VIDEO CLIPS
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| What's Up with The Little Airplane? | ||
| That's easy! | ||
| I needed a way of getting around America, to visit small towns especially. So why not drive a car? That would take too long. Why not travel by airliners and rental cars? Not a chance. The last thing this bone-weary 200,000-mile-a-year traveler wanted to do was spend more time on bleeping commercial airliners! | ||
| Learning to fly a small airplane was something I couldn't afford to do until about age 35. When I finally could finally afford it, family and career were taking all of my time. By age 45, the clock running, I took the plunge. In 2001 I earned by private pilot flying certificate. A year later I learned to fly in the clouds and got my instrument rating. | ||
| The airplane you see in the picture is a 2001 Cessna Skyhawk. It goes about 120 knots, or 138 miles per hour. You can take it up to 14,000 feet, enough to cross every mountain pass in the America. | ||
| I flew the Skyhawk around America to collect stories for Life 2.0. These are some of the people I visited. You'll meet them in the book: | ||
| • Peter Scanlon, born, bred, schooled and married on the East Coast in the New York area. Peter was a high-flyer at insurance giant Cigna until he burned out from stress. Peter had three new job offers—two in New York and one in Des Moines, Iowa. He and his wife had to get out a map and see exactly where Iowa is located. Despite having no roots in the Hawkeye state, the Scanlons decided they needed to reinvent themselves and start leading less stressful, more personally fulfilling lives. Peter and his family have blossomed in Des Moines. They bought a 4,200 square foot house for less than $400,000. The better part is a stress-free drive to work, a dynamic church that even his kids like to attend, a community of interesting, friendly people and a surprisingly rich cultural life. | ||
| • Dave Barton, who once ran a most un-California-like business in California—a company brokering factory tool parts by telephone and fax. Dave was up against the wall economically when the landlord tripled the rent for his business. So he closed the business and sold his inflated Silicon Valley 1,700 square foot house for $895,000 and set off for hills of central Pennsylvania. With help from a no-interest loan from Penn State, he's re-launched his business as an Internet-based company. The Bartons also bought a 3,800 square foot home on two acres for $235,000—for cash. Family expenses are as low as they get. | ||
| • Dick Resch, a Harvard Business School grad, who became disenchanted with the materialism and morals of Wall Street. He uprooted to Green Bay, Wisconsin where he joined a furniture maker and became (one presumes) the laughingstock of his Harvard classmates for abandoning the easy riches of Wall Street. Dick rose to CEO. He now runs the most profitable company in his industry. His secret? He takes the time to teach everyone in his company financial literacy, even though many have not finished high school. | ||
| • Andrew Field, a native Californian who got the inspiration for transforming his life while fly-fishing in Montana's Yellowstone River. His company, Printingforless.com aggregates idle printing press time around the country and sells it through a Web-based auction. He and his wife Victoria live like baron and baroness in their custom-built home on 22 acres near the Gallatin National Forest. | ||
| • Rick Randall, a self-made millionaire who paid a price for his financial success. Not only a failed marriage but separation from the person he cared most about in this world, his daughter. When Rick married for a second time and embarked on a new series of entrepreneurial ventures in the medical device field, he decided to locate in smaller cities (Wilmington, N.C. during the school year; Lake Placid, N.Y. in the summer) where he could focus on both work and family. I visited Rick in Lake Placid. | ||
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Thanks to my Cessna Skyhawk, I met these and many other people during personal visits over the last two years. During this journey I met countless ordinary folks doing stunning, creative things with their work and lives in places you'd least expect. |
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| People who have discovered the where of their happiness. | ||
Click
here to watch as Rich discusses Life 2.0. |
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