- Well mornings like these, waking up like this, having breakfast here on the side of the bow of the boat, couldn't wish for anything else. (upbeat mellow music) So we arrived not where we wanted to be, halfway. - So waking up at two o'clock in the morning, because there is a good weather window. Checked everything, should be 15 up to 20 knots of wind. So we decided just to tell our story. I invested all my money, and I also took some big loans, unfortunately it went down and I lost everything.
(upbeat music) (winch rattles) - [Rianne] We are Rianne and Gerben, and this is our son Benjamin. We made a few mistakes in life and experienced some challenges. - [Gerben] Cancer, bankruptcy, depressions and a divorce. - [Rianne] They ignited us in creating our reality. - [Gerben] For now, sailing around the world to find our home somewhere on our planet. - [Rianne] So welcome to our weekly vlog, from rough sailing to slow living.
- [Gerben] Embracing the waves of life. (alarm bleeps) (waves lapping) (gas hisses) (breeze loudly blows) (gentle guitar music) - Oh, thank you. Whoo! How is captain doing? - Captain is doing well. - Oh, what a sunrise.
- Yeah, we started this morning at two o'clock. - Two, three o'clock? - Yeah, 2:30. I woke up at two and then set out the bay at 2:30.
And now this. - And now we are here. (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music continues) - Well mornings like these, waking up like this, having breakfast here on the side of the bow of the boat. Couldn't wish for anything else.
We've got a lot to do today, but my day started pretty amazing. (clattering metal) (winch cranks) - Hey! Benjamin. Okay. - See? - Yes! (Benjamin speaks in an indistinct language) - Yeah, come here.
- Ah, baba help. - Wow. (Benjamin speaks in an indistinct language) - Yeah, can you call the dolphins. - Yeah, dolphins. - Yes dolphins. Okay.
(gentle piano music) (Benjamin giggles) (gentle piano music continues) - Pull. (gentle piano music) - Take it. (Benjamin speaks in an indistinct language) - Yeah, very heavy. (gentle piano music) - So waking up at two o'clock in the morning, because there was a good weather window.
Checked everything, should be 15 up to 20 knots of wind. Look at this. I put everything out and now we have this. It's like a mirror, it's really like a mirror.
Thank God we have some internet. Benjamin is very happy with his new toy. Benjamin say hello. The funny thing is when Benjamin wants something, then he says, "Ger-ben."
Hello, Darling. (Rianne laughs) - After waking up in the middle of the night for good weather, and we're almost standing still. - Yeah, no, no, we're making a speed of, let's see, 0.3. - Ohh, okay, we are moving. - So we are moving. - Sorry, we are moving.
- We keep going. - But I'm also a little bit excited about it because I can work properly, down below deck without the waves and going. - You hardly notice that we are moving. (laughs) - Only, only thing, only minus point now is that we had to run the generator. - Yeah. - So I'm really looking forward to the solar panels, we're going to get in Italy.
So yeah. - Oh, what is that? What is that? (Benjamin speaks in an indistinct language) - So we arrived not where we wanted to be, halfway. - Mama help. - Are we going to drop anchor, it's beautiful here, it's peaceful, it's quiet. And even Benjamin is okay with it.
(Benjamin speaks in an indistinct language) What is it? It's a fisher, fisherman ha. - Can we help him? - Do you want to help the fisherman? Say hello. (Benjamin speaks in an indistinct language) We said Hello. So where are we captain? Do we have a spot to drop anchor? - Yeah, you can drop anchor here. It's on the map, it's the nearest place, there's no wind tonight, so I think it's a good spot.
- It is beautiful. - And we have a beautiful view on the sunset. - Yes we have.
(gentle piano music) - So we decided just to tell our story and yeah, let's go back to 2017. I just sold one of my companies, I sold my house at that moment, I bought the Perfect Sense, my dream boat and I invested all my remaining money in another technology startup I was in, very involved in. - Yeah, and I was climbing a corporate career ladder, I was working with a peer brewery, I had this beautiful home in Amsterdam where I lived for more than a year and which I bought after my divorce. And yeah, life was pretty good, and we were just together, we were just overly in love, love birds. - Happy, love birds. (Rianne giggles) - Happy couple that was on top of the mountain and nothing could stop them. - No.
- But that changed within one and a half months. - Yeah, then the shit hits the van. The technology start up got in to a corporate finance game and I invested all my money and I also took some big loans to try to survive and to keep the company afloat, but unfortunately, it went down and I lost everything, I lost all my money, I lost, I had to sell the Perfect Sense, lost my mindset, and yeah, I also lost the taste of life, and I think that's the biggest loss. - Yeah, most difficult part. I had this beautiful energizing men where I fell in love with, and I ended up with (Gerben laughs) a sack of potatoes. (laughs) - Yeah.
A bag of potatoes. - A bag of it. - Laying in his bed. Yeah.
Yeah, but I was really in a depression and. - So Gerben didn't have anything left anymore, yeah, he had a bag with some clothes, so I asked him to live with me and we were only two months together and but we just knew whatever would happen that we belong together and that we would survive. - Yeah. - And we even took it to the next point that we said quite soon that we wanted kids and we even knew their names and that even although we were facing a terrible time with the bankruptcy that we wanted kids. - Yeah. - So we started trying to get pregnant, and in the meantime, I even quited my job in my corporate career because I was very inspired by Gerben in the days that he was that amazing, successful, energizing, entrepreneur - Entrepreneur.
- to start my own company, which I did, a sustainable fashion brand, but yeah, all of that made the 2017 was very challenging for us financially, mentally, yeah, it was a lot. So during 2017, we were able, I was able to get a loan and buy the Perfect Sense, and we were able to pay all the bills by renting out my apartments. And we live primarily from my savings as well and I had this hobby of coaching people. So I had this two to three individuals every year. So that brought in some money and yeah, to be honest my new business endeavour was only costing money, so 2017 was really difficult. - Yeah.
- And then we had 2018, and at that moment in time, Gerben was getting a little bit back on his feet mentally, so he went regularly to the Perfect Sense to sail her, for himself to get more confident, but also to have friends and friends from friends on board to pay and cover the bills for the boat. - Yeah. It was really surviving. - Yeah. And at the beginning of 2018, I got pregnant of Benjamin, which was kind of a miracle - Yeah, that's a miracle because I had testicle cancer in my past and I had a lot of chemotherapy, so it was not sure if we could do it in a natural way, but yeah, Benjamin is a miracle, so, yeah, that especially matters.
- Yeah. So 2018, we were still being very creative with how we could pay the bills and renting out the apartment was still the big sum of money to get everything covered. - Yeah, thanks to Airbnb. - Yeah, especially in Amsterdam, so we could make like 400 euros a night in the weekends. - Yeah, so what we did is we rented out the apartment, we slept in the car - in the car. - And then we got back.
- Yeah. But what we did realize, and learned during those two years is that although financially we were really struggling that we could make our best day with every day, and I think it's also driven by Gerben having cancer that we really live in the moment, in the day, because you don't know if tomorrow will come. - No. - But I think also that we develop this kind of skill, this talent to make from every day a beautiful party, so. - Yeah, I remember the day, you want to talk about the, in the dancing, in the grass.
- Yeah. - Yeah, go ahead. - Go ahead. - Yeah, I'm very excited about it because I did this very beautiful moment, we barely had any money to fill the tank, in the car - the car. - to pay for that for the diesel.
And then we saw the piece of fresh mowed land and we drove the car inside, we opened up the doors, we put up the music, we took off our shoes and we started dancing in the freshly mowed grass, yeah that was something magical. - And we had a lot of those moments, like early morning walks through Amsterdam with empty streets just to see the sunrise up above the city. It was like beautiful or enjoying very consciously the first sun rays after winter, that we came into my apartment in March.
So we really were able to create these beautiful moments in every day, and this also meant that we actually didn't need a lot of money to have a beautiful life. - Yeah. - Because for us, the beauty is in the simple things. - Yeah. - So that was 2018, and at the end, Benjamin was almost born, we decided, okay, we have to make a decision now. Gerben was getting more into the game and yeah, what do we want from life? What do we want to live? How do we want to live? So we said, we're gonna redesign our lives, we started with a blank canvas.
- Yeah. - and I think it took us seven days of working on this. - Yeah, we completely turned the apartment into a project room, we put all the white papers on the wall, we started drawing, we started asking all the tough questions in life.
- Yeah, we have some big winds now, so its like. (sighs) - Yeah. - We asked the questions that you normally wouldn't ask yourself, actually, we see life as the biggest and most important project we ever run. So it's insane that you don't take life as serious as the product in your job or in your business, right? At least that was what we concluded at that moment - Yeah. - that we should do this every year, which we actually do. But we started asking the questions, like what, if anything, and everything is possible, what would you do a whole day? And what if that day would be turned into a week or a month, or maybe even a year, where would you be? Who would you surround yourself with? Where would you want to raise your kids and how many hours in a day would you still be working and what kind of work would you want to do? So it's like all these questions that really determine how you want to fulfill your days with things. And we also really started about, okay, but how do we want to contribute? How do we want to give back to community and have really that fulfilling life as well? Not only getting those goals in, but also having a life with meaning and fulfillment.
- Yeah. And yeah. And in the end it came down for us to sailing around the world to find somewhere our place to settle down. Yeah. - And yeah to inspire and enable others to live their best life as well, because we truly believe that anyone can do this, almost anyone. - Even after major setbacks. - Yeah.
Yeah, so, and that's actually also what Feel the Breeze stands for. And when Feel the Breeze was born, it was in the end of 2018. - Yeah, it was the summary of the project. - Yeah. - We really wanted to create a family brand and yeah, Feel the Breeze was the outcome. - Yeah.
So but we also knew that with doing is we had to take some tough decisions like me quitting my new business, which I just started one and a half years ago, but also leaving family behind and taking a lot of risks again, because we still had finances not fixed and figure out, not at all. - It was not a good place. No. - No. But what we did know is that we needed to test this life first, before we threw everything upside down, we want to know for sure that this new life was actually something we really wanted because you can think of anything and write it down on paper, but reality can be totally different. - Yeah, and because Benjamin was there, and we didn't know if Benjamin would love sailing as well, and as a newbie family. - Yeah, so in 2019, we decided to live on the Perfect Sense for eight months, and we sailed from Valencia to Turkey. And during that year, we rented out my apartment again, first on Airbnb, and then we find this tenants that just stayed there until the end of the year.
So we had all our basic costs covered, but that was it, so our life expenses, and if anything will break on the boat, we did not have enough money, so we couldn't buy the groceries from that. So that means we had to be creative again and there and then I decided to take my coaching business, which was still a hobby at that moment towards making it a professional business. So I started with an online course in Dutch, I did some master classes.
We had coaching sessions on board with one-on-one and group sessions, start-ups, directors, everything in the mix, and we even did one day charter, but that was really a mistake, we don't ever want to do something like that again. - No. - And I was a hostess for some events and Gerben consoled some startups. So we really got very creative and tried everything during that year just to cover the bills. - Yeah.
- And in the end, when we arrived in Turkey, we had to have, I had to ask friends and family for money to buy our tickets, so. - Return tickets back Amsterdam. - Yeah, so we were, we definitely didn't have our finances figured out yet. - No, and it was, yeah, that was really one of the lowest points. - Yeah.
So we got back to the Netherlands in our home in Amsterdam. And then we noticed within two, three days, actually, that land life, especially city life wasn't for us anymore, so I made a decision there and then to sell my apartment, which we did within three months. And I sold it with quite a good profit and yeah, but when we sold it and we had to move out, Corona happened, everything went in lock down, so we were kind of homeless and we... - And not able to reach our, to reach the Perfect Sense in Turkey. - Yeah, there were no flights going, nothing.
So what we did then as being creative again, we bought a Land Rover Defender, with a rooftop tent and we started driving slowly towards Turkey. And every time a border would open up, we would go to a different country. And yeah, during 2019, we primarily focused on ourselves re-energizing again, because 2017 and 18, yeah, they were just really tough.
- Yeah. - And 19 as well. So 2020 was really about re-energizing ourselves. We were on the road for two months to get to Turkey. So I decided to invest in the boat with the refit and to invest in our Feel the Breeze brand and our YouTube channel. And I put my coaching business on hold for a year. - Yeah.
And you invested in all the courses of Tony Robbins. - Yeah, personal growth, one of the most important things we did even love coaching because the love relationship is the cornerstone for everything that we do. We have some spiritual journeys. Yeah, and I set some money aside from the profit of the sell of my home for investing in cryptocurrency, in gold and startup and some stock, so I have this whole portfolio that is working for me for getting money, and yeah. - Yeah.
- So 2020, we did not have financial stress, and it was really about building the foundation of the Feel the Breeze brands for actually this year, so we really invested in building the pillars, there're different income streams where the Feel the Breeze brand put, yeah live and triffle. - Yeah, try. - So 2021, which we are in now, we have nine different income streams that cover all our life and business expenses, which is for us really a milestone. - Big milestone.
- We decided to give all transparency on all the figures, we made a blog post so you can find everything in there. And we know that money isn't a popular topic to talk about. And especially within YouTube, transparency is rare, but we actually strongly believe that you have to have a healthy relationship with money to be able to become financially free, which for us is a very important thing. - Yeah. - And with talking about it and being open about it, I think that's the first step to coming there. So if you are interested, we have written a blog post, you can find it down in description, with more in-depth, yeah, information about our nine different income streams, we give you the figures there as well.
What we're not talking about is about my wealth and how that is growing and how that is making money, but that is doing even better than our nine income streams at this moment, but our main goal is to, for 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, yeah, (beep) 2022. (laughs) To raise our income streams and that they even have to perform better, and 2022 will be the year that Gerben's going to pay off a quiet amount of the debts that he still has. - Yeah. Yeah, because that's, yeah, that's still a burden on my shoulders and yeah, that's the next step.
- Yeah. So this is how we afford it. We have now currently nine different income streams, all built around the Feel the Breeze brand. - Yeah.
- Which is a YouTube channel, but much more than a YouTube channel. So we hope you like this, and if you do, don't forget to give us a thumbs up, and if you're new here, click subscribe, and hit that bell to get your notifications. And yeah, we see you next week, we try to reach the Krka waterfalls. - Yeah.
Yeah, and a special thanks to all the patreons who are really supporting us from day one. - Yeah, and who are very, very patient with us because they didn't get the attention they deserve because there's something we didn't tell, but you can find in the blog post. - Yeah. - We launched a community and there went a tremendous amount of work in, but we have a free part within that community, so you can join it as well. - Yeah. Yeah, if you are interested in how to do reach your best life as well, and you want to learn more about the Feel the Breeze then please join us on our community.
- Yeah, so that was it. - Yeah, thank you. - Thanks for watching and patreons you really are the best, yeah.
- You're simply the best. ♪ Simply the best ♪ ♪ Better than all the rest ♪ Okay that's it. (upbeat music) - So we changed plans again. - Yeah. - It's really difficult to find good weather window. So we decided to make a pit stop at Seemingly.
(guitar music) - So today is a very special day because this is the day we are going to do our first live session of our mentor program. (guitar music)
2021-12-10