A Unique Vacation Idea for Your Family – You’ve Got to See This!

I wrote recently about vacationing away from the crowds in Southwest Colorado. Today, I have another idea that comes from Raising CEO Kids’ Sarah Cook.

Cook suggests taking business trips – with your kids! But not like you might be thinking.

Instead of riding roller coasters or camping together, plan your destinations around people for your kids to meet with like entrepreneurs, executives and CEOs.

Cook says to think about things your kids like to do and then seek out companies to target for interviewing employees. This plan will then build your vacation plan. They recently did southern California and the East Coast, based on the people they had planned to connect with.

For example, her California-based family had met a staff member of Disneyland on twitter.  He ended up inviting them to the park to interview him. They were also able to meet Jason O’Neill, a teen who founded the Temecula, California company Pencil Bugs, which makes cute pencil accoutrements and greeting cards.

They also met with Allyson Ames from Wonderland Bakery in Newport Beach, California. Ames was a mere teen when she was named Best Young Chef in America and her bakery is known as the “Official Sweet Ambassador” for Newport Beach, according to the company’s website.

They then sent out a request via Help a Reporter Out (HARO) to find companies on the East Coast for the kids to visit and got a whopping response. They visited Carmine’s Restaurant in Times Square, American Girl, Radio City Music Hall, The Rockefeller Center, NBC, Hersheys, K’Nex and Cabela’s.

Cook also suggests checking out FollowerWonk (www.followerwonk.com) for twitter. This is a quick and free way to find PR people for different companies. This is how she found people at Hershey’s and Legoland.

Stay tuned for another post with suggestions from Cook that will give you and your children some questions to ask and please look for Cook’s soon-to-be-published book “The Parent’s Guide to Raising CEO Kids.” www.raisingCEOkids.com

Marijo Tinlin is the editor in chief of Family First, one of the oldest family-oriented websites on the internet. She is also the author of the new book “How to Raise an American Patriot, Making it Okay for Our Kids to Be Proud to Be American” available at www.raisinganamericanpatriot.com.