November 2010. Lieve had finished University and had just started working with me on my software project. November usually is pretty cold in the Netherlands and while working with an office view on grey clouds and a street covered with slushy snow, Lieve said “take a look at this”.
Project Getaway
lifestyle design for adventurous entrepreneurs
This was before I had ever heard of ‘the four hour workweek’ and I didn’t have a clue what ‘lifestyle design’ was, but I did notice people with laptops in paradise, doing what we were working towards and not just a few, but about 15 of them! Very very cool!
The next few months went on and the two of us working together was evolving at an exponential rate. We had discovered ‘the four hour workweek’ and got familiar with all kinds of inspirational blogs. All ups have downs though and to stay motivated while sitting behind our computers for about 12 hours per day, I quickly created a tool that would show a slideshow of things that would motivate us and sure enough, the following pictures were among Guy la Liberté, Richard Branson, Loic le Meur and other inspirational heavyweights:
March 2011 I woke up in the middle of the night and grabbed my iPhone as I usually do to check my RSS feeds before falling asleep again and one of the feeds was titled ‘Bali 2011 for Adventurous Entrepreneurs’ and unlike before; when we could just admire Project Getaway, we could be a part of it and actually be in the pictures we were viewing daily ourselves. Very exciting!
At that time I hadn't made much progression with my master thesis, software development didn’t go as planned and our financial situation was having some hickups, so taking off to Bali for a month for $3000 didn’t appear to be the brightest idea. Therefore I was pretty surprised when I suggested to Lieve “shall we apply?”, that she didn’t shoot it down immediately. It didn’t take us more than a week to commit and send in our applications to the Project Getaway Bali 2011 event, the 22nd of September.
Although we didn’t know whether we would get accepted or not, we booked a one way ticket to Bali the first of September and this pressure appeared to be just what I needed. Within 2 months I had finished my master thesis and graduated university.
The next few months passed and it wasn’t until the end of June that we were notified that we had made it through the pre-selection and that we’d schedule a Skype call to make sure it would be a good fit. The interview went well (although we were shocked to learn there were about 40 serious candidates) and a few weeks later, when we got home from eating out, coincidentally at a Indonesian restaurant, while walking up the stairs, starting to get Wi-Fi reception, I opened my mailbox and spotted a mail from Michael with the subject “Congratulations, Tom and Lieve!”. We literally jumped up and down for about 5 minutes before opening the mail which started with “After you have finished jumping up and down..”
Later during the Bali 2011 event I was discussing the application process with Phil (PG core team) in which he mentioned “you guys definitely were the most enthusiastic!”
Project Getaway Bali 2011
The 22nd of September the Project Getaway Bali 2011 event would finally commence. By that time we had been in Bali for about three weeks and we drove our rented motor-bike to the provided GPS coordinates. After watching this video for like a hundred times at home, it was weird to actually walk on the premises of Villa Bali Bali ourselves.
The first thing that struck me was the amazing luxury of the villas. We usually travel in backpacker like we-don’t-care-compromising-on-luxury-as-long-as-its-cheap style and the Villa Bali Bali villas are just the most luxurious place I’ve ever stayed at myself.
Next I found it very exciting to meet the other participants. Although we did plenty of Facebook-Sherlocking we didn’t know for sure who the other participants would be and I must say, although it has got a lot better the last years, I’m not always the easiest person when it comes to flexibility in social situations.
Fortunately this didn’t pose any problems at all. Probably since we could all relate to each other easily, dealing with similar hurdles on a daily basis and facing alike problems.
The first days were primarily filled with introducing ourselves and outlining Project Getaway in general. Among these briefings, was the introduction to ‘chief roles’.
Chief roles
Although it was somewhat getting used to the first week, eventually I started to see the value and even the necessity of the ‘chief system’. For several day-to-day items a ‘chief role’ would be established that would be fulfilled by one of the participants. Reasoning behind it is that if nobody is responsible, it will not get done. Other than that it’s clear who to contact should there be an issue concerning that particular responsibility.
Chief roles were created for marketing, social media, learning sessions, sports, pictures, music, social events, drinks and even for mosquitos (making sure the most effective mosquito repellents were available and being used). I took the social media role upon me.
A day at Project Getaway
Although we already covered a day at Project Getaway in this video, here’s an additional overview of a typical day for Lieve and myself at Project Getaway.
7am/8am – Wake up routine
Wake up and on some days go for a 30 minute run in the neighborhood before the sun would get too hot.
8am/9am - Breakfast buffet
The villa staff prepared the most delicious breakfast buffets with pancakes, omelets, fruits, toast, fresh juices and of course coffee and tea. Usually we were with four or five other’s at the breakfast table, depending on who would wake up at what time.
9am – 12pm – Work
Lieve and I would work on our software project. During the Project Getaway event we established all affiliate partnerships for our ‘for free’ promotion, finished the website and made it available to the public, wrote the pitch material, implemented the payment gateways, created and uploaded documentation screencasts and of course coordinated software development.
12pm – 12:30pm – Practice swimming
One of the personal goals Lieve and I set for ourselves during this event was to learn how to swim freestyle properly. We both love snorkeling and diving and although we are perfectly fine in the water we both couldn’t swim multiple freestyle laps. Having a pool in our backyard and a trained swimmer among the participants, these 30 days would be the perfect opportunity for us to change this, so just before lunch we usually would cool off in the pool and practice our freestyle swimming.
12:30pm-1pm – Lunch buffet
Although it’s called ‘lunch’, lunch in Indonesia is the same as dinner: a hot meal. The villa’s had their own staffed chef, who prepared delicious dishes. Lunch typically would be more social than breakfast, since everybody would be there.
1pm-2pm – PG Talk
Each of the participants would do a talk on something they are experienced at and what would be interesting for the other’s to learn about. The first talks were held in the little pool (every of the three villas has its own pool) and the later talks were held in villa #1 because of the size of the projector screen. These PG talks were extremely interesting, since although we knew what the other participants were doing somewhat, during these PG talks they would really get into the nitty gritty of their ventures. We had very interesting talks about managing projects, SEO, branding strategies, automation, ‘my-story’ talks and Lieve and I did our talk about managing and working with virtual assistants, which even motivated two other participants to hire their first virtual assistant during the event.
2pm-4pm – Work
After either lunch or a PG Talk we would continue work on our own projects.
4pm-5pm – Sports (or work continued)
Lieve took the ‘chief of sports’ role upon her making sure everybody would have enough physical exercise and around 4pm we would usually do a ‘crossfit’ session, which was a blend of exercises we performed in a timed circuit (not sure if this fits the legitimate crossfit requirements), preceded by two Bodycombat tracks instructed by Lieve. These sessions wouldn’t take an hour, however afterwards we would usually plunge in the pool to cool off and have a chat with each other. The latter weeks we didn't do as much sports due to being banged up from climbing mount Agung, being sick and other events, so the later weeks we usually would just continue work.
5pm-6:30pm – Work
After the sports break we usually would get back to work. I would use this hour to perform the responsibilities I took upon me; Project Getaway social media and gathering ‘Top Tips’ on various topics from the other participants.
7pm-8:30pm – Chatter
Sometimes we would continue work either on our own projects or on Project Getaway responsibilities, however usually we would just sit down in Villa #1 (the biggest villa) and chat with whoever would be there about whatever would come up.
8:30pm-10pm – Movie / Drinks
Of course one should use a huge projector screen with accompanying projector to its full potential so we watched several movies. On other days we would go out for drinks to the W hotel or the gorgeous Potato Head beach club.
10pm – To bed again
As early as 10pm we would call it a day and go to bed to fall asleep like immediately. Others would stay up way longer and some of the participants that had to deal with clients/parties in different time zones would stay up until 5am to get a couple of hours sleep and show up for lunch again. We’ve missed this all though, since we would be exhausted already at 10pm.
Memorable moments
River Rafting
Leo Babauta
We arranged live video call with Zenhabit’s Leo Babauta to discuss his webinar about building habits. Read more about this over here.
Cocktail Party
Yoga in the backyard
Evan Lovely, who we met earlier at the TropicalMBA compound, was kind enough to come over to the villas and teach a private Yoga class.
Gunung Agung
“No, not difficult at all. My grandmother can do it on her flipflops”. Hmm, not exactly representative of the rock-climbing-like horror, but still very glad we did it. Thanks again Nicholas, although you might want to revise the pitch talk somewhat (or introduce me to your grandmother)
Rock Bar
Best sunset view I’ve ever had at the even so impressing Ayana resort. Worth every over-priced penny.
Diving in Permuteran
Closing Party
Closing the Bali 2011 event in style with a no-expenses-spared pool party..
My take-aways from Project Getaway
- Connecting with others
I will do an entire post on this topic. In short; it’s amazing how much energy, inspiration, feedback and joy one can get by connecting with interesting people.
- Positive can-do attitude
One of the suggested quotes of PG core member Antoine is “Nobody cares if you’re miserable so might as well be happy”. So true and surrounding yourself with positive people makes life feel like a breeze.
- Responsibility (Chief Roles)
Somebody has to be accountable for specific areas, or it will not get done properly. Although we still haven’t implemented this as much as we probably should have, the importance of this became apparent during the event.
- Pomodoro technique
Although wary at first about that many breaks, it really does help me get more stuff done. Read about it over here. As writing this post, I’m listening to the ticking sound of fellow participant Kristian’s Cherry Tomato Pomodoro timer application.
- Testing products quickly
Although this is discussed in ‘the four hour workweek’ extensively, seeing it being done in real life was very inspiring. Keith (sophieandfox.com – currently offline – exclusive British like party hats ) and Sophie (Sticky Inspiration did a 24-hour project, testing ecommerce ideas by creating an online storefront without any real products and utilizing paid traffic to test if the products would be bought.
- Several practical business oriented techniques
The PG Talks were invaluable and combined with the numerous chats we had we learned a lot of great ways to manage projects better than we were doing before Project Getaway.
- We learned about Podio which we used for communication during the event. Podio is extremely flexible and we are using it for one of our current projects now.
- Kristian introduced us to Trello which we love to keep an overview on projects.
- Michael’s project dashboard created in Excel, which automatically fetched data and triggers alerts on performance etc. was amazing. We’re definitely implementing this for our projects.
In retrospect
In retrospect I can say that I’m very glad and privileged to have gotten to know the other participants and I can safely say that Project Getaway has been the second most memorable event of my life. The first being a two week holiday with 6 friends to one of the Dutch islands when I was 16, but do consider that that is really hard to beat; six rebellious teens with a little-less-than-healthy sense of responsibility without any supervision on an island..
If you haven't already done so, be sure to check out the Project Getaway Facebook page for footage of the event and read about what Lieve learned from Project Getaway at the Project Getaway Blog.