I’m fresh back at my desk after 6 weeks travelling the world with the family – two boys aged 7 and 9, one wife, age undisclosed. An amazing experience.
San Francisco, then England, followed by a solid look around France and Italy, Singapore on the way home and now back at my desk.
People have asked about the highlights, but there were too many to pick just one.
Funnily enough, some of the best experiences were completely unplanned – playing football at a campground in the south of France, doing absolutely nothing (for once) by the pool in Singapore, talking rugby with a stranger in Cannes.
But let’s be honest, travel, let alone travel with kids, is not always rosy.
There were some experiences that seemed hard in the moment. Points in time when we just wanted to be safe and comfy back at home. But looking back they are some of the most memorable moments and always gave us a good story to tell. A vomiting child in a London Uber (with an amazing driver who could have charged a soilage fee, but didn’t!). A seemingly unfair EUR150 penalty fine from a grumpy train conductor in Italy. Getting badly stuck in a one-way system and causing a traffic jam in Montepulciano (the kids politely refer to it as the time “that time Dad dropped lots of F bombs”). A code brown in Sarteano which could have been sooooo much worse. All of these things added to our experience. Now we have a laugh about them and we are more experienced for it.
Which brings me to my point… we travel for the experience. And we travel to gain more life experience – culture, language, food and more.
I’m already a seasoned business traveller – I know the airlines, taxis, hotels, culture and language in the places I visit regularly. But travelling with the family in new places where the locals often don’t speak the same language, can make an everyday activity like booking a restaurant or buying a coffee, a rather challenging and always interesting experience. Every time we do it, we learn more. We gain experience.
Now we have some experience travelling as a family. Next time we will know more – the most important phrases (for us) to learn in each language, how to order our favourite coffee, whether to travel by train or uber or hire car, when Air BNB versus a hotel or a campground might be more appropriate, whether to have a stopover on a long flight or get straight there. Who knows, maybe one day we will be seasoned family travellers… it will get easier every time, the more experience we get.
At Likeable Lab we see a lot of prospective clients decide to ‘give it a go ourselves’ when it comes to social media marketing. They don’t have the experience but will give it a shot anyway. This can definitely work, much like us on our travels. But it works only if you really want to put in the hard yards, make some mistakes and learn from them. You need to be willing to gain the experience. This takes time and effort to take a hard time and turn it into a learning experience.
It will take a good number of trips before my family and I are seasoned enough travellers to breeze through a foreign country with absolute ease. We need to make a lot more mistakes first.
When travelling the world of social media, we have made a lot of mistakes already. We have the experience and we get more every single day. It’s just what we do.
If you would rather take the fast track than travel through the world of social media on your own, then let us manage it for you.
You know where we are, if you want a chat then get in touch and I will call you personally.
Cheers,
-Likeable Nick
PS – if you are thinking of travelling with your kids… I have a little bit of experience there now too. Feel free to throw that into the conversation if you like.
