This transcript was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect the odd misheard word. Click any timestamp to play from that moment; times marked ≈ are estimated to within a minute or so.
Welcome back to the Anglotopia podcast. We had a two-week hiatus that was unplanned.
Yeah, kids have been home a lot. We've recorded it with the kids home, but it's not ideal. So we'd like to do it when the kids aren't here. And so we're snowed in today, and the kids are at their grandparents' house. So we're going to take the opportunity to record a couple podcasts
So hopefully we can get back on a weekly release schedule. So now this week's topic is a reader suggestion or listener suggestion. A combination of two suggestions, actually. They wanted to know why we like Gold Hill and Shaftsbury so much and how we started Anglotopia and how that got going and why. And those two are actually closely related. So, well, that should cover a whole hour of a podcast.
So, I guess I'll lead off because this part of the story doesn't involve you. Ouch.
So back in the late 90s, I was a budding Anglophile. I wasn't full. I didn't have full Anglomania yet. You're like, I wish I'd known you in those days. No. So, and Jackie will attest to this. I'm kind of a moody person.
Totally kidding. So let's just say in high school, I was very miserable. most of the time um high school was a place i wanted to leave as soon as possible which i think
everybody feels that way but i mean i unless you're like the most popular kid in high school and then like you spend the rest of your life trying to recreate that yeah i mean so i just
wanted to graduate and go on to college and get on with my life um and we also live in a very unpleasant place in the winter. And so in the deep dark days of winter when you don't want to go to school and you have to get up at 6am to get there and it just makes an overall mood that makes you bloody miserable.
So the story starts in a Hobby Lobby back in the late 90s. And I think I was there with a friend.
Most small towns used to have a hobby store like a Ben Franklin or an independent hobby store. But Hobby Lobby took over the hobby market. And so now Hobby Lobby and to some extent Michael's and what's the other store?
Joanne Fabrics are the center for hobby and crafts and whatnot. And so at Hobby Lobby, you can buy posters and frames and everything. And one day I was going to the posters, as I often did, because I liked.
Well, and that was like, let's be honest, that was a very late 90s teenage thing to do. Like, go look at all the cool posters.
Yeah, because you could get cool posters and they were cheap, which was nice. And then you'd hang them on your wall back home and get a cheap frame that they could go in. So it was, you know, it was nice for that.
See, that's the difference in how we were raised, which is just a weird, like, segue. way like i didn't grow up with a lot of money so i was just thrilled to have the poster you were like i need a poster and a frame i'm like who's got the money for a frame i was i was working as
a teenager i had a dog walking job i had disposable income see that and a car oh my gosh you are like
i worked two jobs as a teenager and it was still just the poster if i was lucky so anyway
ran them we're getting off a tangent on our both our attitudes towards money so so i was at hobby lobby and uh there and previously i would often buy posters at pretty places because i dreamed of traveling to around the world when i grew up you know as who doesn't when they're a teenager
and who does it period right and so i came across a picture of an english village scene
and like it just struck me as like the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen it was like it was perfect it was a village curved down a hill it had an ancient ruin on the side and it was the view was downhill and in the background there was a beautiful hilly valley green and hilly valley it was I was like okay this is coming home with me and I bought a frame for it and so I took it
home hung on my wall hung next to my bed i love that you were that kind of teenager
my mom taught me wonderful interior decoration skills what can i say thank you mom she did she's probably listening she did so i hung it on my wall and and they're in there at home and i would look at it every day and it said cottages of dorset and it didn't really say anything i didn't say where it was and um i would learn this later i didn't know that this is actually one of the most famous street scenes in Britain, but I'm getting ahead of myself there. So I hung it on my wall. And so in those deep, dark days of high school and winter, and you don't want to be there. I thought life isn't so bad because one day I'm going to go there. And I thought that's my dream. I'm going to go there one day. And that's, that's like the place I'm going to dream of going. And I'm going to have an attachment to, because that a place that beautiful has to exist. And because it exists, life isn't terrible.
get over yourself and your teenage angst and get on with your life because you're going to finish
high school you're going to go to college and one day you're going to go there and so that was it was kind of a it was a totem it was a it was a a force for motivation in my life um and so as the years passed um i learned that it was a place called gold hill which was in shaftsbury dorset which is a town um it's actually just on the dorset border um next to wiltshire and you know i i so i learned it was a real place that you could go to and so it just remained that it kind of encompassed my vision of england in my head of what england was and what it could be to me at that stage in my life as a huge anglophile and as somebody who wanted to go there and so then that's when you come into the picture yeah um it was hanging it was hanging on the wall in your room when we met yep so we met in 2002 in college our first day of college it was it was my second day was your first day. Yeah. So we met in remedial math class. Go figure, right? Yeah, we're both really bad at math. Speak for yourself. So we were going to Columbia College in Chicago. We were these
pretentious art students. Again, speak for yourself. I have trigonometry homework to do
after this. Totally kidding. So we both only went there for a semester, but Columbia didn't work out for us for lots of reasons. My reasons are different than her reasons, but it just didn't work out. But the one thing we both got out of that semester at Columbia College was each other.
And so when you came to my house for the first time, that poster was there on my wall.
It was. And, like, it struck me, like, so you still lived with your parents when we met.
And I remember, like, you invited me over for breakfast. And that's a whole long story. But, and I showed up and, like, your whole family was there. And so that was fun. But I remember walking into your room and seeing that poster and thinking, like, let me set the scene. Like, John's 18 years old. And he's like, come over to my house for breakfast. And I'm like, okay. And so I come over and, like, you're showing me, like, your room. And I'm like, and so my home life was very different from your home life. Although I still lived with my parents at the time, I was very independent. So it was kind of, anyway, it doesn't matter. So what struck me, like, so setting the scene, like, he's got this bedroom with really nice furniture in it, bookshelves full of books, and posters on the wall of places. Now, I don't want to sound sexist or anything like that, but your average 18-year-old boy in America, like, does not have pictures of castles and village wall or villages on their bedroom wall. And I remember that it struck me thinking, okay, this guy is kind of interesting. Like, there are no, like, rock bands or car posters or, and not, you know, not.
Well, yeah, but I'm just saying, like, and I'm not knocking those that like rock bands and cars. That's cool, too. But it just struck me as something really different.
Anyway, so this poster was there. And, you know, as we were young and in love, we spent a lot of time together.
We would watch movies and watch TV shows. And hang out with the door open. Oh, gosh. You know. Oh, my gosh. To protect my poor mother's modesty. Oh, my goodness. And that poster was there.
And so you understood how important the poster was as you got to know me and my mood stories.
Yeah, that you really had a dream. That you, it was more than a dream. That it was a goal.
one of the things that attracted you to me was that I was a goal setter yes and that you know if I said I wanted to do something I would figure out how to do it yes and so you were there and as an eyewitness for us going to go to this place yeah so because and you couldn't believe we were
going to do it either like yeah I remember the night you asked me you were like do you want to to england on our spring break we were both back in college were we both back in college yeah this
was 2004 okay so fast forward a couple years um we were both now going to purdue north central which is where we both got our degrees and so we were um i don't i don't want to knock purdue north central this isn't gonna sound this might sound like a knock but it's not but purdue north Central was very affordable.
So, Purdue was, it was, the Westville campus is like the third or fourth extension of Purdue in Indiana.
It's now Purdue Westville and Purdue Hammond are the same campus. This is not relevant. This is not relevant in the conversation.
Sorry. Well, maybe we'll cut that out. But so we were going to both to Purdue North Central. And because it was affordable and because I actually had a – I got a core 40 diploma when I was in high school. And that entitled me to more financial aid than you would normally get.
So, you know, when our tuition payments were covering, we bought our school books, we had money to spend. And we were kind of like, well, why don't we go somewhere for spring break? Why don't we go to England? By this point, I had been there once with my mom and I wanted to go back.
Well, with the caveat, though, that we were going to go somewhere for spring break, but we weren't going to use the money in a way that, like, would not be enriching. Like, and I'm not knocking those people who, like, want to go down to Cabo and, like, party all week. But we wanted it to be to make sure that those funds were used in an educational way still. So we thought, well, why don't we go to England and go do museums and go see architecture and all of that good stuff.
It actually set a tone for how we like to travel going forward. We prefer to be enriched when we travel. We don't just like to go and tick boxes on a to-do list.
No, but there is something to be said about sitting on a beach. I mean, I'm not going to knock it.
And coming from the background you came from, you were like, you're full of it. There's no way we're going to England for our spring break.
I will say what's really ironic, though, too, is at like 19 or 20, I think, as independent as I was, and my parents were very like, I don't, um, not, my parents really didn't keep a tight leash on me, which is a horrible expression.
Yeah. Um, I still had to ask my parents. I'm like, uh. And I had traveled, like, internationally by myself a couple of years back. I'm like, do you guys care if I go with John to England? And my parents were like, what? I'm like, no, it's all cool. It won't cost you anything. And they were like, you just make sure you hold your passport the whole time. I'm like, yeah, I'm good. They were like, bye.
And I, we had talked about our itinerary and I'm like, I really wanted to go to Shaftesbury. Um, and I'd emailed the tourist board locally, like how to get there. Cause it's actually when you're, I think you're 20 years old at this stage, 20 years old and you haven't really traveled that much internationally. Like everything is a mystery.
And when they wrote me back the instructions for how to get there, I just, I didn't understand it. I'm like, how can I just walk from the train station? They're like, no, it's 10 miles on a busy road. You can't walk. I'm like, how do we do this? You know? And it would require... So we did London.
That's another story. And not related to Anglotopia in any way because it's in France.
I just would like to maybe talk about my first initial reactions to England because I think that's really kind of a neat. I remember we took the Heathrow Express in. It was our first. You knew how to get into town, so to speak. And I remember we stepped off the train and I was always a huge fan of the Paddington books as a kid. So when we stepped off the train, it looked like a storybook. It looked like all of the stories and images that are kind of like drip fed to American kids by England. And I remember just telling John, like, oh my gosh, it looks like a storybook. It looks like...
Yeah, he totally did. We stayed in a really nice hotel, which is no longer a hotel anymore. Now it's very fancy flats right off of Lancaster Gate. And we just, like, you introduced me to newspapers, British newspapers, and he chuckles because...
Yes, sometimes there are naked women in their newspapers. And I'm not a fussy wife. I don't really get upset or uptight about that kind of thing. Not to say that those who do are fussy either. which just doesn't really bother me. But my love affair with Hyde Park began on that trip. We sat in the park and we read newspapers, appropriate, regular newspapers. And it was cold and it was rainy, but it was fantastic.
Yeah, and I think even on that first trip were the seeds of what would become Anglotopia.
I mean, we were at that stage, we were only there as tourists and just traveling and trying to get the most of it. But experiences there made it away into the first post-Sundangletopia and the first book we wrote. So, yeah. So, yeah, we had this great trip. I think we were there for a week.
And I had said we wanted to go to Gold Hill. It was really important to me. But for those who don't know me, I'm very, I've never been formally diagnosed, but I have social anxiety. And it's heightened when I'm traveling because like you don't know the social cues and you don't know how to communicate. And they don't know the rhythms of how to do things there. Like it makes you even more standoffish. And so to go to Gold Hill, it was a day after we had got back from Paris. And I just said, oh, I don't want to do it. Let's just do it on our next trip. We'll just hang around for the day. Because it was going to require me to make a phone call to book train tickets. And I have a thing about making phone calls. And Jackie's like, this is ridiculous.
We're going to go. And she picked up the phone and called and booked the tickets.
Yeah. Well, and because like it was all he talked about nonstop from when you booked the tickets. And I knew you well enough to know that this was just a tick that you had that was preventing you from really accomplishing a dream. And that it really only all you needed was someone else to pick up the phone and do it.
Yeah, it certainly validated my decision to ask her to pair me the day before. She's amazing.
So we booked train tickets, and we got up the next day. And so here's the thing. This is going to be a long journey. This is going to take all day. I don't remember where the train left. Was it Paddington or was it Waterloo? I think it was Paddington. I think Paddington goes southwest.
It doesn't matter. So we got on the train, southwest train, which doesn't exist anymore. It's now Great Western. I think, again, it doesn't matter. And so it was supposed to be a two-hour and 15-minute train ride.
And then we would have to take a taxi because the train didn't go directly there. It went to Gillingham, which is the nearest town of the train station. Then we had to take a taxi cab, which the tourist information office assured us there would be taxis at the rink there. And I take a taxi to take the rest of the drive from Gillingham to Shaftesbury. And then Gold Hill is located behind the city hall.
I think, though, that as first-time travelers, or at least as a first-time traveler to England, the fact that they were like, no, there will be taxis at the taxi stand, you know, in Gillingham. And, like, you're like, okay, so I'm going out to the countryside and you're assuring me that there will be a taxi. Which is, like, public transportation in the rural parts of the U.S. are, they're just not dependable. So, like, if I was telling somebody they wanted to come out this way, like, let's say from Chicago, there is no taxi service, well, there are taxi service, but there will be no taxis at the train station. So that's really, that's really something. Like, I remember thinking, okay, I guess we're just going to go with this and hope we're not going to be murdered.
So, yeah, so we, so that was how the way it was supposed to go. It did not go that way. We learned some new British words that day.
And we also learned how insincere British customer service can be. And so, yeah, we went to, we went to Woking and then we had to change trains. But then there was a rail replacement bus. and then we were on a bus for a couple hours, and then back to the train. Like, it was a very confusing, arduous journey. And because we had no experience traveling on bridge trains, like, we didn't know that they do engineering works on the weekends, so that's when there's usually a place. Like, we didn't know any of this now that we know now. But eventually, we made it to Gillingham.
Yeah, but we were, like, really late, too. It was like the middle of the day by that point. Yeah.
It turns out there's a boarding school nearby, and all the girls are returning from their weekends back where they were back to school. So there were plenty of taxis. Yep. And he drove us to Jaffsbury. He was really confused as to why anybody would come there.
He thought we were there to see Madonna, because Madonna and Guy Ritchie live. Yeah, Madonna.
He's like, this is the most boring landscape I've ever lived in. Why would you want to come here? I'm like, because it's beautiful.
Yeah, grass is greener. People think North Indiana is incredibly beautiful, and sometimes it is, but sometimes it's flat and boring.
And so, yeah, so the taxi driver pulled us into Shaftesbury on the high street, And I'll never forget my first pull onto the high street. And I'm like, okay, where's Gold Hill? And the taxi driver's like, it's behind the town hall. There's a path. We're like, okay.
Yeah. And so we arranged for the taxi driver to come back in a couple hours because we had to take a train back. Because we were like, this is a day trip. And so we followed the path next to the church behind the town hall. And as you come around, there was.
Yeah. And for context, this is one of the pictures I took that day. I'm sorry to the people who are listening and not watching the video.
I'll put a picture with the show notes. But that's the view. It was there. And it was a real place. And I was finally there and it just blew my mind. And it was just, it was as beautiful in person as it was.
You won't find it anywhere else in the world. It's just, I cannot even describe the hue of gold that the sun casts over the countryside.
it's just it was beautiful it was nice to share the moment with you and then it rained and sleeted
yeah we did like all four seasons yeah it was one of those days where there was all four seasons
and one day britain is well known for those but we we didn't want that dampen our spirits no we're
hardy and and you know it turns out there's actually it was a sunday for once there's actually it's on a sunday in february there's not really anything to do in shastbury other than look at the view so we kind of we walked around the walked around the town shesford is not a village it's a town just gold hill makes it look like a village but gold hill is just one street in the town and there's three villages within the town but it's a town so we walked around the town walked around the high street we had we had tea at the top of gold hill in the salt cellar which was a newer cafe and it's underneath the town hall we had tea and cake and looked at the view um that's really all there is to do there is look at the view yeah um occasionally i'll see a picture
like pop up like a like a memory in my computer and there's a picture of like 19 or 20 year old us sitting and in the salt cellar and i just like we look so young so yeah it was
one of the top five one of the top five days of my life actually seeing this place in person for once and it had an effect on me like it's it was like a drug i'm like this place is amazing and now i want to be here as much as possible and because like this place is real it's not a fake place it's a place you can live it's a place you can can visit and it's always there and that first trip to Shastbury was just amazing. And so we, and then we came home and then, and then the poster was still there. And then I had, now I had my own pictures.
I got pictures of my own printed and was like, okay, my goal now is I want to go back there as much as possible.
we're gonna we're gonna just leave that alone and keep moving so yeah so this it was incredible to
finally achieve the goal that this place that i dreamed about going for years we finally went it was amazing and it's because oftentimes when you go to a place you've dreamt about going it's disappointing it was not disappointing no it was it it was literally scratched the ankle file itch and was like you know i want to i want to die on this hill one day oh don't say that i want to
retire here like this is my like it and you very well might because it's steep enough that i could see you like having a heart attack trying to get up the hill so so yikes so we need to move time
along because we're a half hour in and then we haven't gotten the second part of the podcast yet
but okay so line in it here we go second part second the year well the transition we'll do a
transition oh my god oh my god this one might be over an hour so the years passed four days later i think the next year we went back to shaftsbury on our on our spring break trip yeah we did and we stayed we stayed at the retreat b&b yeah it was lovely and they uh bernard bernard and sheena bernard and sheena and bernard became actually became kind of a friend um he took me up in his playing once it was really cool um so that was such a great learning experience too the whole
time like we were those first couple of trips were just we were like sponges to learn the ins and outs of british culture and social cues and although we speak the same language we do not speak the same language and um i mean we still learn bits and pieces when we go back and forth even still.
And we have lots of great memories from Shastbury in those early years. I bought my first Hunter's Wellies at the shoe shop.
Yeah, from an actual shoe store. The shoe store's still there. I was there last time we were there. And I'll never forget, we went to dinner at one of the restaurants and walked back at night. and the air was filled with the smell of all the wood-burning fireplaces and it was just on that cool crisp night it was the most wonderful smell yes and i was like this place is heaven to me yeah and i'm sure the people from shastbury who might be listening to this are like might be like okay but it's it's a wonderful special place for us and so as the years went by we've been back several times we graduated from college um and one of the hardest transitions you make in life is that transition from being a college student to being a grown-up a proper
grown-up we were already married by this point but still we were married we were living by ourselves
by ourselves and we had jobs and we were working but we still had made that transition to to to
i think i speak i'm i i don't mean to be rude but speak for yourself there okay well so part of that
growing up was that um my first job out of college didn't pay a lot of money they never do and unless you're like brilliant and then we didn't have that influx of cash from the school money every year right so while we planned to go to england in the spring like we always did we even booked the tickets yeah we did um uh there's more to the story do you want to do the more to the story no no which which one well we we booked the trip we didn't have a lot of money time off is going to be an issue and then we found out you were you're pregnant the first time oh yeah
um but that didn't that was um that was a really difficult time that was a difficult time so we
we did the responsible adult thing and canceled the trip yeah because we had to well and that
pregnancy we lost that pregnancy and as a result um it was a very complicated situation health-wise and my health really took a turn um so it was suggested that I not travel either yeah so it
was a it was a it was a tough time it was yeah that I think that was probably knock on wood
probably one of the hardest if not the hardest things we've ever had to deal with as a married
couple yeah it was terrible yeah and it was made worse the fact we couldn't go we couldn't go on our trip right and that it like it was granted there were bigger things going on but that sucked
but it was like we couldn't go to our happy place that was just us as an escape yeah from just really the heavy you know kind of hurtful soul crushing things that were going on in our lives
at that time yeah and and so then the next year we couldn't we couldn't go because we we just we
live in chicago and i was not making enough for us financially there was just no way i was not
the money wasn't there yeah and so that that's the segue yeah into how Anglotopia got started so my first job out of college was a I was at an internet retail company so I learned how to do things on the internet marketing wise and that was the foundation for my work career before I was doing Anglotopia full-time so you know I learned how to do things on the web and I was like I really I wasn't making enough at my job and I wasn't going to for a while unless I found a new job and but i was still i had been there for less than a year like patience was an issue and so
i was like okay can i interject though yeah um i just want to clarify though too that you say patience was was it was an issue you weren't looking to come out of college to make you know 60 grand a year it was just that even with me working full-time you working full-time me i was still a student yeah like it just even there just was not enough money so it wasn't an issue of oh i wasn't like i didn't get this killer job out of college well i was climbing the ladder well yeah so but you were on the bottom ring yeah wrong so that means a lot of a lot of eggs and stuff for
dinner and then the economy apocalypse hit in 2008 so that didn't help well that was you're kind of getting ahead of yourself though this is all happening at the same time no because the economy
collapsed in 2008 yeah i know in 2008 but we were living back in indiana in 2007 yeah so let's go
back to starting the site so i wanted to make extra money mostly because i wanted to i wanted to take us back i wanted to go back to shastbury i wanted to stay there you know it like it was our happy place like and especially the things weren't going so great for us in a lot of regards like we just wanted to go there and be happy for a week you know right we had to deal with the the drudgery of everyday life so and i'm a creature of the internet um i grew up on the internet my parents had a computer before a lot of people had computers and so i grew up with doing things on the internet and as my anglophilia grew and everything i would research on the internet and learn things on the internet about britain and one of the things that bothered me is i couldn't find a website that did everything that i was interested in knowing about britain and this was the back of the day when blogs were a thing like we're the new thing yeah blogs were everywhere and so i was like okay i want to start that website maybe i'll make some money from doing it someday someday and maybe it will get us there get us back there and if anything i just learned some new skills that i can use that maybe eventually get a better job so that was the
the rationale and so in a closet in chicago he's not kidding it really was like it we lived in this teeny tiny little apartment in chicago like um a bigger building but a walk-up building which means no elevator just stairs up on the second or third floor and this apartment was maybe 600 square feet
Yeah, it could almost, like you could get a twin bed in there and maybe a nightstand next to it, and that would be about it.
And so that's where we put my gigantic desk, and so that was my de facto office.
Yeah, and this was back in the day, like, I harbored, my goal was to become a writer.
That's what I went to university for. I wanted to write fiction novels. And so that was like my writing space where that stuff happened. And then it became the space where I founded Anglotopia. And, you know, when I founded it, you were kind of dubious about the success of the prospect of this idea.
And you were like, what? I'm going to start a website about, I can't find one online, about everything about England. And I remember thinking to myself, nobody likes England as much as you like England. Like, just, you know, it was one of those where, that's nice, dear. Have fun with that.
You know, do you need anything? But I also think. Also being neglected by me.
Yeah. You know, we often refer to, like, each other as a book widow from time to time. If one of us is writing because you're so stuck into a project. I was a website widow or a blog widow. but I remember in that apartment do you remember this was like in the phase where like anything and everything we could consume British we did and so Sunday mornings we would like have a fry up with like and and like do our very best to mimic a British breakfast I remember we found orange
marmalade we would go down to the to the newsstand and get the British newspapers yep and so we in
this little little teeny tiny Chicago apartment we had this like folding table from Ikea And for the rest of the week, it would be folded up. But on Sunday mornings, we'd open up the table, set for breakfast, and we'd sit there and have our tea and toast and look at the papers. And it was a really special time.
Yeah. And so we started the website. And so, I mean, you could, if you're so inclined, you can go all the way back to the first post. They're still there. A couple of them I'm not very proud of. Some of them are not very appropriate.
I would not publish them now, but it's a learning experience. It was a learning experience.
I learned everything by doing, by building that website. And it's, it's changed several times, you know, since then. But from day one, the goal was this website. I want this website to get me back to England and back to Gold Hill. And I didn't even like the goal then wasn't even a full-time job. just to make extra money so we could, so we could go do stuff.
And, and so time moved on. I, I, I poured all my free time into this website and it started to become a point of tension in all honesty.
Yeah. I was spending my time with no return when I could have gotten a second job, you know?
so time went on we ended up moving back to Indiana from Chicago because Chicago was not working out for us I got a better paying job in Indiana
things started to really turn around for us once I got that better paying job I don't want to say the name of the company
um there's lots of bad mojo there yeah so but you didn't know that when you went in there no longer exists i mean no one would be harmed in saying it but we're not gonna just moving on so okay so we moved back to indiana um do you remember when we so what's funny is
we moved back to indiana and we had been we so it's really random but we when we got married we lived in our first house we didn't stay there very long it's not in a gray area um and that's statement we moved to a nicer area lived in this old victorian house that we loved that flat like we were sad to leave but we knew we needed to move to chicago because your new job had said that was
a stipulation you have to live in illinois if you want the job so they paid for us to move yes so we
moved into chicago um but that being said um we actually moved back to the town with the flat that we loved and i remember we we were renting we were going to rent a house i rented a huge house um we rented this like three bedroom house and i remember a full basement yeah that we walked in
and it had a full finished basement it was cost the same as the apartment it did and i remember
like we walked in and you like it like that office you we walked into the basement and you were like
this is this is my office this is Anglotopia yeah so we yeah we moved in down there put hung up all my british stuff brought in bookcases all my british books and it was Anglotopia headquarters
and we were we were actually expecting again when we rented that house yeah but unfortunately that didn't work out either we had a really rough time starting a family yeah we so we that was tough
We eventually filled all the rooms. We did, so it has a happy story. But I only share that part of the story
to let those out there who have had issues with that to know you're not alone. It's not something shameful like that can't be discussed.
Seven or eight years, yeah. We had two kids in that house. Well, I should say our first kid was in Anglotopia, really took off in that house. Right. So, okay. So, yeah, let's move forward. Let's get back on track here.
So, as I was writing Anglotopia, it was a hustle, okay? I spent all my waking time trying to figure out how to make this website work and make money. And it was starting to make money.
And he was still working full time. I was still working full time, but it was starting to make money.
and like real money to where it was like now you were like very supportive because you're like it's making us money like this is this is a worthy endeavor and i'm like okay so we need to get caught up on our bills and and we need to survive on my job seller so we can use some of this money we're making to go to england and but it still wasn't quite like it still wasn't enough because the pound was almost two dollars to the yeah to the pound back then so going to britain was really Expensive airfares you were gonna spend at least a thousand dollars per person They since gone back down, but it like it's just we couldn't make the math work And then then the economy took a tank. Oh, yeah And so in 2008 and and that got really scary So I got really scary because then we were worried about my job and then so and we were renting a house And we're like, you know
Foreclosures were happening left and right hoping that the house we were renting wouldn't be foreclosed
yeah and that was really scary and so that that affected how much money the website was bringing in so we we couldn't get them we couldn't make quite enough money to for Anglotopia to do what
it existed for um but it was still turning over enough of a profit that it was helping our bottom
line yeah it was helping us finally get to that american middle class lifestyle we were sold by going to college and as ironic i had to have a second hustle to do that but so we so i made connections i made lots of connections running the website i mean this is no one told me when i started the website that a big part of how your business succeeds is the relationships you make with others i had to learn that along the way and um i made friends with with the people doing the marketing for british airways at the time and learned that there was going to be a contest and this content because to give you context this was after the economy had collapsed transatlantic air travel had just tanked and so british airways is marketing agency at the time it's a different agency now they put together a plan they said we're going to do a contest we're going to call it the face of opportunity and it's the goal is to is to sell how important face-to-face meetings are to the growth of the business because this was back when skype was becoming a thing so people were just doing their important business meetings over over video and so it was decimating the transit clinic air travel trade which is the lifeblood of airlines like ba and so so they announced this contest and the contest i don't remember i should look up the details but i think the the contest was going to give away 100 round trip plane tickets to britain
they were going to charter a plane especially for this and the goal well you got two additional
tickets and you got two additional tickets to go anywhere anywhere in the world that ba flew so that was like that was the prize and i was like whatever i just want to go to england
yeah you even told me you're like jack you can have the last two tickets like you can have the tickets you can decide where we go from yeah from london and so i'm like this is our opportunity
this is like because the most sweet stakes that you enter you just put your name and an email down and hope you win but this was a contest where you had to do something to win and i'm good at doing things so you had to write an essay yeah and I'm a good writer I don't know if anybody's noticed
I like to think I'm a good writer oh man again send the letters to John at Anglotopia so you
had to write an essay explaining how winning the contest and how a face-to-face meeting would help your business grow and Anglotopia and the guy who spearheaded the contest the market agency was like john you need to enter this because you're exactly the right kind of small business that we want to encourage to do this kind of travel and so with that endorsement i was like okay i need to enter this so um so i wrote the essay entered didn't hear anything for a while and while i was in atlanta for dragon con um which is a multimedia fan convention and there's a big british element but it's outside the scope of this podcast i was there and i was in a panel and i got the email
that i won the contest i remember that phone call that was like what i was like like what what i was
like holy smokes so there was a different word yeah you did not say smokes and i was like this is it like i we're finally gonna go back after i think it was three years at that point it felt and we had And we had tried repeatedly.
Yeah. So it was just... It was like manna from heaven. We're just like, this is wonderful!
Like, finally, what I found in Anglotopia is gonna happen. We're gonna go back.
Well, and for Anglotopia to be recognized as a... Not that we needed anybody else to recognize it as something legitimate, But the fact that it was, and from a big corporation like British Airways, it felt like, it felt like, I think that was the moment for me where I was like, okay, this is not a hobby. This is a real thing now. Like, he's really made it. He, oh my gosh.
This is the first step on this being not just a hobby, but a job possibly one day. And so, um.
well i okay sorry i don't mean to get we're getting spoilers dear uh spoilers sweetie well
i'm just looking at the time here thinking that's fine uh-huh remember a couple minutes of that is
me getting up and dealing with the dog so okay so okay so we got the tickets um the trip was we would go to a thing in chicago they chartered a plane especially for this and then you would mingle with the business people there was like a big thing in chicago which is at the lounge which just wonderful in the BA lounge yeah we had business class seats I heart the BA lounge oh my god
and we had business class seats and look can I just say though like British Airways has been incredibly generous to Anglotopia with lounge access and occasional upgrades and that kind of thing and assisting with flights and just yeah we heart British Airways in the biggest way it was the beginning of a great relationship with them but it's also a relationship that has been so beneficial hopefully to both companies like yeah we are not in the financial position where we could
ever afford to travel like that yeah so we did this thing in chicago we flew over and we got there we flew business for the first time the first time which was so wow it was because we've always went you know we always went coached and yeah so so we flew over and then the day we got there it was like your first two nights hotel were included at the park lane hilton park lane hilton it which was
absolutely gorgeous and the first day was like a series of business seminars with the great and
good and british business and it was fantastic it was fantastic it was a huge yes like it was big for us as a business and me professionally absolutely and and so when we booked the trip though um i'm like okay we're going back to shaftsbury like we're going back to gold hill it's been it's been over three years at this point like i gotta go back yeah well in the intervening time um somebody emailed us one day and said that hi we own one of the cottages on gold hill now and we're letting him out for self-catering accommodation you can rent the cottage and sleep on gold hill we were like take our money okay so um so we booked the cottage up down cottage for the first time yeah on on gold hill we only had two nights though because uh
because i yeah this is a sore spot so yeah i don't know how much i want to go into this but We'll just say that while you were working, you had changed companies again.
Yeah, so changed companies again. But I hadn't been there for a year yet. Yeah.
And they were like, they were very resistant to even having the time off to go to take advantage of the face-to-face part of the trip.
And they would not give me the time off to do the free tickets anywhere else in the world.
So we, like, I did, I don't know, like, months worth of research where we were going to go. We decided we were going to go to Rome.
Because my employer said that we could leave on Tuesday night. But I had to be, and they would give me the time off for the rest of the week. But I had to be back at work on Monday.
And I was just like, but you needed the job. I needed, I couldn't, I couldn't walk away from the job because I, financially we weren't
Anglotopia wasn't there yet. And so I was just like, okay, I have to be an adult about this.
Yeah. We just were grateful that we even got to do the first part of it. So we just, because I remember there was serious conversations about, do we just say, oh well and go and worry about you getting a job.
No, I remember. But I remember that that was like we legitimately tossed that around. And not to say that we did that lightly because we were still really coming out of, you know, the recession and that was a really tough conversation to have.
So, because they weren't supposed to give me. I hadn't accrued my time off yet because I hadn't been there long enough. And so they gave it to me anyway, which is good. And my boss is very supportive. But their support could only go so far.
So we can only go for a long weekend. And so we did the two free nights in London with the hotel that the contest provided. And then we were going to have two nights to stay on Gold Hill.
Yeah. We got a little teeny tiny Mercedes hatchback. A lot of fun to drive. It was so much fun.
We finally saw Gold Hill again. I got to drive up Gold Hill because we had to drive up to unload our bags. We stayed in up-down cottage.
You took me to the seaside for the first time. We went to the seaside for the first time.
It's our home away from home. It's our home away from home. And that first stay there was just magical. It really was.
After going from seeing the poster on my wall, going to see Gold Hill and realizing it's a real place and it's a wonderful place, and going back several times since the visit, and then to sleep on Gold Hill.
And to hear the rhythms of life on the hill, how quiet it is, hearing the church bells, hearing the birds.
People walking up the cobblestones, drunk people coming back from the pub at night, stumbling up the hill.
Even though Shaftesbury is a town, very much on Gold Hill, it feels like it's almost this own little village.
Hearing the rain on the slate roof. Yeah. Cooking our own meals in the kitchen. Like, it's just, that cottage became.
Like, it became my vision of what I love about England so much. And so that first stay there was only the first of many. We've been back.
No one, I'm not kidding. Like when I walk in the door to the cottage, it feels just as comfortable as the home I'm sitting in today. It feels like I'm home. Like we've had so many milestone moments and memories made in that cottage that it's like Mabel, our daughter, she sat up for the very first time all by herself when we took her.
Her first Christmas was there. I don't know how many New Year's Eves we've rung in there.
So we've tried several times. In every trip we've taken to Britain since, we try to fit in a visit there if we can if we're in that part of the country.
Like you feel like you've neglected something. Right. And a few years ago, we would go in the winter, just the two of us.
Just go for the weekend. It was actually, we called it, when we go to England, we call it workcation.
So let me describe what that looks like because people don't believe me. So John's version of workcation is work with work with work. So we get on the plane and work starts from there. And you get off the plane in England and you work and you work and you work. And then you get back on the plane to come home where you're working on the plane home. And then when you get home, then you stop working. But in your defense, it is expensive at times to go. It is more difficult and complicated to go as we now have a family. There's a lot there. So I can understand why we try and make the most of it when we're there.
It's people we meet. And now it's the import companies we meet up with for products to bring over. So most of our trips there are spent, we call them workations. There will be elements we're enjoying ourselves. But I have to run a business while we're there.
We have to run a business. We have to run a business while we're there. Thank you. And it doesn't stop.
we went for my birthday. It was like four or five years ago. We had a really good year, and you said, I don't remember what the reasoning was, but you're like, your birthday present can be that we go stay in Updown Cottage for your birthday.
And so we went for a week around my birthday. The kids stayed home. We went to Updime Cottage. We left the dog in charge. It was like the first.
It was like one of the first trips where it wasn't a work case, you remember?
We deliberately shut off and enjoyed it as a vacation. Mostly. You could never turn it off.
Well, and that was the first time we had had it. We had went without, like, we had traveled. We had just had two kids. We had went once with both kids, the Christmas I mentioned where we spent in the cottage. And then, so it was our first vacation post two kids that it was just me and you. And that was, I think that's, I mean, not to.
I think it's important, and I hope I'm not getting ahead of you, to talk about kind of that jumping off point for Anglotopia, because that was a big deal.
That's the point in which Anglotopia kind of spread its wings and flew the nest.
yeah so okay so back in 2011 yeah well back in 2010 yeah you gotta talk about Anglotopia
had a point where we almost moved to the uk yeah because that's relevant to this conversation
uh i wasn't gonna talk about that because you don't have to name well no because i think it's
important in the journey well all throughout okay our priorities change i write about i write about
this in my book that's coming out i have a whole chapter on this but um it's very difficult for us to move there people ask us why we haven't moved there because it's really difficult we would love to we would love to but the problem with Anglotopia is that it's a small business and i'm technically self-employed with it so that it can't actually get us a visa anyway unless it had 200,000 pounds
sitting in a bank account somewhere and visas are very very expensive to get yeah so you got to have
you got to basically be independently wealthy to get the visa plus you have to pay the visa fees now it's like 15 to 20,000 pounds in visa fees like we've done our homework this is something all throughout this time we have tried to move to England and we haven't really talked about that because I wasn't going to, but I can do it quickly.
Well, yeah, and I think that our priorities, for one, they became our priorities instead of just our goals. Originally, Anglotopia was started to make sure we could, not vacation, but we could go back and experience Britain. But as Anglotopia began to mature, we realized together that we want to live there. And so that became the goal of Anglotopia.
Yeah, the goal became not necessarily to live on Gold Hill, but that's the fantasy, to live in a village.
I would absolutely live on Gold Hill. I mean, I would be in the best shape of my whole life because that hill is incredibly steep.
So through the years, I've tried repeatedly to get jobs in the UK because that's actually really the only way we can get over there is to have somebody employ us and sponsor us for a visa. And there have been a couple opportunities. one where I even accepted a job and we were almost going to move over yeah but but it came at the most inopportune time when we had just found out we were pregnant with William again junior yeah again and we had as because we had had so many problems as a high-risk pregnancy there was just
no way we could do an international move yeah have a baby I just I and the NHS yeah the NHS would
have been great but we didn't we don't know any they do things completely different there for pregnancy like yeah it was just it was a lot of unknowns that we couldn't it was a path we
couldn't go down yeah i just i felt like for my own mental health that heaven forbid had william not made it yeah that i could not i would not have been in a good place yeah i i really think
all the difficulties we had that the distress of the move would have not been detrimental i agree so i got i got i was offered a job we were going to get visas we were going to move to the uk this was in 2010 and we like had fully committed yeah we were starting pack boxes i mean yeah we i and we knew i had flown over for an interview we both flown over for an interview like they were keen and we knew we were visas like it was basically it was our dream coming true but we also knew we
We were pregnant when we went over for the interview. We just didn't understand how high risk it was going to be.
So that really, so we didn't move to England. And that was the last opportunity we had in 2010.
And so then that's what shifted is I was still employed in Chicago. I had a very good job. I was commuting every day, though, which sucked. From Indiana, it's an hour and 15 minutes to Chicago every day from where we lived at the time. You know. So then in 2010, in autumn 2010, Prince William proposed to Kate Middleton. And we looked at each other, and they're saying spring wedding.
We didn't get an invitation. Actually, go to the wedding, but go and cover the events surrounding the wedding. That will be huge for Anglotopia. And we cannot. And then, but we didn't really go anywhere with that. But then in January of 2011, I was emailed by the BBC, you know, like, we want to interview you. Are you coming to cover the wedding? And I'm like, gosh. Yep.
Yep, I'm coming. Yeah. We're going to figure this out. We're going to figure this out.
But the thing we had to figure out was she was, you know, seven months pregnant.
And my job at the time did not necessarily want to give me the time. Well, actually she gave me the time off.
Yeah. But you had also just made a comment. They had made accommodations for us to do the contest and go.
Because I knew about Anglotopia when they hired me. So they understood that it would cause unusual issues for an employee. But she gave me the time off. But I think it was February. She didn't really give me the time off. They let me go.
Well, right. But that February, we had one of the snowiest winters on record. I was still a very high-risk pregnancy. The hospital was 20 miles away. And there were times where I was just like, dude, I don't want to have this baby on our living room floor. You have got to stay home today. If I go into labor, I cannot make it to the hospital. And work was as understanding as they could be. So we had that going on. And then we had William. William was a very complicated birth.
But he needed it for the wedding. But I needed it for the royal wedding. So you took FMLA.
So I had to invoke the FMLA, which for those who don't know, it's the Family Medical Leave Act, which when somebody has a medical condition, you're entitled to take unpaid time off.
Well, and not only that, like my recuperation after William's birth was very difficult.
Well, let me tell this part because this is the best part of the whole story, I think.
November was our target month. November would be when projected income, I would make more from Anglotopia than I did from the job. So I could let the job go.
So let me set the scene. Okay. John said that William was a very difficult baby. He was a very colicky baby. He cried from the moment he came out of the womb. And he just really difficult baby. And so Will was about six weeks old. It was early April. The royal wedding was coming up. And it was a really trying morning with William. And I get this phone call from John. And he goes, I've just been fired from my job. And I remember talking to him on the phone and he was obviously really upset.
Yeah, I was walking down the street in Chicago with my box of belongings. I was doing the walk of shame to the bus stop because I took a bus at the time to Chicago.
And I remember telling him, congratulations, babe. Today is the first day you work for Anglotopia full time. Well done. while in the back of my head like if you've ever seen the movie uh what is it inside out where what is it disgust or fears like running around going oh my god oh my god i'm thinking like oh my god rent and diapers and formula and oh my god yeah and from then on you worked full-time for Anglotopia more than full-time well yeah we own our own business we both work more than full-time
Yeah, so I took the bus right home from Chicago, and I was like, okay, this is it. You're doing Anglotopia full-time now. This is your job. Holy crap.
So, but it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Absolutely.
So I'm not, I have no animosity towards the company. I still have friends who work there. So, you know, it doesn't, yeah, whatever.
And so, yeah, so they gave me a nice severance. And then I inked a sponsorship deal with Visit Britain. We were going to be okay for the next few months. I went to the Royal Wedding, covered the Royal Wedding. I was on the BBC.
Yeah, I remember we went to a really high-end shop here and got him all kitted out. I remember it had to be like an Anglotopia green tie because green has always been our signature color for Anglotopia.
So, yeah. So, I went to the Royal Wedding. It was a huge success. It was big for us. I mean, you watched the traffic when I was on the BBC. It was like tens of thousands of people on the...
Will had just been born. He was literally three weeks old. No, six weeks old.
Well, because when there was a big event like that, and this was back when smartphones were still relatively new, like the cell phone networks just got jammed.
And then I couldn't do all my updates that I was supposed to be doing. he was gonna live blog the whole wedding from from in front of buckingham palace and so she
had to take up slack yeah so like i get i get this call at like three o'clock in the morning i'm home with mastitis with with with the newborn and he calls me and he's like hey babe um i don't remember how you called but somehow you got a call through or a text or something came through and he's like I need you to jump online, open the BBC feed, which at that time was not an easy, like you could not everybody could do that. And I need you to basically live blog for me. And so I remember I took William in his bassinet down into the basement office and live blogged for probably five or six hours. And I remember like at one point, like live blogging with like my foot on the bouncy chair, trying to keep William like really calm and cool like to the and then it got to a point where I was like okay like I called my best friend and I'm like girl you got to come over bring food like and she was amazing like but we I feel like that at that point I noticed a trend with me it's usually like trial by fire in every position I've ever had well but so I you know the takeaway should be that
this is a team effort absolutely this business cannot succeed without both of us even it's just
it's sometimes i have a heavier hand sometimes i have a lighter touch but so i think so i think
that that trip to the royal wedding is a good place to stop absolutely because that was eight years ago now so that there's a lot more history sets but so the i mean that's really the jumping off point yeah that's so that that's what we want to talk about is why gold hill is so important and still important to us.
It's where, I don't know about you, but it's where I am happiest. I'm happiest there.
You know, I I'm going to get a little verklempt here, but you know, I have a very good life. I'm very blessed. We have a nice house.
see the article from december but it's so i have no reason to like i'm happy here and where we are yeah but it's a different kind of happiness when i'm sitting in the piano room at gold hill and looking at the blackmoor veil and having a cup of tea like it's a different happiness that it's a feeling that we're home it's yeah it's home and like i said we have a home and it's wonderful but it's
meant to be there and it's just up down cottage a very special place for us and it will remain so and I we just pray and pray that the owners will hold on to it until we're rich
we're not really buying lottery tickets so we're not really going to go buy lottery tickets um we know the odds are stacked against you but um the goal one day is we want to have like the goal now for Anglotopia is obviously to continue to be our full-time jobs that's the goal number one but the long-term 20 to 30 year goal is is we want our own english it'll we want a cottage in english countryside somewhere although after our our trip to scotland maybe scotland we want to cottage somewhere in britain and we want to we
want to be there as much as we possibly can i think if somebody came and knocked on our door today and was like not that i expect anybody to hand us anything but if if let's like we're painting a magical fantasy here yeah they were like here here are the keys to a cottage and it's yours and here here are visas for your whole family they're yours we'd be like okay how fast can we wrap this up here like house on the market like how many books can i bring like that's it we're good we're
bye peace so but yeah that's so that's the long long-term goal um and hopefully once we get out
of this rough patch the business is in yeah we can start planning for that um again again
so and hopefully maintain that plan yes so it's so that's that's the dream now is is from buying a hobby lobby poster and becoming enamored with a place and going to it and sleeping on it and you know it's that's where we want to be yeah spiritually physically mentally and And hopefully once we're out of this rough patch, we can just go back for a visit.
Yeah, we were supposed to be going next week, but we had to cancel the trip in December when we hit our – well, we canceled earlier in that. But we were going to go on our yearly February business trip. We were going to go to the spring show in Birmingham and find some imports. And we were going to stay in Updown Cottage for a few days.
But when things got tough, that was the first thing that had to be canceled. Other than the tours that we are planning in 2018 with Reformation tours,
which those are very tentative based on whether the tours fill, we're not traveling this year. We're taking the year to stabilize the business and focus on the future so that we don't have a rough patch like we did last year. So that's the boring part of running a business. You've just listened to an hour and a half of all the exciting parts.
And although you've listened to all the exciting highlights, and I guess it goes without saying, but there were a lot of hard times.
we hope you enjoyed the stories this went on way longer than it was supposed to but hopefully it was entertaining. If you have any questions, leave it in the comments. I'd be happy to answer questions, and thanks for listening.
