About
Frenchy Living
From Palo Alto and Carmel, California to Fontainebleau, France —
and pretty much everything it took to enter this new way of life,
a life that is increasingly one of purpose and joy
my story
It All Began in a Walled Garden in Fontainebleau.
I didn’t think up any of this myself. I was sitting in my beautiful walled garden in Fontainebleau, France near Paris. It was a beautiful, blue sky day in February and I was just minding my own business between surprise hip surgeries. Then the ideas just began to flood into me, like a download. I realized I have a message of courage, resilience, hope, and of going-for-it. Very quickly I came to understand I need to share this message. Then to build a business around it even though I thought I had relocated from Carmel, California to France to retire. The whole thing came in pretty much a flash. That I could be a mid-way point between high-priced experts, (that I absolutely recommend you hire if you make this relocation as I did), and just only moving over without any help. A soft place to talk with someone already walking the path. Now I help Americans sort out if France is for them and then quite a bit more. It started as helping people move to France, that is the least of it.
I would say very little of my private client consultations are about logistics and such as that information is available everywhere online. What my clients and I talk about is about digging deep to uncover their courage and resilience, their hopes and dreams, find their agency, voice, and sovereignty. Instead of a how to relocate service, this has evolved to a how to reinvent yourself platform at any age and anywhere. My warrior self has been activated. And yours?
How a Garden Idea Became The Salon.
the idea
From a Private Page to a Professional One.
But back to the garden where so many great stories have begun. I had this blast of ideas come to me and I am sitting there thinking fine, but I am here in France and my clients will be mainly in the United States. How to reach them? Then I think Instagram. I have a private page, why not have a professional one.
going viral
Viral in Three Weeks. Then Comes the Burnout.
Then it gets bananas. I start building it up in mid-February, get my second new hip in March, launch the Instagram site on March 19, and we are viral in three weeks. Before four months are up, I have almost 30,000 followers and am adding about 1,000 a week. An old lady who moved alone to France. Then comes the burnout.
the salon
Out of the Algo Loop, Onto My Own Website.
Instagram starts killing me. I am so grateful to it as it helped me evolve and grow but to satisfy the algorithm is a thing. And reels need to be under three minutes and grab attention in the first three seconds and direct the algo on where to send them and it is no way to help people learn a thing. So then I start researching how to get out of the algo loop and hit on my own website.
On my own website, you can have entertaining reels that are not beholden to rules and regulations. Fun stuff, slice of life stuff, inspiration. And if you want more, if you want to know more about becoming so bold and courageous as to do what I have done, or just the first part without the moving to France bit, then come join us here in The Salon.
I realized I have a message of courage, resilience, boldness, and of going-for-it.
It’s the journey behind the journey. I get so used to what I have done that i lose sight of what i have done. maybe you get that. it’s like when you must do something to get something or handle something, you can lose sight of what a big thing it is that you have done. through the sharing of all of this i believe you can also find the parts of you that may need recovering so you can create the live you want to live, at any age, anywhere.