Introducing Matt Koenig

The American Dream

Graduate from high school.  Go to college.  Graduate from college with a degree and get a job.  Work your way up the ranks.  Invest and save for retirement.  Maybe get married, have kids, buy a nice house and car.  Upgrade the house and car to bigger and better.  Keep earning and saving for retirement when you finally have the time to do the things you always dreamed of doing.  Sacrifice now, live your dreams at some undefined time in the future.  It’s the delayed life plan.

This was the life path I always believed in, because this was the path I was always told was the one successful people chose. It’s the path most people follow.  It’s a path that works well for some but I am looking for more.

Case of the Mondays

Working for the weekend?  I need a vacation.  Back to the grind.  I wish I could win the lottery.  This day is just dragging by.  I wish it was 5 o’clock. These are what people say when they want to be doing something other than what they are doing but are too afraid to jump off the beaten path and blaze their own.

For years I was too scared to make that leap.  I didn’t take big risks.  I kept at the grind because I believed this was the only path that led to success and security.

I got married in 2001 in Indonesia and got my first real taste of life outside the US.  I absolutely loved it!  The travel bug had bit me and it bit hard.  Then I lost my job due to downsizing and that security that I was so confident in was gone.  I spent the next year trying to get back onto “the path.”  Finally, I secured a job with a local hospital and worked for several years never really finding my groove.  We had two kids during this time and returned to visit Indonesia only once. We ended up over $20K in debt, most of it from credit cards.

After 3 years there, I quit and worked for my sister who had started a company in market research.  I worked from home.  It was incredible.  I started to see what life could be like.  Then the downturn in the economy hit, and I was forced to return to the hospital and the confines of a cubicle once again.  Only this time, I had a plan.

My plan hasn’t quite worked out as I had intended.  I planned on only being in my current job for a year and then I’d be running my own business from Indonesia.  But the drudgery of the daily grind took more out of me than I realized.  It’s tough to try and create a new life for yourself and your family when you have to juggle 8 hours of work, family time, personal time and somehow fit sleep in somewhere.  So I endured and persevered even though I wasn’t entirely happy.  During this time I changed into a person I didn’t recognize or like.  I was depressed.  I was quick to anger, snapping at my wife and kids.  I was bitter toward the world.  I felt trapped and I hated myself for allowing that to happen.  I knew something had to change.

Then a friend suggested I read “The 4-Hour Workweek,” which led me to discover Chris Guillebeau and “The Art of Non-Conformity,” which led me to connect with Sean Ogle of Location 180.  I started asking questions like “how can I manage my own time? How can I do the things I really want to do now?  How can I do the things I am passionate about and make a difference in the world?  How can I get started on this now and trial it out?” I started developing a new escape plan, which resulted in 1 Year Sabbatical.

The 1 Year Sabbatical

1 Year Sabbatical started out as a plan to take a year and live in Indonesia without having to worry about working.  This would give me time to pursue my own personal projects, develop my photography business and spend more time with family.  To accomplish this we needed to get out of debt and I’m happy to say that we are now $2K away from being completely and totally debt free.

A few months ago, I marched into my boss’s office and told her I wanted to take a year off and live in Indonesia; a 1 year sabbatical.  She was all for it but the gatekeeper in HR said the most I could get per company policy was 4 months.  It was decision time; 4 months or go for the year?  Then a friend suggested I take the 4 months and see how things go and if it’s a good fit then just stay.  The cool thing is my boss somewhat suggested the same thing (although she’d rather I stay).

So we’re shooting for departing to Indonesia in October of this year. In brief, our plan is to fly to Indonesia late October, stay with the in-laws for a bit of time and then make a go at some business ideas we’ve been developing.  I plan to pursue my photography and my wife wants to open a bakery.  We’ve got 4 full months to make it happen and decide what our next course of action will be.

We don’t necessarily want to be location independent.  We like having a “home base” with the option to work from anywhere.  What we are looking for and what I believe Location Rebel can offer is to become masters of our own time.  When you create your own businesses you have a bit more freedom to decide when and where you want to work.  When you work for someone else you have to work the hours they deem necessary regardless of whether the effort is justified.  I want complete control over my time and for me that is what being a Location Rebel is all about.

Planning Ain’t Easy

It’s damn scary especially when you have kids.  We have so many unanswered questions and things to consider.  On occasion we’ve reached planning paralysis where the to-do list is so long that we don’t even know where to start.  There are lots of action items that will require delicate timing such as selling our car and the rest of our stuff.  All we can do is put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward toward our goal.  The alternative is no longer acceptable.

Our goals for the next 6 weeks to get this plan off the ground are:

1)    Start selling off our crap and eliminate all debt completely – a lot of the money to fund this sabbatical will be coming from the sale of our stuff.  It’s also paying off the rest of our debt (now at about $2K). We’re taking a gamble and believing that we won’t be back at the end of 4 months, so we’re selling it all; household items, TVs, cars, furniture, books, everything.  This is going to take a monumental effort and some unconventional approaches so we need to get on it now.

2)    Purchase tickets and set a date – we’ve been dancing around this for quite some time now never really making a firm commitment.  The time has come to do that because without shelling out that cash for the tickets we could just bounce back and forth forever and never really take this adventure.  It’s all about commitment and there is no better way to say that than with your hard earned money.

3)    Start making progress on my photography business – Items on this list include purchasing a laptop, adding more photos to my sales site, building a stock photography library, putting together marketing information for my business in Indonesia, and brainstorming additional business ideas.

We’re not pretending that this is going to be a walk in the park.  The transition is going to take sacrifice and lots of hard work.  But I think that if you want to live a life that you can feel good about, a life that will afford you certain freedoms with your most valuable resource – time; then I think we owe it to ourselves to not give up, but to persevere even when the path before us isn’t visible.

What about you?  Are you ready to take fresh steps to change your life?  Are you ready to be a Location Rebel?

Matt will be updating on his journey here once a month, but you can read more about him and his plans at 1 Year Sabbatical and Matt Koenig Photography.