Roadtrip Nation: A Guide to Discovering Your Path in Life

SO WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO WITH YOUR LIFE?

“You should be a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, a consultant, blah, blah, blah. Everywhere you turn people try to tell you who to be and what to do with your life. We call that the noise. Block it. Shed it. Leave it for the conformists. As a generation, we need to get back to focusing on individuality. Self-construction rather than mass production. Define your own road in life instead of traveling down someone else’s. Listen to yourself. Your road is the open road. Find it.”—Mike and Nathan

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After college Mike Marriner and Nathan Gebhard had no idea what to do with their lives. All they’d been exposed to were standard career paths like doctor and consultant—roads that didn’t fit them at all.

To see what else was out there they took a roadtrip across the nation in a huge forty-foot RV to meet with people who had successfully defined their own paths in life—including the chairman of Starbucks; a lobsterman from Maine; the director of Saturday Night Live; the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic; the first female Supreme Court Justice of the United States; head stylist for Madonna; and the CEO of National Geographic Ventures. All told, one hundred and forty people candidly shared their stories about how they got from college to the present. Now in Roadtrip Nation, Mike and Nathan share the most compelling tales with you.

Along the way, they explain how you, too, can get out there and meet people on your own. From making cold calls to asking stimulating interview questions, Roadtrip Nation will give you the tools to create a life that you’ll look back on and say: “I was true to myself every step of the way.”

Mike Marriner, Nathan Gebhard and Brian McAllister are from California. Nathan and Mike met in sixth grade, and have been friends ever since. Brian and Mike played water polo together in college, and since then the three have embarked on several eye-opening experiences.Post-college, feeling sheltered and underexposed to the world around them, they hit the road in an unsound 1985 green RV to connect with people who defined their own roads in life. Contrary to what they had learned in school or growing up in California, they discovered that people can build lives in line with their individuality.That trip inspired them to create Roadtrip Nation, a grassroots organization that mobilizes students to hit the road and explore the world for themselves. Footage from these trips are shared with people all over, through the Roadtrip Nation Series on PBS, books, various broadcast partnerships, and online.

Mike Marriner, Nathan Gebhard, and Brian McAllister are from California. Nathan and Mike met in sixth grade, and have been friends ever since. Brian and Mike played water polo together in college, and since then the three have embarked on several eye-opening experiences. Post-college, feeling sheltered and underexposed to the world around them, they hit the road in an unsound 1985 green RV to connect with people who defined their own roads in life. Contrary to what they had learned in school or growing up in California, they discovered that people can build lives in line with their individuality. That trip inspired them to create Roadtrip Nation, a grassroots organization that mobilizes students to hit the road and explore the world for themselves. Footage from these trips is shared with people all over, through the Roadtrip Nation series on PBS, books, various broadcast partnerships, and online (roadtripnation.com).

Joanne Gordon was a writer at Forbes magazine from 1998 to 2003 and has written about management, career, and workplace issues for Boston Magazine, Working Mother, Seventeen, and the Chicago Tribune. Before becoming a professional writer, she spent six years in marketing and, in 1997, earned a graduate degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She is the coauthor of Roadtrip Nation with Mike Marriner and Nathan Gebhard, as well as the author of Be Happy at Work and Career Bliss. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.