Our Story

Before We Talk About Us, Let’s Talk About You.

Making a relationship work takes, well, work. You know this, of course. At least intellectually.

But the movies, books, and ads that are so prevalent in our world can’t help but influence your thinking. They would have you believe that it’s a magic spark, a love at first sight, or a deep psychic connection where you just know what each other needs.

Cue the romantic music.

That emotional part of your brain often overrides the logic you know to be true, and you start wondering why your relationship doesn’t measure up to what you see all around you.

We’re here to call bullshit on all that nonsense. You watch a mushy movie or read a trashy romance novel for entertainment, not instruction.

So let’s get back to that “work” concept from before. While we’re in agreement that a good relationship does take work, it shouldn’t feel like work, at least not in the way you’ve looked at work before.

This kind of work is teamwork, and it’s what we’ve been learning in depth since 2008, when we first decided to remake our lives and live, work, and travel together 24/7.

We’re Warren and Betsy Talbot.

Nice to meet you! We’re masters of the relationship hack. What is a hack, you ask? It’s a shortcut or workaround to a problem, an insider’s tip that makes life easier or better.

We didn’t realize we were in training to become masters until well after we started turning our failing relationship around. And over the years, as we systematically changed our marriage and our entire lifestyle, our friends and family noticed.

Friends of friends started following our updates. People we didn’t know asked us how we became such good partners. How we “convinced” each other to follow our dreams. How we dared to change jobs, move cross country, sell half our stuff, and more.

When two people close to use suffered life-threatening illnesses, we realized life is short. At the age of 37, we asked ourselves the question:

If we knew we wouldn’t make it to our 40th birthdays, what would change about our lives right now?

Our biggest dream was to travel the world, and we made the decision to speed up our retirement dream by 27 years.

For two years, we saved and downsized, selling everything that didn’t fit the vision of our new life. On October 1, 2010, we set out to travel the world. Today, we’re still doing it, though we also have a home base in a little village in Spain.

What’s interesting about us (besides Warren’s rockstar hair or Betsy’s infectious laugh), is not that we travel the world or even that we now live part-time in Spain. What makes us worth following is that we share all the hacks, workarounds, and shortcuts we’ve learned since 2006 in repairing and revitalizing our own relationship. We wouldn’t have the travel now if we hadn’t learned the partnership lessons from years ago.
Because of the way we live, we’re exposed to change and new experiences more than most people. We’ve learned to deal with the stress and work together as a team. Our relationship has been a living laboratory of changing environments and challenges.

And because we work together writing books and publishing a podcast, we also know how to overcome that “don’t sleep with your coworker” problem.

And because we’re friendly, chatty people, we want to share everything we’ve learned with you so you can benefit from the lessons we’ve learned by living a somewhat unconventional lifestyle.

You don’t have to travel the world to enjoy a strong relationship. But you will have to step off the path of conventional thinking. And if you’ve read this far, we’re pretty sure you’re good with that.

So let’s get started, shall we? Click here to visit our Getting Started page.