind the corporate grind of Berlin to sail the Mediterranean and live life on his own terms. Flo's journey, filled with remote work, mobile homes, and stunning locations like Zanzibar, will ignite your wanderlust and show you how to turn passions into tangible realities.

The power of letting go isn't just a cliché—it's a transformative practice, as Flo illustrates through his transition from a corporate headhunter to a life coach. We'll uncover how leaving behind possessions, relationships, and professional roles opened up a path to clarity and purpose for Flo. His story offers valuable insights into building a meaningful career and maintaining a client base while navigating the challenges of a nomadic lifestyle. Learn how real connections and genuine conversations became the foundation of his coaching journey.

Life on a boat with pets might sound idyllic, but it comes with its own set of unique challenges and rewards. Flo shares the serene experience of syncing with nature and weather patterns on the sea. From climbing Kilimanjaro to the simplicity of desert life, Flo's adventures are a testament to the profound personal growth that comes from embracing life on the move. Tune in to Beachside Banter and let Flo's experiences motivate you toward your own path of adventure and self-improvement.

About My Guest: 
Florian is the founder of Simplicity Of Happiness, an inspirational coaching project that is helping customers to live the life they love. 
He is living an adventurous life and is taking his own inspirations from travel around the world.

Between the mountains and the ocean, between Europe and Africa he is collecting stories and experiences to share with the word.

You can find him here -> https://simplicity-of-happiness.com/

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Speaker 1:

Hey, hey, hey everyone, Welcome to another thrilling episode of Beachside Banter with Bea. I'm Bea Davis, I'm your host and I'm hanging out with Flo today. I'm super excited to talk. All about his whole life Seems like it's just been an incredible adventure. So, flo, go ahead, take it away, introduce yourself and give us a little bit of a history. Yeah, well, hi.

Speaker 2:

I'm Flo, that's it.

Speaker 1:

That's Flo.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, currently I'm sitting on my sailing yard here in the Mediterranean. I live on a boat full time. It's super, super smoking hot so I have to sit outside, so there might be a boat passing or my dog just walking around. And I am currently working from here, because I'm always working at home office based and I do that as a coach, but what I really love to do is full-time travel.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. I'm so excited. So, if I remember correctly, you started out in Berlin and then you decided that you were going to hop on a boat. How did? How did you come to that decision, or tell me all the things?

Speaker 2:

Well, how much? How much detail do you want to know? How much time do we have?

Speaker 1:

We want to know anything you want to share with us.

Speaker 2:

Well, if you look at it at hindsight, it looks like a plan because, well, obviously, at every step in my life I made a certain decision, and one decision led to another, and that led me living my dream right now. I dreamt about this 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Did I have any idea how to get here? Absolutely not at all. I was terrified. I was super afraid. I had a lot of really big hiccups, founded a couple of companies with the wrong people, get in fights, had to readjust, so it's not as easy as it seems. When I look back, there's one thing that has made a shift for me, and that was that I asked myself what I really like from all the things that I'm doing day in, day out. What is it that I truly love? And I came up with a lot of things that were not work to me. I always thought work has to be painful, work has to be hard. You have to work for work, so that you deserve it. Work can't be fun. If it's fun, then it's like it's a leisure activity. It's something that you do for fun. Nevertheless, I started to journal a lot, write about these things that I would like to do, and then I asked myself a very important question, and that was what would I do, if somebody paid me the same amount every month, so it's not like a one-off and then it's gone. You have to do something every month, but all I have to do is I have to prove that I love what I'm doing. And then I thought about so many things and I couldn't decide. And all of a sudden I realized I would like to travel full time. I would like to talk about that and I would like to motivate other people to live up to their potential as well. And then from there on I still had no idea how to do that, but every time that I saw a possibility that could bring me closer to that, I did that.

Speaker 2:

So there was a point when I decided to buy a mobile home and travel full-time for almost an entire year with my back then girlfriend. She was writing her doctor thesis so she could work remote. I was working for the oldest business school of the world it's a French grand école and I managed the alumni base and I had to do that remote anyway. So I thought I could do that from anywhere if I have a mobile connection. Then we traveled. Then we moved to Switzerland because we really liked the mountains and we really liked the country. We both had a passion for Africa, so we went there on vacation. I met somebody that I helped to rent out a room with Airbnb at the beach in Zanzibar, ended up building an entire lodge together. I used to live in Zanzibar at the beach for a year. Then I moved back to Switzerland. Then I moved back to Switzerland. Then I lost everything in Zanzibar due to basically just crime. It's the way it happens, over and over and over again in Zanzibar.

Speaker 2:

I moved my African business to Kilimanjaro and I organized safaris in Kilimanjaro climbs. I organized most of that from my boat. 2018, I bought a boat 2019, I moved from the boat on and off and now, for about one and a half years, I'm full-time living on a boat. I don't have a home. Well, that's not true. I can sail my home wherever I want to and I feel as liberated as I have never been before.

Speaker 1:

That is absolutely amazing. You are literally living the dream life. You've been to some of the most amazing places that I like, places that I have been wanting to check off my bucket list since I was like, probably three years old. So yeah, tell me about Zanzibar. I hear that the beaches there are absolutely incredible and that it mirrors, or is almost as pretty as, the French Polynesia. Is that true?

Speaker 2:

I have not been to French Polynesia, but the videos that I saw are quite, quite similar. First of all, what does it mean to live the dream? I mean, everybody else can have a different dream. I can tell you that one of the most frustrating things can be to turn your dream into reality, because all of a sudden it's not a dream anymore. And very often we have a dream and that keeps us working and it keeps us focusing on working, performing, making money, showing up in the morning, because there's something that motivates us, because we want to get there. When you turn that into reality, all of a sudden it's nothing that you want to achieve, it's just normal and it's there every day. So for me, I found it at times really difficult to focus because all of a sudden there are the downsides. I mean living on the boat right now. We were waiting for summer here in Europe quite long. I'm very happy that it is hot right now. At times it is just way too hot and you can't really cool down the boat.

Speaker 1:

I bet.

Speaker 2:

Then you have the other boats passing. Your world is shaking day in, day out. Then if you have one storm coming through after another, you have to find shelter. So you're always a little bit on the run. You're often lacking security. It's the same in Africa. You're lacking the security of a well-run system. So, if you are used to having a law, having rules, if you sign something, if you sign a contract in Africa Africa is a continent, so there is a wide variety.

Speaker 2:

I have been married to a Moroccan woman for a couple of years, so I know Africa a bit, from the very north all the way to the east, and there are certain similarities, similarities and that is a very oral culture, things that are written down, they are out of your mind and they are not present anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we agreed on this yesterday. That's why I signed it yesterday, but today's a different day, so you always have to keep negotiating. Life is now and, um, if you, if you make a contract for the future, it's so often that somebody, somebody will screw up with poverty, and especially the american tourists. So american tourists, they were terrible around with their, with their dollars.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, not, not terrible, but if you look like an american, it's really difficult to make lasting business because they are used to tourists in general, especially the Americans, having just a very short vacation time. So they are here, you have to work them today, you have to get as much money out of them as you possibly can, because they'll be gone tomorrow and they won't come back, so you won't have a second chance and um, so being being a white person in Tanzania, especially in Zanzibar, is at times challenging. And then they have a rip-off culture. They don't really invest in their own future. It's very male driven, hierarchical, um.

Speaker 2:

It's a big influences from Oman and other Islamist or Islam countries used to be part of the kingdom of Oman and it became part of their culture. But they have this mix of this continental African culture and then this, the Islamic culture, and it is at times really difficult because there are a lot of rules and then this um, the islamic culture, and it is at times really difficult because there are a lot of rules and then people don't really want to apply to the rules.

Speaker 2:

So if you see that it's, it's fine, but then you can still get in trouble for that. So to have a business and to run a business is really difficult. Quality is really low, especially with these like one-time customers, because it's not like here in elba in italy you have a lot of people from switzerland, from germany, from north italy that come here every year, and zanzibar it's mostly all of the time like one-time customer. They can afford this one time in their lifetime. They're here and they are gone.

Speaker 2:

And so what? What do you do? You try to promise them as much as possible, and all the menus are full with all the things that you can get in the western world, but then they are. You can't get them, and if they make them, they taste very often horrible. So that is a bit of a mix.

Speaker 2:

You can make the most beautiful pictures, but you have to always be careful that nobody sees you, because you can't really show your shoulders, you can't really show your knees. You will always have somebody trying to sell you something or rip you off. If you're a woman, then you always have a guy trying to hit on you. You see, there's always ups and downs and you have to focus. You have to. You have to make a decision for yourself, not only what is it that you want, but also what is the price that you're willing to pay for that. I did not have a hot shower in a year when I when I lived, when I lived in zanzibar. So one of the first things I did was that we dig a well, because very often power cuts every single day. So you have to find your way around and if you're willing to pay that price and find a way around, be easy, look for a solution then you can really enjoy the moment. But if you have that mindset, then you could enjoy office life as well?

Speaker 1:

probably, yeah, so you're giving up a lot to have those like to live in that paradise, so to speak.

Speaker 2:

Well, I gave up a lot to gain a lot Gotcha. So if you look at the average person, I have heard that an average person has about 24 hours a day, seven days a week, about 52 weeks a year. It's the same for everybody, and most of us live every single second of their life. There's not a time that we are not here. So we are always living our life doing something Watching TV, be it reading a book, be it playing or watching sport, be it on vacation, be it working. We do something every single moment.

Speaker 2:

So if you want something else in your life, you have to give something up, and so I earn my living with coaching. I mean the best coaching, the best paid coaching, is leadership coaching. So I do a lot for companies, but what I'm really, really interested in is to help, to help you find out who you really want to be and, to be honest, who you already are deep inside. Very often we have a perception of who we are, but the way of how we show up in the world is a bit or a huge difference, and there's the gap where the frustration comes from, and this is what I'm really, really passionate about. I decided that I'm not teaching you how. These are the five steps and then you can have everything you want in life.

Speaker 2:

No, first of all you have to give something up, you have to let go, and that's a power.

Speaker 2:

I call it the power of letting go, because if you're not attached to something, then it's every moment that you hold on to a thing, to a job, to a house, to a friend, to a love in your life, it's a decision.

Speaker 2:

If you're not dependent, if you have the power to let go, then every day you have to ask yourself why do I still want to be with that partner? Why do I still want to go into that office? Why do I still want to pay for that house? And if you find an answer for that, then there's a meaning. If you develop that power to let go, because you know that you're going to lose it anyway at one point in your life, you're going to lose everything that you ever had. It's helpless to talk about how to keep things, because we won't keep things or people in our life anyway. If I have to give it up anyway, then I better focus on the time that I do have and how to make the most out of that and you do not make the most out of keeping on to something that doesn't add value to your life.

Speaker 1:

Those are words of wisdom, thing that doesn't add value to your life.

Speaker 2:

Those are words of wisdom. Yeah, well, it's words of suffering and of pain and of frustration. Because for so long I just thought, oh, if I just add this to my life, then I'm happy. And I get more and more and more and more frustrated. And at one point I thought, if I continue like this, then one day I'll be dead and nobody even noticed. And then I thought, okay, if I'm like this, then one day I'll be dead and nobody even noticed. And then I thought, ok, if I'm dying anyway, then I better do something I liked before.

Speaker 2:

And that's when I slowly, slowly started shifting. And I still have my days where I'm frustrated, and when I'm alone on my boat and the weather is nasty and the internet's not running and I'm running out of power because I'm solar powered, and if it's raining for three days, I mean still these frustrations. It's liberating to be able to step back and ask yourself why am I doing this? And if you have an answer to that, then all of a sudden it doesn't matter, because there is suffering and there is pain and there is a price to pay in whatever you do.

Speaker 1:

That totally makes sense. So what got you into the coaching aspect? Did you just like come to? Well, I know you said that you wanted to make income, obviously, so is that kind of how you melted that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, it's, it wasn't. It wasn't money driven. I had no plan and I did not know. I did not know where I want to go to, so I could not make a plan how to get there. I got a job offer for an American-based international hedge hunter. I started working there Obviously quite good communication skills, people liked me, did really good placements, and that was back in the 2000s.

Speaker 2:

And then Lehman Brothers went broke and I was working in the 2000s and then Lehman Brothers went broke and I was working in the placing people in the finance industry and all of a sudden, these people that are placed for so much money, they were out of job and they called me and said Flo, you were the only person that I talked to in my whole recruitment process who gave me the feeling I truly matter. And I realized I do that because I have no idea about that whole finance thing. I have no idea. I mean I can't tell them to do their job, so I better ask them what they really want to do and what their wife thinks about that or their partner, and how they want to be and where they want to be in 10 years. And then they said I need to get out of the finance industry. This is killing me and can you help me with this? And I thought, yeah, no, because I had no idea how to do that. At the same time, I knew that I really liked talking to these people and that I can have a positive influence and I can empower them. So I'm not solving their problems, but I'm empowering them to have a shift in their mindset and all of a sudden see a solution to their own problem. And then I talked to my bosses back then and they said, oh, that's a great idea if we can build this up, the coaching service alternating with the headhunting service, because one is addressing the client, the companies, and one is addressing the people. And they wanted me to get the funding for this basically paid out of my own pocket and if it's working, then I can do it. Then I thought, okay, if I have to do that all on myself anyway, then I can just go my own way.

Speaker 2:

And we went separate ways. I did a coaching training and then I realized I am able to have really good conversations but I'm really bad in finding clients. My former boss came back to me because she was in the alumni association of ESCP. My former boss came back to me because she was in the Alumni Association of ESCP, this business school, and they looked for somebody an international career service consultant, basically doing free coachings for their members and she said, ok, well, I know that you're a coach for a year or two, now Would you like to work for us? And that was perfect because it got me into full timetime coaching and I didn't have to find any clients and I had this huge name of the escp europe behind my name and that gave me the confidence. And then when I started to travel more and be in tanzania, I knew that I would like to well, yeah, find my own clients and be even more independent outside of that university business school setting.

Speaker 1:

So how do you go about finding clients now and building a community, since you're kind of living that nomadic life?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's still my most difficult task. There's something that I would call different. It's not about finding clients, it's about creating clients. Coaching is quite difficult because it's not that somebody needs to have a glass of water, that somebody needs to have a dinner, that somebody needs to have a new toothbrush or anything like this, or that they need a mechanic for their car because it broke down, and it's not that they need a psychologist because they just had a mental breakdown. It's that they, if you already have a license and you have a car and everything is running, but you somehow feel a little bit uncomfortable If you now decide that you're taking a driving class again, like, maybe you take a race driving class, but taking a driving class it's something that you don't really need but that could improve your safety or your performance in the future, and that's the thing about coaching. So nobody really nobody needs coaching and at the same time, everybody needs coaching.

Speaker 2:

You always start at the point. Wherever you are, you can always look at a thing or a thought, or a belief or a value that you would like to improve or change. Make yourself a better version of yourself, just step by step, but continuously for the rest of your life. So I need a coach. I can talk about my thoughts and my feelings and share my values and my beliefs, and very often if somebody is able to listen well, then they are able to pull me out of my current situation and give me like a meta position looking from the outside of my own life, and all of a sudden I see a pattern that I kept repeating, but it was unconscious and I realized it's holding me back. So it's always a situation where you could need a coach.

Speaker 2:

So what I do is that I try to serve one person every day, so not for making the money, but for um, and and if I'm really busy, for example, I do a lot of boat work myself and I had some really structural repairs over the last weeks and then also or of course, it's a little bit less Um, but normally if I have my office days, then I'm trying to reach out to people that I already know. It doesn't matter whether it's my contact base, just texting them a WhatsApp or through LinkedIn. It's, most of the times, people that I already somehow talked to in the past and I'm just like connecting, like hey, what's up, gotcha, how are you doing? What's going on in your life? Um, and I taught myself to listen. It's quite opposite than today, but just like letting them come, letting them express themselves.

Speaker 2:

Something that I had to really train is to not switch into my own thinking, to not judge. So if you tell me what you would like to do, then so often people are not listening but they are preparing their own answer or their next question. And if you give me an answer, then I taught myself to just be with you and say, oh, that's how you see the world, not that's what I would like to do. And oh, that's completely right. And you are so right and everybody else is wrong. That's interesting. That that's what you like, that's what you enjoy, that's what you fear. That's interesting. Tell me more about that.

Speaker 2:

And all of a sudden people can open up because somebody's listening and somebody gives them the feeling that they are okay the way they are. And very often that brings me to a point where people tell me about a layer of their problems that they normally don't express. So it's not that outer layer. Oh, somebody treated me bad, it's something deeper like, oh, it's a pattern. It happens often to me.

Speaker 2:

I feel like this and that, oh, I'm unsecure with something in my life and I don't have to teach them that it's just showing up and if we reach that layer, we can talk about your insecurity. Say, okay, what would you need? I mean, what would you like instead and what would you need to get there? They have an insight, they have a different perspective on an outside problem that they try to fix and all of a sudden they can address the root. Through that, very often I get recommendations or people say oh yeah, you know what. I think I have a couple of other tasks that I would like to talk about, and then we talk about yeah that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

So, but it's not about I find somebody who's paying me because they don't know what they pay me for. So I say if I serve you as good as I can and all of your issues are fixed and you have no need to talk about anything, then you're probably not a client for me anyway. Should I try to sign you as a client? But all of a sudden you're still not a client, but you are a person who thinks highly of me and whenever there's something in the future, it's most likely that you will come back to me. And if you talk to your best friend and they say, oh, I can't talk to my partner about this, I can't talk to my boss about this, and I'm so frustrated, and all of a sudden, you sudden, you might think well, you know, call Flo, Call Flo. I talked to him last week. He's a nice guy, he listens. So most of these calls I do on video.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you could do it anywhere in the whole entire world. That's amazing.

Speaker 2:

I wanted to do online courses so that people can sign up and I don't have to be present and that I put my knowledge somewhere and people that I put some ads online. People click on there and then they can sign up for a class and they get the knowledge and so they can train themselves. And so it's like one too many the approaches, the teaching approaches from one too many people, and that it's scalable, and all of that and none of that worked. It just absolutely didn't work.

Speaker 2:

And then I thought, yeah, because I'm not that guy, I'm living for personal connection. So I made the decision that I want to have these one-on-ones and I try to find a way how I can travel so much and still get paid for one-on-one. So I did incentives. So where we went riding for one week in Provence, in southern France, camping outside bonfire, french food on horses all day, or we went sailing or we climbed the Kilimanjaro, something that I did 10 times is for one week by foot, walking through Sahara. So, with camels, I have some nomadic friends. I did a solo trip in Sahara about 10 years ago, 11 years ago, and I made a couple of friends and I can call them, and then they organize everything. All my guests do not feel like tourists, they feel like nomadic friends because they are not driven around, there's no jeep, there's no tent, we just sleep under the open sky and it's like super, super connected to nature, and that's for an entire week in the middle of nowhere and we don't see anybody else. It's very far entire week in the middle of nowhere and we don't see anybody else. It's very far off, everything in morocco, um, and this is how I wanted to get the personal connection.

Speaker 2:

And then, well, there was something happening in 2020 that made that quite difficult and all of a sudden, I was, I was, I was completely out of business. I had no income. From one moment to the other, I had to refund money that I already spent, so it put me into huge problems. And then I thought well, the same techniques or the same experience that we have by creating these groups while walking through sahara, let's do that online. Call it a mastermind, have a people, a group of like-minded people, meet at the same time every week and discuss our problems there. And I just offered it for free because I probably because I needed a self self self-help group.

Speaker 2:

And, um, this first mastermind that I started in, I think, february or March 2020, is still online and we still meet every Tuesday morning at 7 am. And then I started a couple of other masterminds, focusing either on leadership or entrepreneurs, and now I'm just starting one for coaches and one for people who would like to have a life like myself, and I'm doing that with my girlfriend together. She's also living on a boat and she's running quite a huge YouTube channel on travel, and so we thought about putting our knowledge into a mastermind group and we might call it like life in a nutshell, something like this so it's about these people who would like to step out of their comfort zone and do that nomadic life for a year or two, and these are things that would not be possible without first losing everything in the pandemic because it had this mind shift or it offered the mind shift.

Speaker 1:

Well, that mastermind sounds absolutely amazing, the one about traveling and the world. I absolutely need to join that for sure. That sounds awesome. Wow, you have done so many amazing things so real quick. The Sahara Desert I just got to touch base on it. How scary is it? It seems like it's super scary to be in the middle of nowhere camping. I mean, is there crazy animals that are trying to come and eat you? I'm just curious.

Speaker 2:

It is a place that I was really, really afraid of, and I was scared on my own, and I was scared in the dark and thought somebody's going to come in the middle of the night. I was there and nobody else was. Who shall you be afraid of if there's nobody else? I think the most dangerous place is the city.

Speaker 1:

I'll agree with that.

Speaker 2:

yeah, there are so many other people, you don't know if you get bitten by a dog, hit by a car, because there's always something happening in the city, especially when I'm coming from the boat, coming from the desert or coming from the boat, the boat moves very slowly and if you're in the city, everything is going so fast, the cars are going so fast and they are passing you about this much distance and nobody seems to care. It's like imagine somebody shooting a bullet this far away from your head. You would call that person crazy or call the police. But if somebody drives past you with a truck it's as deadly as a bullet if it hits you and people think that's normal If there are no other people around and almost no animals.

Speaker 2:

So it took me 10 years to see the first snake. They are not. Really. I have never seen a scorpion there In Zanzibar. I had scorpions in my living room every other week. I had scorpions here in Elba, but in the desert and then traveling with some friends who really know that area.

Speaker 2:

The thing is finding water. So when I was on my own I was really, really scared. But when I'm there with my friends, they can tell me exactly how long to walk, in which direction to find a well, and they know another one in case it doesn't have water. But they know pretty sure which one does have water and which one not. And if you have the camels, and they know another one in case it doesn't have water, but they know pretty sure which one does have water, which one not. And if you have the camels and they are carrying the water, then you know that you could carry the camels, don't have to drink for for days and days, so you can take the water for yourself.

Speaker 2:

And you know that you can cross uh, you can cross a couple of hundred miles before you run out of water. You just have to keep moving. So everything slows down. I have never felt more peaceful, more calm, more at ease with myself, and the same happens to my uh, to my clients. So we start as as a like a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, and the first day and the second day it's people who have these jobs, and the third day these are friends that forgot how to check their emails. And all of a sudden it's about living life, loving people, having relationships, talking to people, making the best out of the time that we have. And time slows down If everything that you do has to be powered by, like with your muscles, it's difficult to hurry, there's no place to reach.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't matter if we eat an hour later or an hour earlier and there's no food on the table anyway, because first you have to build the camp and find some firewood and make a fire and then start the cooking, so everything is slowing down. It's the same that can happen with boat life. If you have to be in sync with the nature, if you have to watch the weather, is there a storm coming from which direction? You have to be in sync with the nature. If you have to watch the weather, is there a storm coming from which direction? You have to move and you can't just go there quickly. You have to prepare everything and then the whole house is like shaking and moving and you're going with the force of the wind and then it takes a while until you're there.

Speaker 2:

It's difficult if you have meetings like this. We we rescheduled our meeting one time and I didn't have it in my mind and all of a sudden my phone was ringing. It was like you have a meeting now and that was so sorry about that yeah Well it doesn't.

Speaker 2:

That was my fault because I didn't look it up before. But if it's anything about daily life, it doesn't matter whether I get there five minutes later or earlier. But if I have a meeting like this and you have an office schedule and I'm sitting somewhere on my dinghy, my phone rate oh, I have a video call right now. Normally. Normally I do my, my, my office calls, so that's, that's my dog. It doesn't even stand up for barking, it's just lying there. Way too hot, so cute. Thanks, Jungle. I lost my point. I forgot what I wanted to say.

Speaker 1:

No worries, I do have a question about the dog, though. First off, what's his name?

Speaker 2:

Jungle, jungle, unchained Okay.

Speaker 1:

That's so cute. How is it with animals on a boat? Is it difficult to find them? Like veterinarian care and that sort of thing, Because I've always loved, like I've seen, people who have had like cats on their boats or you know stuff like that. Cats are super easy.

Speaker 2:

Because they can't go anywhere. Cats, they poop in their little house. So even if they are living in the city, very often they don't go outside. So you train them, they go into their little cat toilet thing. So it depends on the dog. There are some dogs that are really clumsy and they don't really move well on the boat. It depends on the dog. There are some dogs that are really clumsy and they don't really move well on the boat.

Speaker 2:

I have a dog who's really clever and really I mean he's safe all of the time so he doesn't trip or anything. It's a very, very, very active breed. It's an Australian Kelpie and they need to have something to do and lots of running throughout the day. Um, and I found out, it helps him a lot to be on the boat because if he's in a, if he's in an apartment with other people passing by and cars coming by, um, he always thinks that this is his herd and that he has to herd them and he's to guard them and that he's barking and protecting.

Speaker 2:

And on the boat, as soon as there's water between us and another boat, he doesn't do anything. He just maybe, he, maybe he looks at them. So if people passing with, say, dinghy, a motorboat, if they go full speed, he doesn't, he doesn't even open the eyes. But if they go into throttle or if they go slower, all of a sudden he wakes up because he thinks that they are coming and approaching us. But as soon as anybody else can, can move around and for him it's like a different world. Um, and super, super, super easy. Um, and he is quite happy with going on a long walk in the morning and the evening and, uh, and I have seen a couple of people with with, with their dogs on the boat and it's very often quite simple, but you have to go ashore with them and with the cat.

Speaker 2:

You don't even have to do that and the cats can be outside, they can go climbing, because cats are mostly afraid of water, so they don't jump off, they don't run away. You can just leave. Well, they, they can climb, they can run, they can find some place to sleep. I mean, you just give them the cat food, you have some water, they have their little toilet, so that's super, super easy.

Speaker 1:

Yes, they live their best life too. That's awesome.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I had the dog before the boat. There are a couple of countries where it is quite difficult because you always have to check in not only yourself and the boat, but also the dog Especially in the.

Speaker 2:

Caribbean. There are a couple of countries where it's really difficult, like Jamaica. It's almost impossible. That is an issue. I could always park my boat for a while in a marina or on land and just travel and visit friends. But if you have the dog with you, then you need to. Then you need to take the plane is the train instead of the plane? Or you have to pay for the dog extra. And then you do have the bag, because they have these boxes and I don't have the box on the on the boat. So that is a that is like my biggest hustle.

Speaker 2:

On. Being on the boat is not such a problem, but leaving the boat I don't think I would go for the option with the dog, especially if you want to go on passage. So right now I can single-hand steer my boat for a couple of days and then he doesn't like to do his business here on board because he wants to go ashore. But if there is no shore that's a bit stressful for him. Yeah, I can see that. I had him before the boat and well, now it's just like he has to stick with me.

Speaker 1:

He's stuck with you. You're his human. That's awesome. I bet he loves it. I think dogs are so simple. Anytime they can get uh lovins, they're fine. That's what it seems like, um also. So, wow, this has been such a great conversation. I'm so excited for what you're doing and you're the beautiful background that you have going right now. It's amazing. For those of you who can't see definitely check out on the YouTube because it's very pretty.

Speaker 1:

The dog is also super cute too. I'm in love so real quick, towards the end of every episode, I always try to give everybody a chance to plug their business. So where can we find you if we want to take you up on your coaching?

Speaker 2:

Well, the easiest is if you look for simplicity of happiness. So the website is simplicityofhappinesscom and there is my email and there's a contact formula and I like to keep it super simple. So if anybody is interested in that, or maybe in the mastermind, I'm not a heavy seller. I don't have to find clients. I don't have to sell anybody something that they don't need. I keep it super simple. If you're really interested in finding out more about yourself and where you want to go and like to have somebody ask the tricky questions, just contact me. We set up a call, it's for free. We have a one hour conversation and we see where it takes us from there. So super, super easy Simplicityofhappinesscom.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. And a final question what does paradise mean to you? So I know you've got several versions of that, but out of all of them, what do you think your favorite paradise would be?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So my paradise, the place that came the closest to my paradise version of my younger self, was, in fact, Zanzibar and the landscape around there. Okay of my younger self was, in fact, zanzibar and the landscape around there Okay, but having been there for a while, then I missed the mountains. So for me, paradise is this planet Earth and having the freedom to go where your heart takes you. Oh, I love that. We're living on a beautiful planet and what makes it so amazing is that you can travel in the Nordic countries, that you can travel in the tropics, that you can go into the desert, that you can go into the mountains. You can't go into the mountains.

Speaker 2:

What a world would that be if we wouldn't have to worry about wars and borders and customs? But, especially in Europe. When I grew up, we had like 27 different countries that are now all in the European Union and they have different languages and there are, technically, borders, but if you have a passport of one of them, you can just travel across and you pay with the same currency and being with the boat, it's a German flag boat, but it's still the European Union and nobody is checking on me and I don't have to register anything. So this year is really, really free to my travel in Mexico earlier this year and there you have to sign in and sign out of every single day. Where you are, you always have these heavy armed forces and here's like people are just chilled and relaxed and if you manage to travel like that throughout other countries, then you can. Basically you can always be at home.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, home is where the heart is. That's what they say. Anyways, awesome, flo, thank you so much for joining me today. This was a great conversation. I loved picking your brain about other things. I can't wait to see what your next adventure is going to be, because I'm sure it's going to be something absolutely amazing, so awesome. Thank you so much. We will keep in touch and, yeah, I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank you very much, b See you soon.

Speaker 1:

Have a good one. Hey there, beach lovers. That's it for today's episode of Beachside Banter with Bea. I sure hope you had as much fun as I did. Hey, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the show. You can catch me on all social media platforms at Life, love, travel, and if you've got a question or you just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to slide into my DMs and I'll make sure to get those answered for you. Big thanks to everyone who joined me today and for all of you tuned in, and until next time, enjoy your week.