Ashley Campbell
Author, Photographer, Founder of SnapShop Online
Read one magazine article about a family traveling the world, then spent 17 years preparing to take her five kids on the same trip.
About Ashley
Ashley Campbell is a photographer, writer, and the author of I've Never Been Here Before, the book about her family's year-long trip around the world. She founded SnapShop Online, a photography school that has taught the basics of photography to thousands of children and adults. She has explored 31 countries, most of them with her husband, Chris, and their five kids. She lives with her family in Oklahoma, three miles from her childhood home, and she describes her work as encouraging people to see beauty in the seemingly mundane.
The world trip began as a magazine article Campbell read when her oldest child was a year old. Seventeen years later, in June 2022, the family of seven boarded a plane with small backpacks and did it. The preparation was financial — living below their means, eating at home, sharing a gallon of ice cream instead of buying individual custards — and it was about character. Chris and Ashley spent those years teaching their kids to be comfortable being uncomfortable, to take calculated risks, and not to let fear be the loudest voice in their heads. An old travel trailer and trips across the United States were the training ground for 21 countries.
With John Harding away, Campbell sat down with George Wright III for a conversation about the 17 years of intentional living that made a year of world travel possible. She walked through the saving, the hard Christmases when the answer was still no, and the day the plane took off from Morocco. She told the story of being dropped on a highway near Thessaloniki with no shared language, the deflated basketball her son Everett packed that turned pickup games into dinners in family homes, and the six months after the trip when she set weekly deadlines and finished a manuscript on December 31.
Key ideas from Ashley’s conversation
Character built while saving for a goal is worth it even if the goal never happens.
The Campbells told their kids no for years, through hard Christmases and birthdays, for a trip that might not happen. Campbell says consistency carried it, and the delayed gratification and calculated risk-taking her kids learned would have been worth the sacrifice on their own.
When you are discouraged, swap the bad what-if questions for good ones.
Instead of asking what if it goes wrong, Campbell asked what if it turns out better than she could imagine. She says the trip was better than they pictured, and that question is what kept her pushing toward a goal nobody else's family was chasing.
Give your family one frame for every setback: it works out or it becomes a good story.
Stranded on a highway near Thessaloniki with seven people and no shared language, Campbell and Chris stayed calm on purpose because they were setting the tone. Ask what the best case is first. If the worst case happens, it will be funny eventually.
A deflated basketball opened more doors than any itinerary.
Her son Everett packed a basketball and a pump in his one small backpack. Pickup games with locals led to friendships, and friendships led to dinners in family homes around the world. In every country they visited a small town, a mid-sized suburb, and the capital to see the whole picture.
Write as you go, because the planner is how the details survive.
Campbell carried her paper planner throughout the year and wrote constantly, which is why her book holds so much detail. After coming home she gave herself six months, set weekly deadlines and monthly goals, and finished the manuscript on December 31. A publisher who had reached out years before messaged her after she posted it on Instagram.
