Two years after building a dream home with a $150,000 recording studio attached to it, we decided to sell and move to Walt Disney World.
Who does that???
In 2019, we moved to Orlando, literally 5 minutes from the back entrance to Walt Disney World. Seriously, the fireworks shake our house, we’re that close. But how the hell did we make that dream a reality.
Let’s start first with “Why did we do it?” We were living in Tennessee and had moved there two years earlier. We built a wonderful house that was fully accessible for our daughter. Spent $150,000 building a recording studio.
But we weren’t happy.
We were too far away from our friends and had found it hard to meet friends in Tennessee.
We weren’t seeing family enough. When you have a child with serious medical needs in a wheelchair, it’s very hard to travel. We can’t fly easily.
And we’d been driving to Disney once a year because it was the best vacation place for us. It was where my daughter could do all the things and be seen by Disney cast members as a typical kid who was just there to have fun.
So on one of those trips, I mentioned it to my wife. I said, “I’m not happy in TN.” And she basically agreed with me right away. She’d been feeling the same.
But what the hell… Who does this?? We had just moved two years ago. We built this dream home with all the things we needed.
And it’s not like we were rolling in money and could move whenever we wanted to. My business had just posted a net income of $50,000 the previous year. And my wife was working part-time.
But this pull of moving to a place where we could see more friends and family and have things available for my kids was strong. Reaching this goal would make our lives better.
There were significant hurdles. When you have a child with medical needs, you need an accessible home so that it’s easy to move around without getting injured. Well… we already had that so we needed to figure out a way to build a new accessible house without having to sell our current one.
And that was tough. Every lender we went to said, “No, sorry, you don’t have enough income. You don’t have enough equity in your house. We can’t give you a mortgage unless you sell and move into a rental.”
After searching and searching, we found a lender that knew us and was willing to help because they understood the situation.
And then there was the personal challenge of letting go of this amazing recording studio that I had just built. It felt like a failure. But the truth was that I didn’t need it anymore. My business had transitioned to podcasting and it was growing.
With each hurdle, we didn’t quit. We got through it by solving every problem as it came. One at a time.
And that’s what you have to remember when you face a problem or a challenge. When you want to accomplish something, you have to chip away at it. A little bit at a time. Face every problem as it comes.
Because the one thing that I’ve learned in life that has helped me more than anything else is to remember that everything is temporary.
Nothing is permanent. Things are always changing. You’ll have bad days. It’s not the end of the world. There is going to be something new every day.
Everything is temporary. And if you can get through that next problem on the next day, you can reach your goal too.
You can move where you want to move. You can create the business that you want to create.
Everything is temporary. Keep moving forward.
Danny
PS. What’s your goal? I’d love to hear it. Please reply to this message and let me know what you are striving to reach.
