Bob and Melinda Blanchard are bestselling authors and successful entrepreneurs who are passionately committed to a simple but profound belief: We are all entitled to live a life we love.

Married and with a child before graduating from college, Bob and Melinda have always chosen to act on their dreams. Together they started nine businesses, including the gourmet food line, Blanchard & Blanchard & Son. They then moved to an idyllic Caribbean island and opened a beachfront restaurant that has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. It’s a life story that inspired Katie Couric to ask them on the Today Show, “My first question is – how can I be you?”

The little restaurant they built (literally—by hand) was a smash hit from its debut. Blanchards Restaurant on the island of Anguilla has been featured in every major travel guide and in hundreds of articles about the Caribbean. The restaurant is consistently acclaimed by Fodor’s as “one of the best restaurants in the Caribbean, if not the world.”  

In 2000, Bob and Melinda wrote the best-selling A TRIP TO THE BEACH, which tells the madcap story of their first year in Anguilla as they built the restaurant, trained a quirky, lovable crew, and survived Hurricane Luis, a category-4 storm with two-hundred-miles-an-hour gusts.  People magazine called it “a beach book to savor.”

In addition to A TRIP TO THE BEACH, Bob and Melinda continue to write successful books, including AT BLANCHARDS TABLE, COOK WHAT YOU LOVE, LIVE WHAT YOU LOVE, and CHANGING YOUR COURSE. Today, they divide their time between Anguilla and Vermont, where they have developed an exciting line of Live What You Love products that combines beautiful designs, positive messages and environmentally responsible practices.