Thank you to guest contributor, Ed Coleman, who alongside his partner in life and business Jenn, is 1/2 of the creative force behind the website Coleman Concierge for sharing his TBEX creator community story!
Everybody has a core lie they tell themselves to survive. Mine was that the walls of your suburban castle would never crumble if you only built them high enough with a steady job that pays the bills and the perfect kid-to-dog ratio. On a tear-filled cross-country trip after dropping my kids with their mother to go to school in Ohio, I found a new one. I could outrun the demons in my soul if I only ran far enough, fast enough, and never looked back.
Instead of returning to my empty house, where I was actively severing the last threads that held me in society, I ended up on Jenn’s couch. She let me stay on a trial period, conditional on morning lattes and cleaning with bleach spray. She was rightfully nervous after seeing my Good Crack-Housekeeping decor from liquidating all my assets on Craigslist.
I wasn’t fully feral. I re-learned taking the trash out and stopped peeing in the kitchen sink. I also started believing Jenn’s core lie. Her body, which betrayed her during her professional ski career, could withstand the beating of providing spa services at twice the industry average.
We left my ghosts behind in the Arizona desert and fled to the beaches of San Diego. My demons were still in hot pursuit, but the daily pounding of surf sessions kept them at bay. Jenn’s were pounding down the door.
Her knees, which stole her skiing soul, conspired with a bad back and pinched nerves in her wrist to knock her out of another profession. She could work one day a week at a spa and only after copious amounts of ibuprofen. The dream of Jenn globetrotting the world while working at luxury resorts seemed as distant as Jenn’s youth bouncing around ski mountains pro-patrolling and instructing.
We found a new lie. We could get paid to travel the world and become six-figure bloggers in three years. I mean, why not? I was writing my epic science fiction novel, and Jenn had an extensive background in adventure sports and high-end spas.
We attended our first TBEX in Huntsville before we even launched our blog. Surely, a DMO would want to work with us based on our amateurish business cards alone. Alas, we returned home with our dance card completely empty, but the seed of something greater was planted.
We met a community of creators who viewed the world in a different light, many of whom are closest friends today. Don George’s writing course taught me to play the accordion of time in my writing, and Jenn learned valuable skills to run our blog like a business.
Leslie Walker and her Huntsville TBEX team set unrealistic expectations for every other convention we attended. We hiked from neighborhoods with trailheads leading away from affordable houses, ate breakfast one-on-one with Samantha Brown, and partied under a Saturn V Rocket.
We returned home from Huntsville with our business model firmly planted in our brains. We dodged high-volume keywords like the World-Famous San Diego Zoo, Sea World, and California beaches and focused on finding transformative adventures that could change you and the world.
As the warm, rich, and harmonically complex notes of the accordion of time washed over us, we realized our business plan didn’t align with our current core lies. While we were seeking amazing adventures for ordinary people, our friends were striking it rich with winnable, high-volume keywords like “Best Honeymoon Destinations” and “Overwater Bungalows.”
The truth about lies is that the journey is more important than the destination. They represent something between a desperate need and a burning desire. When you find the right words, your core lies turn into your core truths.
Many years later, Yancy Wright, ANFT Forest Therapy Guide, TBEX Speaker, and CEO of Casa Alternavida, was leading us through a fire ceremony. We wrote down all our fears, pain, dreams, and aspirations and used them to light a fire. It burned bright and hot, but it wasn’t enough.
We had to actively tend the fire with bigger sticks, providing fuel spaced carefully to create the perfect ratio of heat and fresh air. This lesson from nature reinforced what TBEX taught us: that success is as much inspiration and motivation as education. Our journals flowed with realizations about how escaping the world wasn’t enough. We knew for certain that we needed to experience the world and, hopefully, make it a better place with our services.
Betrayals are only as permanent as you allow them to be. Through our journeys, Jenn discovered space-age knee braces that could protect her during a dynamic fall and keep her prosthetics from shattering her bones. She was reunited with her passion for the slopes, and we found ourselves skiing in Bulgaria with TBEX alum Tim Leffel and a chateau of the most vibrant, creative people you could ever meet.
I learned that people do make their fortunes from app development from TBEX speaker Ray Blakney and that honeymoons never have to end from the incomparable Mike and Ann Howard. On the one hand, my story of steady pay and dissatisfaction with my day job felt pale in comparison. On the other, the transformative adventures I have working on Coleman Concierge allowed my shattered soul space to heal and grow.
I thought of the first time I came to Huntsville when I was five. I stood beside the Saturn V rocket and thought that if Man could go to the Moon, anything was possible. I remembered mailing away to the National Space Society for pamphlets on careers in space as I studied Physics in college before the burdens of young children and an overbearing wife forced me to seek more sensible employment.
I applied to a NASA program within two weeks of returning from Bulgaria, and within two months, I was working on returning humanity to the Moon. Samantha Brown still follows us on TikTok, and we’re still planning work trips for African safaris and powder skiing in Japan, but my life in Huntsville is giving me more satisfaction than ever.
Today, Leslie Walker is my neighbor, and my house costs less than my salary. I live less than a mile from 100 miles of single-track that heads up into the hills. I spend my days getting people off this planet and my evenings getting them out and exploring it. In my spare time, I’m developing an app that might change how people travel. I’ve realized that honeymoons don’t have to last forever, and neither do demons. Somewhere in between are the lessons from TBEX, that vivid dreams and educated planning can build a fire bright enough never to be extinguished.
Join the TBEX creator community and meet wonderful people like Ed and Jenn at any or all of our upcoming TBEX events in San Sebastian, Spain, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Anchorage, Alaska!
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