Vacations that can transform lives

[Music]

each of us is here on the planet for a

very limited amount of time

and i know that sounds like a big bummer

but it’s actually not it’s actually kind

of cool

because it unites us all in a shared

experience

we know that our lives are limited and

precious and so we understand that other

people’s lives

are limited and precious as well and

it’s within that limited time frame

that we get to write our story the story

of our lives

so it’s worth stopping from time to time

to consider

exactly what story it is that we’re

writing

in the end what will the theme have been

and importantly what will be the really

really cool

scenes now this is something i’ve been

thinking a lot about lately because

recently

the story of my life took a dramatic

plot turn

in the past when people have asked me

what i do for a living i like to say

that i’m an author of books and a travel

writer

and i like to say that i own a vacation

rental business and a travel company and

that’s all true

but it’s a little misleading because my

real job my grown-up job for the last 22

years has been in finance

which means i’ve sat in front of a

computer 10 hours a day every day

staring at numbers

so you can see why i prefer to talk

about writing books

and about traveling but also because

those are my passions

i love stories especially true stories

and i love

traveling i love vacations in fact i

think that vacations

are some of the most awesome things that

people do

so it might surprise you to learn that

the most amazing vacations in my life

vacations that have literally changed my

life

are vacations that i didn’t even go on

and that’s because

several years ago i started an

organization called the vacation angel

network now the network is a group of

vacation rental homeowners and we open

up our homes to families who are going

through some kind of a hardship

like an injury or an illness we started

with families who had children being

treated for pediatric cancer and these

treatments can last 12 months sometimes

18 months most of that time spent in the

hospital and

aside from being emotionally devastating

they’re often

financially devastating as well so our

idea was

after these kids were done with

treatment and got to finally leave the

hospital

we would just give them a chance to go

on a free vacation

take a break be together as a family and

just enjoy life it was our hope that in

the story of their lives

this would be a chance for them to turn

the page and start a new chapter

and this whole idea really happened by

chance i i

encountered a family that was in the

situation and i said i don’t know if

we’ll help

but if you guys want you’re welcome to

go stay in one of our houses

and they said sure and they did

and it wasn’t a grand gesture on my part

it wasn’t a huge sacrifice

i think it’s possible the house might

have sat empty anyways

but it was quickly apparent that for

this family

it was a big moment in the story of

their lives

and what i didn’t know at the time was

that this event was also going

to be a big uh a big moment in the story

of my life

too because it was really feel good

and i quickly realized it was something

that i wanted to do more of

and so i did i went out and i recruited

some more vacation rental homeowners

and we started doing more vacations and

we started to donate

our houses to auctions for charities and

foundations

that were kind of in keeping with our

mission and suddenly

and quickly uh we had this sort of

thing that felt like it was making the

world a little bit better

place and it was cool so

that happened now um you guys have all

heard

the saying that no good deed goes

unpunished so a few years after that

um we were hosting a foster family with

a foster mom and she had five foster

kids at one of our houses

and this was over in lake chalan in the

cascade mountains of washington state’s

one of my favorite places

on the planet and my parents have a

place there so i happen to be there

along with all my brothers and sisters

and

all of my nieces and nephews i come from

a big crazy irish catholic family

super fun and uh it’s in the afternoon

and somebody raises the cocktail

flag and i get my first delicious icy

cold beer

about to crack it open and suddenly the

phone rings and it’s the foster mom

and she says john i’m so sorry to bother

you but

none of the toilets in the house are

working which

if you uh live the glamorous life of a

vacation rental homeowner this is not an

uncommon

call to get so i’m like fine i hand out

i hand my beer reluctantly back to my

brother i jump in the car

i go a few blocks up to the house and i

already know what the problem’s gonna be

i know it’s going to be the septic pump

in the cistern out in the yard

and i also know it’s not going to be fun

so

i get there and i put on my gloves

like a cowboy getting ready

to ride a bronco because this is not my

first septic system rodeo

and i open up the cistern and it’s

flooded now it’s

it’s clear water but it it’s sewer water

and it stinks so

i take a deep breath and i reach down in

and i

waters all the way up to the edge of my

gloves and i knock loose the float pump

and i come back up

deep wrap and all the water blows out

and i’m like okay great problem solved

now the swimming pool

is right in the yard there and the mom

and the kids are there so i yell down or

i say hey you should be all set now

uh everything should be fine and she

goes oh great thanks but john

come down and meet the kids now i just

want to go take a shower

but i say of course yeah so so i walked

down

and there’s a little 10 year old girl

and she’s in the um

shallow end and uh the mom says to her

uh mary tell john what you did

and i look over her and she is smiling

she is just

beaming and she you can tell she is so

proud of herself

and she says i learned how to swim

and i say oh that’s great and i look

back at the mom and the mom says um she

says

she’s never been in a swimming pool

before she’s

never actually been in a swimsuit before

and uh

i get a big lump in my throat i’m

getting one right now and my eyes are

watered up but

i can’t do anything about it because i

got the sewer water gloves on

and i went back to the mom and she says

thank you and tears just started

streaming down my face

and uh you never know

where you’re gonna be at a pivotal

moment in your life you never know what

you’re going to be doing

you never know what you’re going to be

wearing but this was a pivotal moment in

my life because it was the moment when i

realized that

this is what i wanted this should be a

big part of my life

this is really what i want to do and so

i did i wrapped it up

i started recruiting more vacation

rental homeowners

and we started doing more vacations and

importantly we started teaming up with

foundations

that would nominate families for us to

take on vacation and causes for us to

support

and because these stories really

resonated

with people especially stories of

illness

these were stories about families uh

showing great courage

they were stories of sadness and they

were stories of families

in the fight of their life against an

enemy that they didn’t even provoke

and that really resonated with people so

we started getting on the news and we

started getting on local television

programs

and if we posted on social media these

stories would really go

and that brought more people would start

to call me and say how can i help and

how can i get involved

and suddenly in an organic way this

thing really started to grow

there was a moment when i found myself

on the phone

with um there’s a really great

television program called treehouse

masters

and very popular it’s got millions of

viewers and i found myself on the phone

talking to the host

pete nelson and he said john i love what

you’re doing we have to get some of

these kids out to my treehouse resort

and i said sure so suddenly we

find ourselves out there we have a

family with a young cancer survivor

and pete nelson is this great gregarious

guy and he’s there and he

is dancing with them and they’re

laughing and they’re having the best

time

and i’m standing there in this beautiful

forest surrounded by treehouses watching

this

and i just thought this is extraordinary

and maybe that’s not cool

for a lot of people but for me a finance

nerd who has spent probably way too much

of his life in front of a computer

uh i thought it really was cool i

thought it was extraordinary

and so because of that suddenly we had

more people coming in and

we created a virtuous cycle and i

realized

we really have something here i would

like to see what this because what could

become

so after 22 years i quit my job in

finance and decided to pursue the

vacation angel network full-time

and see what would become of it now i

think that was a great decision

but if i’m being honest uh at first i

wasn’t so

sure because when we started doing this

we would have families that were done

with treatment and they were leaving the

hospital

and hopefully they were leaving the

hospital forever

and when they came out we would have

they would have a good time and then

they would continue on with their lives

and that would be the end of it but

now that we were teamed up with

foundations and we were doing more

vacations

i guess it was inevitable that we would

start to encounter families

that were going through an illness from

which

they were not going to recover

and we would encounter parents who were

going to lose a child

we would meet moms that were ill and

maybe they weren’t going to get better

and it hurts your heart a lot because

these moms in particular they weren’t

concerned about

being sick or even about dying all they

were concerned about was that their

young children

were going to grow up without a mom

and i had some

a hard time with these stories obviously

and

i’m not proud of this but there was a

time when i thought to myself

uh maybe i’ve made a huge mistake

but but that was the moment in time and

fortunately

um i’m not in that space anymore i’m in

a space now where i get

excited every day to get up and do what

i do

and it wasn’t one particular thing that

got me through it was really three

things

the first thing was getting a chance to

see these families

come together and really just have fun

and celebrate life uh sort of reignited

my passion

for vacations and for stories i think

all of you guys will agree that

vacations don’t always go well

some sometimes they go spectacularly

wrong even

comically wrong but your worst vacations

can end up being your best memories and

it’s because of the stories

they become the stories of your family

and when an unexpected illness or injury

befalls the family

they don’t always have the opportunity

to write those stories

and the story of every family is

important so for me

i get excited about the opportunity to

just in a small way

help these families to write their story

the second thing is i have been

overwhelmed

by the amount of generosity and the

outpouring from people

to help support our mission we live in a

time

now where you can sometimes start to

feel like the world is a cynical place

but after founding this organization and

seeing how many people have called up

and offered to support

um to offer their homes off their time

offer their talent and i want to

emphasize these aren’t

rich people offering their homes for a

weekend in the hamptons

while they head off to europe for two

days most of the members of our network

are small business owners in a very

competitive industry

some of them are struggling to make a go

of it and still they call

and say john what can we do how can we

help so

there have been times when we have had

more homes and vacations to offer

than we have had families to give them

to and i would have never expected

that so um i hope that makes you guys

feel like we don’t live in a cynical

world that we live in a wonderful world

i know it does for me

so the third thing is and maybe the most

poignant thing

happened when i was talking to a woman

who’s become a friend of mine

and she is the founder of an

organization called the ladybug house

and their mission is to uh to create

better palliative care

for children who have terminal illnesses

they’re hoping to create a better

experience for kids as they come to the

final months

weeks and days of their lives and i was

talking to her one day

and she told me her motto and it really

struck me and their motto is this

she said we can’t always add days to

their lives

but we can add life to their days

each of us has a terminal diagnosis

we’re all dying

we’re just doing it on a limited on a

different time frame

and it’s within that limited time frame

that we get to write our stories

for me it has been an honor and a

privilege to be a small part of helping

families to write their stories no

matter how long or

short those stories may be

it’s been humbling for me to witness

families show

grace and courage in the face of

overwhelming adversity

earlier when i said i think vacations

are some of the most awesome things that

people do

i think maybe you’ll see now i was being

a little intentionally misleading

the awesome things that i have witnessed

are not people going on vacation the

awesome things that i have witnessed

are people i don’t even know offering

their homes to people they don’t even

know

on our network and not just offering

their homes some of these people have

gone out of their way to make these

vacations

truly exceptional the founding of the

vacation angel network has become

one of the great joys of my life i’ve

learned

that the value of things that you give

often far surpass

the sacrifice that you make in giving

them in the end

it’s really no sacrifice at all because

if you can find a way to leverage your

time

and your talents and your assets to help

somebody improve the story of their life

you’re going to find that it

dramatically improves the story of your

life

as well and if you can find a way to

help somebody add life

to their days no matter how many days

they may have left

i think you will find as i have that you

will add an incredible amount of life

to your days as well and that is

something that i would wish

for all of you so thank you for letting

me share

my story

[Music]

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