How Life Kept Ruining Our Plans—and Why I’m Grateful
Four years ago today, I closed my laptop, left my stable job, and had absolutely no idea how wild things were about to get…
April 2021: Goodbye Corporate Life 👋🏻
April 30th, 2021 was my final day working for EEWORX after six and a half years. I was about to embark on a totally new adventure: traveling full-time while building my own business. 🎒✈️
I have to admit, I was as terrified as I was excited: no stable home anymore, no job, living from two backpacks… it was a real jump into the unknown!
To celebrate this special 4-year anniversary, I want to show you that despite all the planning and best intentions, you’ll always have to adapt and pivot.
This is a sort of follow-up and more in-depth post to one I wrote last year, which you can read here.
It feels strange to look back at this day. It was a Friday. I was saying goodbye to my workmates online. All our bags were packed. The apartment was clean. We were handing back the keys to our rental in a few hours and flying back to France the next day.
My wife and I had spent a year planning everything—we thought we were ready. I had told my company I was leaving twelve months earlier. Rosie was trying to grow her YouTube channel, which wasn’t monetized yet. I was running Warrior Flow TV, but we weren’t making enough income yet to sustain ourselves. (To give you an idea, in 2021, I made $2,400 from Warrior Flow TV.) We had saved as much money as possible, so we knew we had time to figure things out.
In the meantime, we would finally bring a dream to life: traveling the world, backpacking through different countries, and experiencing this incredible planet we live on. 🌎
The emotions were strange—a whirlpool of feelings:
Excitement to explore the world 🌏
Stress—being jobless and homeless for the first time in our lives 😬
But there were also feelings we didn’t plan for: anxiety, sadness, confusion. On that Wednesday, while packing my suitcase, I received a phone call from my dad telling me my mom was in the hospital. I spent the day changing our flights to return home earlier.
May–November 2021: An Unexpected Pause ⏸️
Our original plan was to stay in Europe from May to August, have a farewell tour between France and England to see family and friends, and then set off to South America in September.
Things turned out differently. I made the difficult choice to stay with my parents for 6 months to look after my mom while she recovered. At the same time—for reasons I don’t want to get into—we lost 13K euros from our travel fund.
Tough start.
In hindsight, I’m grateful I was in a position to help. It’s a privilege to take 6 months off to care for someone with “no consequences.” And despite how much losing 13K sucked, it’s also a privilege to lose that amount and still be okay overall.
Alongside the stress of this situation, the incident made me realize I needed to figure out how to make sustainable money. Since graduating in 2011, I had always had a regular monthly income—now that was gone. At the end of May, there would be no paycheck deposited into my account. Our savings bought us time… but now, I had way less time available.
November–December 2021: A Brief Taste of Peru 🇵🇪
In November 2021, after 6 months, we were finally ready to start our adventure. We flew to Lima, Peru, relieved to have made it through this challenging period and excited to finally start our dream life.
We loved Peru—an absolutely stunning country! 🇵🇪 We made memories I’ll never forget… but once again, things didn’t go as planned.
On December 29th, we received a call from Rosie’s mom, telling us we needed to return to England because Rosie’s dad wasn’t well. We booked flights for December 31st, sorted COVID tests (remember those?), and spent New Year’s Eve in a plane somewhere above the Atlantic. ✈️
2022: Family Comes First (Again) 🏡
Less than a year after our first false start, we were back in Europe to care for a family member. We stayed in England for 5 months. During this time, I launched Warrior Flow School with a friend, which was a very welcome distraction amidst everything, and a breath of fresh air financially! Warrior Flow TV made some money (in 2022, I paid myself close to $7K from it), but its activity was declining, so the timing of the school launch was great.
Afterward, we spent some time in France for a wedding.
During this period, Rosie decided to explore embryo freezing. I’ll skip the details—but again, plans changed (though this time within our control), and another 15K euros disappeared from our account!
Again, looking back, it’s incredible we had the freedom to do all this. We could drop everything, change plans, and be fully present for family when they needed us. This would’ve been much harder with regular jobs and normal circumstances, especially since we’ve always lived far from our parents.
We were able to “hit the road” again nearly one year after returning from Peru. We landed in Vietnam on December 5th, 2022—20 months after leaving Miami.
2023: Finally Living the Dream 🌏
2023 was magical—the best year of my life by far. We traveled through 8 countries and saw wonders I never thought I’d experience—it was truly incredible. 🌟
Professionally, I also felt on an upward trajectory. Warrior Flow School hit $100K revenue that year, which was awesome. I paid myself close to $23K—still not a fortune, but good progress overall, especially paired with the low cost of living in Southeast Asia. We could travel without touching our savings!
November 2023: Another Sudden Return Home 🛫
Then again, life happened. In November 2023, while in Bali, Rosie’s grandma’s health suddenly deteriorated.
Another shock, another change of plans. No more going to Nepal. Instead, we quickly booked new flights, and within hours we were on our way back to England. We landed in the morning, and Rosie’s grandma passed away that afternoon.
Throughout this entire time—whether caring for family or traveling—we were doing our best to grow our businesses and make money, which was hard. Honestly, it still is.
2024: A Year of Difficult Decisions 🌴
After spending the holidays with family, we left for Miami, then Mexico and Costa Rica. We had a blast exploring Central America—what a beautiful part of the world!
However, during spring, I realized that for the business to grow to the next level, my co-founder and I needed to give it more focused attention. So instead of continuing our journey down to South America, Rosie and I returned to Southeast Asia in July to dedicate six months purely to work. But things didn’t go as planned (again! 😅).
Due to some unfortunate events, the second half of 2024 marked the beginning of the end for Warrior Flow School rather than the breakthrough we’d hoped for. (I’ll share more about this when I’m ready.)
I’m sharing all this for a few reasons:
Growing a business is hard, especially when you add emergencies, constant change of environment, and financial pressures. This isn’t a complaint, just a real observation.
Things never go exactly according to plan. Adaptability is vital. 💪🏼
Don’t judge from appearances. Everyone deals with hidden struggles. Don’t be quick to judge.
Always do your best. Many things are out of our control. Focus your energy on what you can control, and do your best in any situation! ❤️
I really appreciate the honesty here. In my own travels, I strike a balance between being open and holding onto the things that I'm just not willing to share in a public forum. You highlight the transitions between celebrating getting what you want and all of the surprises, changes and flexes that you have to make in order to keep moving forward. In writing about my own travels, I've shared a few headaches. But there is so much more that I'm not going to share. Either way, what I see in your story is that you have a strong intention and objective, such that each time the path takes you in a different direction, you're able to come back to what is important for you. Back in the direction that your compass points. I admire that about you both!