How to let go - Becoming a Free Spirit in Hawaii

Aloha, I'm Kim. The guys with me are Rocky (husband and co-owner) and our son K. It’s been a crazy few months of non-stop work to get to the point we’re at today, and now I’m finally relaxing enough to sit down and write this blog post. While Free Spirit Hawaii started up a little over a year ago, our journey to becoming free spirits goes back a whole lot further.

In 2018, we were living in California. I was working as a business coach in the beauty industry and, Rocky ran his own remodeling business. For the past 10 years, I had been traveling almost non-stop, coaching, and doing live speaking engagements. As a family, we were feeling like we never saw each other. We needed a lifestyle change.

We needed to slow down and spend more time together as a family.

Rocky and I, in the past, had spent a lot of time traveling in Thailand and Southeast Asia. We had previously been Karen Hilltribe Silver importers working with hill-tribe families to export their silver beads and jewelry to jewelry makers in the West.

We missed Thailand and the travel lifestyle immensely. We also wanted to show our son more of the world!

We also really felt it was time for Hawaii to once again play a role in our lives. We had previously lived and owned businesses in Hawaii for many years and really missed the laidback Hawaiian lifestyle.

Hawaii had never left our hearts.

So we decided we were going to make a BIG CHANGE....and we did!

I quit my job, Rocky finished up his last home remodel. We sold our house, car, and basically everything except a small pallet full of sentimental or collectible items. And, we set off to travel!

For Rocky and I, our home away from home is in Thailand. We have spent the last 20 years there off and on again. Besides Hawaii, Southeast Asia has our heart, and we wanted to share it with our son, who also caught the travel bug early in his life.

So in 2019, we set off for the trip of a lifetime! Little did anyone know at the time - how different life would be in the coming years!

We started in Vietnam, my son's birth country. Vietnam is a gorgeous country, full of vivid landscapes, rich art and history, kind people, and fantastic food. After about a month of traveling around central Vietnam, we went to Malaysia and, then to our favorite place Thailand, to take a much-needed break.

People often ask me how I find such beautiful items to sell. Well, to be honest, the discovery of new things is my favorite part of this business!

Having done business in Southeast Asia before, I have met so many amazingly talented people.

Thailand, like Hawaii, in particular, has an out-of-this-world art and craft scene. It's also a place full of young, talented, entrepreneurs trying to get their businesses off the ground. Just like Hawaii!

For me, places like these are perfect to do business in. They are places where a marriage of art and business meet and is perfect for my skill set.

I love to help coach new entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams, and my experience is in the business and art fields. Walla! A perfect match.

While on this trip, I took a lot of time to just walk. I walked through villages and shops off the beaten path. I was starting to meet some incredible people and had begun to collect quite a few gorgeous items on the way! Actually a lot of gorgeous items....see the madness

At this point, it was now late 2019. Before starting the trip, we weren't sure when we would head back to Hawaii.

However, we were making such great connections and starting to really get to know some of the families. We felt another business was taking shape out of the blue!

These were talented individuals that just needed help understanding how to not get taken advantage of and how business is done in the West.

Most artists, especially those in remote areas, are often not aware of what their goods are worth. Or that they are not being treated fairly. Fair-trade practices are not taught to small business owners or artists in small villages.

We felt we could really start something special and help some wonderful new young entrepreneurs change their lives!

This was how our journey to becoming Free Spirit Hawaii began.

At this point, we knew it was time to come back to Hawaii. We had put together a full collection of our own designs and gorgeous items we had purchased from local artists.

So it was time to head to the Big Island, Hawaii, and, get to work!

When we landed in Hawaii, we not only needed to start a business but find a place to call home. We have always been interested in building sustainable living, off-grid homes.

We also wanted to downsize our overall lives.

We wanted to try living in a much smaller home than we were used to and more importantly, we wanted the house to be completely off-grid. This means self-contained solar, catchment water and, not relying on public systems for our home.

So again, we jumped in with both feet and worked to build an off-grid home out of a small starter structure on a piece of land. The perks of being married to a builder are, it didn't take us very long, and we had a place to call home again.

During this time the Coronavirus had started to take hold of the world.

Corona was changing the landscape of what business and tourism looked like in the Hawaiian Islands and the world.

After all, we had not planned to stay put long. We planned to go back to Thailand after setting up a shop in Hawaii. That however with the travel ban was not going to happen.

So after starting up Free Spirit Hawaii (which, at that time was named Tiger Lily Trading Co), we had to shut down for almost a year.

Off with a bang and, then, a screeching HALT!

As the world and we adjusted to the change, we focused on the graphic design portion of our T-shirt business and started to plan what to do when the world went back to normal.

We realized pretty quickly we need a way to get our items to people even when we can't be together in person. So we built a website.

So here we are in 2021, currently slowly getting back to business here in Hawaii.

As tourists are coming back to the islands, we see many new families that had time to think during the shutdowns about what they wanted to do with their lives.

The ever-changing world has made many people decide they don't love their overworked, under-appreciated lives and they would also love to make a big change.

For some that means moving to Hawaii, for others, it means traveling or having more fulfilling life experiences.

We understand what it's like to want a big change and the uncertainty that comes with that.

We started this blog to give people a positive, informative place to come for info on all things Hawaii, travel, and inspirational dialog.

We get a lot of questions about the island. What it's like to live on the island, how did you make such big changes in your lives, and about our travels abroad?

Here on the Free Spirit Hawaii blog, we share info on Hawaii and local culture and language, great local spots to check out, ono (delicious) recipes from Hawaii and Southeast Asia, helpful travel tips, gorgeous places to visit, and, more.

We hope you will join us on our blog to see more gorgeous things, fun places to travel, and, fun discoveries. We promise it won't be boring and you will discover some beautiful things along the way.

Aloha nui loa and a hui hou,

Kim

Impact-Site-Verification: ade98f6b-74fd-4b8f-98b8-31f85f9f6038