Change Work Life

Why have a career when you can have an adventure? - with Andrew Bosomworth

• Jeremy Cline/ Andrew Bosomworth • Episode 189

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#189: Andrew Bosomworth is a former electrician, scuba instructor and self-identified adventurer.  He explains the benefits of trading career progression for adventuring, how he gets inspiration for different adventures, and the type of long-term plans most travellers have.

What you’ll learn

  • [01:20] What it means to be a business manager in the Formula One industry.
  • [03:19] The benefits of having a team of staff from around the globe.
  • [04:25] How much time Andrew spends managing people.
  • [05:44] The different job roles Andrew has worked in.
  • [07:17] Travelling around Africa and different Massai traditions.
  • [09:44] The volunteering work Andrew did in Africa.
  • [10:33] How Andrew became inducted into a Massai tribe.
  • [13:03] The benefits of trading career progression for adventuring.
  • [18:40] How to get the inspiration for different adventures.
  • [20:15] The type of long-term plans that lots of travellers have.
  • [22:08] How to develop an adventurous mindset.
  • [27:19] Working as an electrician in a supermarket during Covid.
  • [28:55] Converting a van into a small house and driving around Europe.
  • [29:43] Working only two months a year by drastically reducing costs.
  • [32:00] Why switch from part-time to full-time work.
  • [34:10] The trade-offs involved with living in a van compared to working a full-time job.
  • [38:15] How most people respond to the idea of a mini-retirement.
  • [42:25] How to deal with the common fears around travelling.
  • [46:00] When the best time is to follow your dreams.

Resources mentioned in this episode
Please note that some of these are affiliate links and we may get a commission in the event that you make a purchase.  This helps us to cover our expenses and is at no additional cost to you.

For the show notes for this episode, including a full transcript and links to all the resources mentioned, visit:

https://changeworklife.com/why-have-a-career-when-you-can-have-an-adventure/

Re-assessing your career?  Know you need a change but don't really know where to start?  Check out these two exercises to start the journey of working out what career is right for you!

Do you have to have a career plan? If you have specific goals or ambitions, then sure, a plan can be helpful. But if you don't, what about just taking opportunities as they arise? What about doing the things which sound interesting or you fancy having a go at? Why have a career when you can have an adventure? That's what we're talking about in this week's episode. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Change Work Life. Hello, and welcome to the Change Work Life podcast, where we're all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. If you want to know how you can enjoy a more satisfying and fulfilling working life, you're in the right place. Occasionally, I come across someone and when I find out a bit about their career history, I think, how on earth did that happen? This week's guest is one of those people. A former electrician, scuba instructor, and inductee into a Maasai tribe, Andrew Bosomworth is now a business manager in the Formula 1 industry. Andrew, welcome to the podcast. Hi, Jeremy. Nice to be here. So, what does it mean to be a business manager in the Formula 1 industry? Well, there was a quite a lengthy trail of industries and jobs, as you said, that ended up with me being here. But this particular job is essentially individual management of a team of around 28 people that work for ex world champion, Formula 1 racing driver, deal with everything from the diary, the estates, the staff, the travel, the family responsibilities. I think the best way to describe it would be the COO of a small to medium sized business. Okay. So, having had a background myself working with ultra-high net worth individuals and families, I know how sometimes their own affairs can be effectively businesses in themselves. So, it's kind of like their own personal private office, which deals with all their own personal affairs. So, is that the kind of setup that you're talking about there? Exactly the setup. Yeah. Yeah. So, I deal with commercial contracts, responsibilities as far as they're concerned, broker negotiating, making sure that we're receiving everything that we should be receiving. And, naturally, two estates across two countries in Europe with staff across both of those estates naturally means that there are a team of people, and it's my responsibility to take that responsibility, I guess, away from the individual, away from the family, and make their life as easy as possible. So, it's kind of like, I don't know, the homme d'affaires, the chief of staff, as you said, chief operating officer, the buck stops with you before it goes up the chain to the big boss. Exactly. Yeah. Before it goes to the what you would, I guess, refer to as the CEO. And you mentioned a team of 28 staff, I think? Yes. Yeah. All full timers? All full-time. Yeah. Yeah. Across the UK and Switzerland, we have 28 staff that move between both countries. Some are fixed, some move rotation wise, so that the level of service doesn't drop in any way, whether that be on the 21st of June, on a Saturday afternoon, compared to the 25th of December, the morning of Christmas, there's no difference in everything that we do. It just goes seven days a week, 365 days a year. So, we have a team of staff that rotate in and out and make sure that we maintain that level of service throughout the whole period of employment. So, how much of your role is things like HR or line management or people management, that kind of thing? Too much. No. Yeah. I mean, a lot, as you can imagine. We have a middle management structure that does very well. It takes a lot of that responsibility away from me. There's still quite a lot of, well, a lot of HR anyway, a lot of making sure that everyone is doing their job properly. Even though it is, as I said, essentially, a medium-sized business, it's still very personable. I know every member of staff very, very well individually. It's not something that I'm removed away from and very much in the weeds as far as that's concerned. I think you need to be with the team of people like that, especially in the line of business that we're in, you have to be able to speak with your team and be able to speak properly to them on a day-to-day basis and know exactly what it is that they do. My job, I essentially see, is to know their job inside out. I often say to the team that my responsibility is to make sure that they have the tools to do their jobs properly. So, yeah, I'm very much involved in the man management of the team. I want to come back a bit more to your role later on in the conversation. But first, I'd love to hear a bit more about the story of how you got there. So, I know you've had all sorts of different roles. Can you just briefly talk us through the CV so far? When I was growing up, I was very hands-on. My father was not big into property but was into property. He would buy somewhere that wasn't very good and would renovate it and try and rent it out or do something like that. And he did that a couple of times while I was younger, and I would generally go and help him out. And that got me into a trade background. So, when I left school at 16, I, went and got an apprenticeship at the local council, which was a shock in itself because they didn't employ 16-year-olds out of school in the local council. Most of the apprenticeships were about 40 years old, if not more. They didn't really employ youth. So, when I went for a group interview, first of all, I got in and I thought I was in the wrong place because I expected to see a lot of young people going for apprenticeships, but it wasn't at all. It was, as I said, probably an average age of 35, 40. Anyway, so I thought, 'There's no chance I'm going to get this.' Went and did the interview, went and did another interview. Anyway, heard back on the job, genuinely, genuinely shocked, really pleased. Did that role for four years and got my electrical apprenticeship qualification. And then, I took that as a kind of safety net, I guess, to go off and do some travelling. So, I thought, yeah, I'm going to go off and do something different. I come from a very small town in the UK, it's a seaside town, Filey, up in Yorkshire. Lovely place, but, yeah, it's got its limitations. So, I decided to go to, I mean, Africa of all places. Where else would you go to as a 20-year-old wanting to travel and see the world? So, yeah, I think, looking back, it was probably a bit of a strange decision to go there, but I really enjoyed it. I went and I was there for eight weeks. As you mentioned in the intro, I was inducted into the Maasai tribe. So, we had to do a certain ceremony, different things that had to be done. One of them was to get the Maasai burns on the arm. So, just to paint a picture of this, this is the kind of ceremony where the Maasais will wear the shuka, I think they're called, the red robes that they wear around them, and they'll jump up and down, nodding their heads to songs that they're all singing themselves. So, we're doing these ceremonies, a few of the things that are going on are quite grim, so I won't go into those details. But, yeah, one of them is the burns, and the ceremony is essentially turning a boy into a man. That's the gist of it. So, to pass the ceremony, one of the things that you have to do is get the burns, and they make this stick, and the old fashioned way of heating a stick, now I'm at this interview, so you can't see me, but I'm rubbing my hands together, stick on the floor, and they get the stick, white-hot, yeah, it's pretty hot. And you hold your arm, people all around you, you're in the centre of the ceremony, and they burn the top of the arm, kind of between the bicep and the tricep. And the whole point of it is that you're not allowed to show any emotion, and this is apparently the way that you can prove that you're a man by not showing emotion when you get burned on the arm. And people have different numbers. I had three. So, they do one, then they heat it back up again, do another one, heat it back up again, and do the third. And I passed the test, and then I think, within seconds of passing the test, I ran away and cried in the corner somewhere where no one could see me. So, yeah, it was quite painful, but that's good. I mean, I've still got them on my arm now. They're not going anywhere. Just pausing there. This this all begs the question. So, you've been working as an electrician for a few years, you decide to go and travel to Africa. I feel like there's a gap there between making a decision to travel to Africa and being inducted into a Maasai tribe. I mean, how does that come about? So, part of my trip to Africa was that I had to go and volunteer in the Maasai, well, in where the Maasai live. So, I went and I spent some time with the family there, and I was volunteering. And I was actually, because I've just done my electrical qualifications, I was helping them put solar into the schools, into a school. And I mean, helping, you know, there's only so much that you can work with, and they had a small solar panel that I could help them wire up. And by that way, they could have a projector that would help them teach the kids different things. So, I was doing a bit of that. I was helping them with a bit of gardening, just generally being around the kids in this school. So, generally, just helping out, and through that, you meet different people. Everyone wants to invite you back to their family. Everybody wants to see you. You know, you are this anomaly in their life, and they were very, very interested in senior. They're very hospitable with little that they have. They're incredibly hospitable. So, we go out for dinner, we go out for meals, and these meals might cost £10 for eight of us to eat an all-you-can-eat, almost like a Brazilian buffet type thing. I don't know if your listeners probably will know that way. You hold your green and your red flag up if you want some more food. This was the kind of, you know, six of us would eat there for £10 and not wanting to flash cash out, but you'd pay, I pay for that because it's £10 to me and probably a lot of money to them. So, you know, we've returned the hospitality. It's all very welcoming, and then, just one thing led to another, and yeah, we found out about the ceremonies and everything, and then we went through it. They were having a ceremony. I stayed on a little bit longer to be a part of the ceremony. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things that I didn't do in this ceremony. So, yeah, one of them is, and I don't know if, I assume that this is still the case, but one of them is that the boys, these can be anything from 10 to 16, I guess, would have to go out, they'd go out from the Maasai, from the family, and they would spend, I remember now, 60 or 90 days I think it is, out in the wild, with nothing whatsoever, and they would just have to survive. And the only time that they're allowed to come back and, again, slightly grim, but I'll put it into context in a minute, but the only time when they're allowed to come back is when they come back with a lion's tail. Basically, that shows that they've killed a lion, which is part of their transition into being a man. Now, that's a lot more difficult now, obviously, with the park rangers and things like that that are in place and stop that happening. But yeah, they would go out in groups, between 12-16 years old, and they might go out four or five of them. And part of their induction into becoming a man is to come back with that scalp of the lion. Now, obviously, I didn't go and do that, before the comments of the listeners start going. I just did the burns, I'm drinking some not-very-nice stuff, but again, we'll go into that. And what's the motivation for doing this then? I mean, you're very early into your career, you've done your apprenticeship, why drop things there and go off on this African adventure? Yeah. Good question. So, two reasons. My employers at the time didn't do very well by me towards the end of my apprenticeship. So, my apprenticeship came to a slightly abrupt end. Long story short, my electrical apprenticeship, I could have qualified after three years, or three years and one month or two months. And my college tutor said to me, 'Would you like to qualify? Or you can just hold off, put in your final assessment in, and you can go for your full four years, and you don't have to worry about employment or anything like that.' And I said, 'Well, I'll speak with my boss.' I thought I've got quite a good relationship. So, I went in and I said, 'Look, this has happened. I can qualify fully as electrician, and I'll go out, and I'll do electrical work for you', as I was on an apprenticeship wage. 'I don't want any more money. I'll continue doing it. I'll just do it on electrical wage.' Basically, my contract was four years or when you qualify, whichever comes first. So, my colleagues were trying to do me a favour by saying,'If you don't qualify, then you'll get your full four years.' So, anyway, my boss came back to me and said, 'No problem. Qualify, put all your assessments in, get your qualifications, and then we'll give you a van. You can go out and do electrical work on an apprenticeship wage. We appreciate that. That would be great.' You know, they're doing very well from it, and that was that. So, I put my assessment in, did everything else. And they got me a van. They got me everything, all the tools, blah blah blah, everything that I needed to go out and do my work as an electrician by myself. I did this for about four months, and then I got pulled into the office one day, didn't think anything of it, and my boss said to me, 'Upper management have discovered that you're now qualified, and your contract is four years or until qualified, so that means that your contract's going to come to an end as of 30 days from now.' And I said some things that I won't repeat. I was quite shocked, to say the least. And this was about two o'clock in the afternoon. As I was walking out of the office, I remember this like it was yesterday, as I was walking out of the office, my line manager at the time tried to give me a job, which was used to go on this piece of paper, tried to give me a job and said, 'Oh, would you mind going to that this afternoon?' And again, I will not repeat what I said, but I think I said, 'You can shove this.' My line manager kind of looked at me and was, you know, again, we've always had a good relationship, so he was a bit surprised. And then, he looked at the other manager, and then my supervisor, his supervisor, and he just said,'No, just leave him. Just don't say anything about it. Don't worry about it. Just let him go.' Anyway, so that was about two o'clock in the afternoon. I went back, and I was 19 at this point, so I went back, and I'd gone to work that morning. I remember I'd gone to work that morning. Mom and Dad had seen me out the door. You know, everyone talks about council's a job for life and things like that. So, they had a great idea that their son was sorted for an apprenticeship, and

he might have this job forever. I came back about 2:

30 that afternoon, went online, found this volunteering thing in the Maasai, applied for an Australian work permit, and applied to be a scuba diving apprentice on a small island in Malaysia. I think I booked my flights from Africa to Australia, but I hadn't booked my flights into Africa yet because I didn't know what day I was arriving exactly. Mom and

Dad came back through the door at about 5:

45 in the afternoon, and I wouldn't normally be back by now, and they said, 'What are you doing? What are you doing at home?' And I said, 'I'll get into that in a minute, but I need to know if you think that I should book this four-week volunteering course in the Maasai. There's only one left, and I'll be going in five weeks' time.' And I remember my dad just being like, 'Woah! Woah! Woah! Woah! Hold up! What? When you walked out the door this morning, you were an apprentice at the East Riding Council. And you're now booking a flight to Africa, and you're going to go and volunteer in the Maasai there in five weeks. Where did that come from?' I said, 'Look, I've got no time to explain. The office closes in 15 minutes. I need a decision. Do you think I should do this?' And they kind of went, 'Well, no. We don't really think you should do this, but it's up to you.' And they've always been very supportive of anything I've wanted to do and anything I've done. I said, 'Okay. Well, that sounds like a yes to me. So, I'm going to book it.' So, I did, and I booked that. I got confirmation of a working holiday visa because I don't know how it's like now, but in Australia, it was instant confirmation when you were 20, 19 years old wanting to go and work in Australia. So, I got instant confirmation from that. I got confirmation of the booking. And because Malaysia was, obviously time in front, by the time I woke up the next morning, I had an interview booked to do this scuba diving apprenticeship in Malaysia on an island that was run by an expat lady. Great, great lady. And I interviewed for that. So, when I walked into work the next day, and all the guys said to me they were shocked as well, said, 'Oh, we just heard the news about everything.' They said, 'Are you all right?' I said, 'I'm absolutely fine. I set them up to Australia, Africa, and Malaysia, I've got it all booked. It's all sorted.' And they were gobsmacked. So, it was one of the worst and one of the best things that happened to me as well. Yeah. Where did the idea come from not to just book the one thing, but to book effectively three things? So, I'm going to Africa, and I'm going to Australia, and I'm going to Malaysia to train as a scuba instructor. I don't know. I guess I've never done things by hour. And that was probably exactly the same question my dad said, why didn't you just book Australia? Or why didn't you just want one of them? I guess Africa, I wanted an exit, I was very keen to go. I don't know why, but I was very keen to go, but I was pleased to know that I was leaving as well. I was very keen to get there, but I was very keen to get out. Australia always had the allure of just sun, sea, everything you see on the adverts and stuff like that. I think I was very, very keen to go there. And Malaysia, Malaysia, to be honest, my sister applied to do another job there, and I knew that she'd done something like that, applied to do something like that. And I just thought, 'You know what? I've always been a swimmer. I love swimming. I've enjoyed scuba diving a little bit. I've done a bit. Why not?' And yeah, I think having a little bit of structure, a loose bit of structure, so knowing that I was going to Africa for eight weeks, knowing that I needed to be in Malaysia eight months later, and then filling in the gaps, made it easier for me to get my head around it and to plan. So, gap years aren't uncommon. So, people often do them before university or after university or maybe take a break from work. When you booked all this, did you have like a plan, this was going to be for a year, and then you were going to come back? Or what was the plan or the thinking at that stage? I never had a plan to come back. I never had a plan, as you can probably tell by just this conversation. I never had a plan. I think that, I mean, yeah, I don't really work well to plans, as I'm sure will come evident as we talk a bit more. I think that me being open to opportunities is always something that's probably been a positive trait of mine. Having the opportunity to be able to say yes to something, I think, is quite freeing and quite liberating. Don't get me wrong. Some people, I know that you need that security, that safety of knowing that you've got a paycheck or that you've got something else. But I think the electrical aspect of my career has always given me safety. I've always said that if ever I need a job, I could get back to the UK, and I could have a job within a day or two. And that's partly due to the fact that everyone that I've worked for, I think I've always done right by. I believe that you should never burn bridges, and you should always leave on good terms if you need to leave for whatever reason. But yeah, I am incredibly confident, probably too confident, but incredibly confident that if I needed to get work, I could be back in the UK within 24 hours from anywhere in the world and start work within the next 24 hours. There seems to be a real maturity of thinking there that I wouldn't necessarily associate with a 19-year-old. So, maybe someone who's a bit older, they might think, 'I've been working for five years, and I've put a bit aside, and I've got this opportunity now, and I don't yet have the dependence, I'm still young enough to do that.' But to me, that feels like it comes a little bit later. So, I'm really curious as to how you developed this mindset at what to me is pretty early on in your career at an early age. Probably just young and dumb, Jeremy, I think. Something to be said for that. Yeah. I mean, so my granddad always had a very important part of my life. And I always looked up to my granddad, and he had something that he would say to me that's always rung true as far as I'm concerned. And he used to say to me, 'If you're young, healthy, and willing to work, you'll never be hungry.' And that sentence has always stuck with me throughout my whole life. And I'm still relatively young. I'm probably healthier than I've ever been, and I've never been hungry. So, God bless him. He died, yeah, nine years ago now, nearly 10 years ago. But what he said was absolutely on point, and he said that to me when I was going away to Africa, and it might have been the last time I saw him, actually. No. No, that's not true, actually. I did see him once after. But, yeah, he said that to me, if you're young, healthy, and you're willing to work, you'll never be hungry. And as I said, I was very fortunate in my upbringing. I was taught a work ethic. I was brought up as a healthy, young lad that you don't have to worry about. I don't have anything particular, touch wood, I don't have anything particularly wrong with me, so I've always been able to find work, and I just guess I've never struggled in that way. And I think that my parents treated me quite maturely throughout my younger ages. I mean, they're not the kind of mothering and, fathering is not the right word, but they're not there, they don't smother me in any way. I remember when I was in Australia, it was my 21st in Australia, and I'd only been there for, I want to say only, I've probably been there about nine months or so, somewhere around about that. And I rang them up because I wanted a surfboard. And I rang them up and I said, 'Oh, you know, it's my 21st birthday coming up.' And they said, 'Yeah?' Well, I'd really like a surfboard. So, it was about 200 quid. It wasn't exactly breaking the bank. It was about 200 quid. I said,'I'd really like a surfboard.' Bear in mind I'd not had a Christmas or birthday present for a long time, because that's just who they are. 'So, would you mind getting me a surfboard for my 21st?' And I can't remember, I think it was my mom or my dad, I'm not sure which one, but they just said, 'Birthday presents stopped when you were 16, son.' And that was the end of that conversation. So, I mean, I went out, like I said, I got that job at 16, I was paying board straight away at 16. That's another thing. They used to charge me board, which was a very normal thing where I was from, you know, I was 16 at the time, it's not like I was, I mean, I couldn't really do much else for the money, couldn't even go out, but they always said to me, 'As soon as you get a job, you'll be paying board.' I said, 'Yeah. Yeah. Sure.' So, 16, I was paying board. I can't remember what it was, 20 quid a week or something. I don't know. And I always thought that they were going to put it away into a savings account. And when I bought my first house, I did something that was relatively, you know, monumental, I thought I'll get it back, they'll give it back to me. Anyway, I bought my first house quite young. The part of the electrical thing where I live, house prices are very low. And my dad and my granddad had given me a little bit of money, enough for a deposit, some 4000 or something, 4000 or 5000 combined with a bit of money that I had from the electrical work I managed to get. I managed to pull a deposit together, and I thought, 'Right. Here we go. Here's my board for the last three years will be coming. And I paid the deposit down for the house, and I was just looking around waiting. And anyway, nothing ever came. So, me thinking that the board was going towards a savings account for something monumental was completely wrong. They just stashed it away, probably gone and drunk it down the pub for the last three years. So, we paid for them to go out on a Friday night. But yeah, that's the youth and the upbringing that I had. It was very down to earth. There was no niceties. My dad had me working. He had a restaurant when we were younger that he ended up converting into some flats. But we had a restaurant when we were younger, and I was working there when I was about eight, nine, 10, 11 years old. Just I say 'work' in inverted commas, but going and picking up plates that were there, and he never paid me, the only thing I ever got were tips. So, let's fast forward a bit to how you got your present position. I mean, what were you doing before this opportunity came up? So, before this opportunity came up, so I need to wind it back a little bit. So, my girlfriend and I had decided to move back to the UK for some work, and my father ended up not being very well. So, I had to change the job that I was doing, and I started just doing self-employed electrical work. So, I was working for myself, I had a couple of lads that were working for me. We were contracting work around the north of the UK, basically. So, I was doing that for a while, and my partner's a very, very good chef, and she was working for a chef called Tommy Banks in the north of the UK, doing chefing, and then COVID hit. And Fanny got furloughed from her role. And I was actually working on a supermarket at the time, and I don't know if you remember, but trying to get any toilet roll or a bottle of water during COVID was like pulling teeth. So, supermarkets were, especially building a new one because they wanted people to spread out more, et cetera, that was classed as essential work, and we actually were pushed by the government to get it through quicker than what it was supposed to be doing in the first place. So, I was working crazy hours, and Fanny wasn't working anything. We ended up getting a dog, which was the best decision ever. Best thing that ever came out of COVID was Frank. And we were having a walk, walking the dog during COVID, and she turned around to me and said, 'Why are we here?' And I said, 'Woah, hold the phone.' I said, 'We've come here for you.' And she said, 'No, no, no. We've come here for you.' I still maintain we definitely came here for her. You'll have to speak to her about the other side of that conversation. So, anyway, we both went, well, we're both here, we both thought that we were here for each other, and we're not. So, why on earth we're here? Anyway, there was limited things that you could do at that time, obviously, with the pandemic and everything that was going on. So, we bought a Mercedes Sprinter van and converted that van into what was a small house, essentially. It was amazing. You know, we could drive it anywhere. We could go to ski resorts. We could go to Croatian beaches. It didn't really matter where we were. It was fully equipped for everything. We could go for about eight or nine days off grid and just be completely self-sufficient. And the idea was that we would cut our costs back enormously and move into the van almost full-time. So, we'd move into the van. The idea was if we worked for two months a year, we could have 10 months off in the van. And it would work. It would work without a shadow of a doubt. We cut our costs down to about 1000 a month. But when you're not paying interest on mortgage, gym memberships, council tax, electricity, gas, I mean, gas alright, we were paying 10 a month or something, because we're cooking, et cetera. You know, Sky TV, TV licenses. When you're not paying all of these bills, I think we worked out that we were spending 1500, 1600 a month, if not more, maybe more, if I remember, just to exist. And then, what we earn on top of that was actually how we would enjoy ourselves. And we figured out that we were only spending about a grand a month on enjoying ourselves. So, I said, well, it's quite easy to earn 12,000 a year. If we can cut the rest out, it's quite easy to earn that. So, that's what we did. We cut the bills down massively. We sold almost everything, rented the house out in the UK, jumped in the van, and went across in the van, and travelling in a van during COVID, it was about as good as it can be, because we were completely self-isolated with each other and Frank, and we didn't struggle in any way whatsoever. So, we did 10 months of that, and then we were ready to do our two months of work. And Fanny, as I said, very good chef, so she would go down and chef for somebody in the South of France in a chateau down there, so she'd do eight weeks of that. And I'd go back to the UK and do eight weeks of electrical work. We'd earn between us 6000-7000 each, maybe something like that. Because you earn such little amount of money, everything you earn on that, you earn because you're below the tax threshold. So, you're not paying tax on it. So, you keep everything that you get, and that was enough. And during that time, the people that Fanny was working for knew my current employer, and they knew that he needed somebody to run the estate in Switzerland as a management couple, and it fit our criteria quite well. We've done luxury, high-end individuals before and property, et cetera. It was management, it was driving, it was everything. And it was in the world of Formula 1, and she knew I liked Formula 1. She rang me up one day, I was at work, and she said, 'Oh, this opportunity has come up, and I think it might be quite interesting.' I said, 'Absolutely not! The last thing I want to do is get back into a full-time job.' So, we work two months a year. We have 10 months off. Why on earth would we want to get a full-time job? As the powers of persuasion that she seems to have managed to convince me to do the interview at least. I said, 'Fine. I'll do the interview.' I did the interview, and it was interesting, and she's right, it is an interesting world, and it's Switzerland that we live in, which is beautiful. So, anyway, I agreed to the interview, then agreed to do a face-to-face interview, came over, did the interview here. We then had to go back to the UK, and Frank, the dog, got to do an interview because he's got dogs. So, he's like, 'Well, I don't know if the dog will fit.' So, yeah, no problem, we'll bring him over. I mean, he'll fit anyways. It's like a big softy, but yeah, he'll fit anyway. So, he passed his interview, and then we said, right, we'll do it for six months until you find someone permanent, because they were struggling for someone at the time. Brexit and everything made it quite difficult for them to employ an English-speaking person in Switzerland that could do everything that they needed. So, just to caveat that, there was a really small pool of people they could choose from. So, it's not like I was, it's not like we were top of the list. I think they've exhausted all of their options before they managed to get to us. So, yeah, I said, 'We'll do it for six months until you find somebody.' And anyway, six months down the line, they said, 'Look, we don't really like temporary staff. We're not in that business. There's a lot of important stuff that we deal with that we like permanent staff. So, would you like to stay permanently?' Anyway, we agreed. We love it where we are, and it's great. And then, fast forward two years down the line, we were asked to take over the COO position, as I would call it, and then Fanny would step up and do the estate management in Switzerland. So, yeah, we've not only done the exact opposite of what I wanted to do, but we've doubled down on it now as well. So, we're really in deep, but it's good. So, what have been the trade-offs? What are the things that you've lost from giving up life in the van and working two months to the year, and what are the things that you've gained? Freedom is the big one. Definitely lost all freedom. But when we were in the van, I wasn't naive to the fact that we wouldn't be able to do that forever. You know, we were very aware that we wouldn't be able to do it forever. My reason for wanting to do the van when we did was because I think that as people, I think the system's broken, as far as working all through our prime years and then get into an age where we can retire and then, our bodies breaking down or are not being able to do the same things that we want to do. What I wanted to do was, I wanted to almost take a mini retirement. And my argument was that right up here, I might work until I'm 55, 60, you know, I see electricians that are 60 on-site and things like that, I might work until I'm 60, but I've worked the whole period up to then. What I'd rather do is, I'd rather take 10 years off when I'm 30, I'd rather have 10 years off while I'm in my prime, and I can go and do mad stuff, I can jump out of planes, I can go surfing in Morocco, I can go scuba diving, I can do all the things that I want to do because my body will let me. And then, instead of retiring at 60, I'll retire at 70. So what? To me, it doesn't make any difference when you're that age. In fact, it's actually easier because no one expects you to do anything on-site when you're 65. You get away with all the easy jobs. No one's asking you to pull big cables in when you sit there, oh, you know, let him do it, he'll be fine, leave the guy, give him the easy stuff. So, I said, 'Look, why are we doing it? Why are we working our prime time?' So, I was very aware that the van wasn't going to be forever. So, I guess that the van just wasn't for as long as what I thought it was going to be, what I kind of wanted it to be. But that's still very much, you know, we don't have the van anymore, but it's still very much an idea for me, that I'll take mini breaks throughout my whole working career. I certainly don't anticipate working in a career all through my life and building up my skills in one individual thing. I think, in fact, that was quite the opposite of my intention. I think that through working in different industries, you build a set of skills that are very transferable, and you can do a lot of different things. And that keeps life interesting, keeps you kind of grounded, when you go into a job where, I mean, this job, I had absolutely no idea what we were doing for the first, how long have I been here now, nearly three years, for the first nearly three years, I had no idea what I was doing. And I'm still learning as I go, but I learn quite quick, generally. And I think it's quite important to keep doing that. But definitely, trade-off, freedom. Freedom is probably the biggest trade-off. But the way that I look at it is that for every day that I do at work here, when we finish in however long that might be, is probably two days off. So, if I come now and do another couple of years, then the way that I look at it is I could probably have another two or three years off when we finish. And then, I'll pick something else up. I'll go and do something else. I'll go and do another job somewhere, whether it be a step back or a step forward, I don't really mind one way or another. I certainly don't have any desires to become this CEO of a top company or have my own big electrical business or anything like that. I definitely feel like I'd rather reduce costs and reduce work than increase both. I think it's very fortunate if you can increase the standard of your living without increasing the amount of work that you take on. When you tell people, friends, family, about the decisions that you've made with work and your plans for these lots of mini retirements, what sort of reactions do you get? For that exact reason, I genuinely don't. I never tell people. I mean, I'll tell my friends I'm going to retire in five years or whatever, and then something will come. I mean, we were ready to retire, we weren't ready to retire, but we had the thought that we were kind of retiring four years ago and jumping in the van and then just jumping back in for two months and back out. But then, this opportunity came up, and the only reason why we could take this opportunity was because we put ourselves in a position where we were in this crazy, crazy role of, we didn't have to give any notice from work, we didn't have to quit work, we didn't have to make all these tough decisions. You know, even if we had bumped into the right people to find this job in the first place, if we'd have both been in full-time employment, and I'd have been working as a sparky back home, and I had a couple of staff working for me, and she had a good job in a restaurant, would we have dropped everything and come here? Probably not. You know, now that we've done it and now that we're in a position, it's one of the best things that's ever happened. But if we had to actually consciously make a decision, it's going back to your question of what made me go to Africa after being an electrician, if they'd kept me on at the council and just employed me as a full-time electrician, none of this would have happened. Their action of forcing my hand is the reason why, the catalyst, or how all this started. It was never my decision. It was theirs. I just went with the flow. And I think that that's kind of what I've done, what I've always done. I mean, I went into, we kind of glazed over the Malaysia one, but I went into Malaysia as a scuba diving apprentice. I was the lowest of the low. And 12 months later, I was the resort manager for the place, and that was just through work ethic and being open to opportunities. I was, what was that, 22, 23, maybe, I'm not sure, 22, 23 years old, and I was running a resort on the southeast coast of Malaysia with, again, probably about 28, 30 staff, similar size to this. Different, such different staff. There were some 70-year-old devout Muslims there. There were 19-year-old backpackers who were there just for a good time. There was younger, less religious, there were people, there were a lot of Indonesians that worked there. There was a whole different, and when I first started the job, I couldn't speak their language, I couldn't even talk to them and communicate properly with them. And I was supposed to be running the place. And I mean, it went really well. It went really well. The guests were really happy. The staff worked really well. It all worked out fine. But if I had had a plan in place that I was leaving the resort after my apprenticeship, then that would never have happened. But I didn't. I just kind of waited to see what came up and what happened. And some people that I met at that resort ended up being the reason why I went to the next job as well. I don't believe in destiny or things like that, but I do believe in faith, and I do believe that you make your own faith. And I think if you put yourself in these positions, if you put yourself in situations that are good situations and positive situations, I think that you'll find that you'll generally cut a path for yourself in a way that you need to do it. I reckon there are going to be people listening to this with a certain amount of envy, and they're going to think, 'Oh, yeah. Now this idea of travelling around in a van, of only working two months a year, of just looking at opportunities out there and taking them, it all sounds good, but, but, but...' And there's going to be reasons that people will tell themselves, maybe it's kids, other responsibilities. I think there's going to be a lot of fear. I mean, what if you get ill? What if something happens, like another pandemic, and you're not able to travel? What if the assumptions on which you are basing this life turn out to be incorrect? And I'm really interested to know whether those sorts of fears have crossed your mind and what you'd say to people who've kind of thought, 'Oh, yeah, and it sounds great, but it's not for me.' And if everyone did it, Jeremy, it'd be a nightmare. So, I'm glad that that's not the case. And you know what? I totally respect anyone's decision to follow the path in which they follow. That's our choice, and that's beautiful that we do have that ability to be able to choose how we want to go about life. My challenge, I guess, would be that every single question that someone says, what if, what if, what if, you just deal with it as and when. You know? There is nothing, if somebody, when you go to Australia, you could go to Australia on holiday. If you were worried about the what ifs, what if my mom gets ill while I'm over there, absolutely a fair point, very fair point, you jump on a plane, you come back, and it's 24 hours. And that's the reality of what it is. You know? I've never put myself in a position where I've not had enough financials to be able to get a flight home. I've never put myself in a position where I've been unable to afford a decent meal. You know, I'm not going around Australia living on soup and noodles. We were eating good food. We were doing our thing. And if I ever needed some money, I went and got a job. And wherever I was in the world, everywhere needs work, everywhere. And I always went and did that. Whenever I talk to, and this is only to the people that I can be very candid with, but whenever I talk to people about what I do, every single thing that they come at me with is just a nonsense excuse for not doing what it is that I'm doing. Now, I say it to them all the time, look, you don't need an excuse to do it. You can just say, 'Look, this is just not me.' That's fine. The only thing that I would say is that I don't have children, and I can completely understand why people with children wouldn't want to live the way that I live. Because I do think that once you have the responsibility of a child, your priorities change considerably. And I completely understand that because you are, I'm sure, and again, I can't speak from experience, but I'm sure you're thinking, 'Right, and maybe I need to think about what I'm going to do to afford to put my children through university or to afford to live in a good catchment area, so they can go to a good school.' You know? I completely understand everyone's decision to do that. You know? I completely understand that reason for everybody. But I think that's why, to go back to the reason why I did it when I was younger, and everyone needs to do this, you know. People say, 'Oh, I'll do this when I'm a little bit older', but it should be the reverse of that. You shouldn't be doing it when you're older, because when you're older, you've got things like a mortgage, you've got things like children, you've got dogs, you've got parents that are maybe a little bit older, that might need a little bit of looking after, you've got all these other things. But when you're 20 years old, you don't have any of that. You know? No. Not everyone, I know that some people do, but that's the time to go and do it. That's the time to go and take risks. There's a book which I recently finished reading called Die With Zero by someone called Bill Perkins. I think I've got his name right. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But that's essentially his message, that there are times in your life when you can do things, and if you keep on putting them off, then you will reach a phase in your life where you can no longer do those things. So, you know, whether it's, I don't know, going skydiving, that's something you can do when you're 20. It's probably maybe something you can do when you're 40, but the older you get, it's going to be harder. And so, one of the central messages of his book is figuring out when is the right time to have these experiences and not falling into the trap of, oh, you know, later when I'm a bit more settled, when I've got more money, that kind of thing. My caveat to that would be that there's never a right time as well, genuinely. And you know what? We have this discussion about the dog, and this probably opened my eyes up a little bit. And I remember seeing somewhere or reading somewhere or something that someone, or seeing it probably on a reel or TikTok or something, someone said,'Look, there's never a right time to get a dog. Never.' And I'm probably going to say it about children as well. It's probably never a right time to have children. But you pick a time and then you make it work around it. And that's exactly, I just probably do that a little bit more. And Jeremy, my whole idea of, oh, yeah, I'll do this for another few years, and then, you know, every day that I work will be two days off, if we were to have children, that probably all completely changes. My mindset probably completely changes because I have a different priority. But there's no plan for that currently, and I don't have that desire. And that's just, you know, I think that that's probably controversial a little bit, but I don't have that desire. And that's just the way that we are. I think that should be slightly normalised as well. I don't think everyone needs to have children. There's probably enough children knocking around. I plan on being a great uncle is what I plan on being, you know. My mate's kids can come out and stay with me in Switzerland, obviously, or wherever it is, and we can all go skiing for a week. And, you know, that's kind of the way that I would see it. And I think that that's important as well. Children need that role model away from the parents a lot of the time. So, I plan on doing a little bit more of that, I think. Just on your note, on your quote, sorry, on your quote about finding the right time to do it, there's one as well that I really, that I saw the other day, that hit home, properly hit home with me. And I don't know who said it. I can't remember where it's from, but it stuck with me. And it was something along the lines of, we spend the first 40 years of our life, 40 or 50 years of our life sacrificing our health to earn money, and then we spend the next 50 years of our life spending our money trying to get our health back. And I just found it. It just hit home. And I was like, wow! That's actually 100% true. You know, people that are in long, long jobs, working 50, 60 hours a week, sacrificing their diet, sacrificing their well-being, their mental health, all so that they can get an early retirement, and then spend all that money that they've just earned on trying to get fit again. I mean, to me, that just makes absolutely no sense. I think I would prefer to balance that out throughout my whole life rather than going one way or the other. That is an absolutely fantastic point. Andrew, I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Now, I know that you don't have a website or a book to plug or anything like that, like many of our guests, but if someone would love to find you, get hold of you, contact you, what's the best way for them to do it? Yes. I used to do TikTok quite a lot. I don't anymore because it's not the line of work that I do. But TikTok and Instagram are probably the two best ways, and it's f1.ab.22. So, that's the best way to find it. And just on one more quote, Jeremy, just because I love it, and I think it's really interesting, and it's a very short one, but I saw it when I was very young, 18, 19, and it hit home for me. It's probably stuck with me ever since as well. It was, the only problem if you ever win the rat race is that you're still a rat. And when I heard that, I thought that, yeah, that's very, very, very true. And people talk about that a lot and doing well in the rat race, et cetera, et cetera. But it's not something for me. Fantastic. Andrew, thank you so much for coming on to the show. Okay. Hope you enjoyed that interview with Andrew Bosomworth. If there's one message I took from this interview, it's that you can do things differently. For most of us, the idea of spreading your retirements over your working life just sounds like a completely alien concept. But in Andrew's case, he's found a way to make that a reality. Now, Andrew's lifestyle is not going to suit everyone. Not everyone is going to want to spend a lot of their life living in the back of the van. But what I like about Andrew's approach is, he's playing with possibility. He's seeing what he fancies doing, fancies having a go at. Sure, let's go to Africa. Sure, let's go to Australia. Sure, let's go and learn scuba diving in Malaysia and then end up heading up the team in a high-end holiday resort. I mentioned during the interview the book Die With Zero, and that has really shifted my thinking about the way I think about time and the way I want to spend it. One of the key concepts of that book is that if you continue to wait until you decide to do a particular experience, you might find that you've waited too long, and that later in life, it's just not the right experience for you. So, if nothing else, I hope that the interview with Andrew helps you ask yourself the question, what are you putting off, and does it make sense to put it off any longer? Show notes for this episode are at changeworklife.com/189. That's changeworklife.com/189. And whilst you're on the website, take a look at changeworklife.com/happy. That's changeworklife.com/happy, or you'll find it under the tab marked Find Career Happiness. If you're looking at the work that you're doing at the moment and thinking something just doesn't seem right, but I can't quite figure out what it is, then I've got a couple of exercises there at changeworklife.com/happy to help you to figure out what it is that you need. One of the exercises has you going back into your career history and drawing out the stuff which you particularly enjoyed or particularly didn't enjoy and see what patterns emerge and what pointers there might be, whilst the second exercise helps you to look forward into the future to figure out just what you would like life to look like. They're exercises which I've done myself, and they're exercises which I know my clients have found really helpful, so do take a look. The link, again, for those, that's changeworklife.com/happy. As always, there's some more great interviews coming up, so if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. And I can't wait to see you next time. Cheers. Bye.