In this exciting episode of Make Your Own Map, Lisa Niver welcomes her longtime friend and founder of Travel Fashion Girl, Alex Jimenez. They dive into Alex’s incredible journey from a corporate fashion career to building a thriving travel community, reflecting on the transformative power of travel, the importance of community, and the courage to take risks. Alex shares her experiences with Women’s Travel Fest, the challenges of balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood, and how she continues to inspire others with her passion for travel.

“I wanted to be in the fashion industry for as long as I can remember. I wanted to own my own business since I was 6.”

“What is the worst that can happen? I took three months off and wouldn’t have a job when I got back, and that actually did happen.”

“Traveling is refreshing and rejuvenating. Just a little more challenging to get up and go nowadays.”

“Reflecting on the person who did that originally and how brave I was then… Looking back at 25-year-old me, I think—WOW! you did that.”

“It’s always worth the risk and I thought, well, what’s the worst that can happen?”

Introduction:

Welcome to this episode of Make Your Own Map! Today, I am thrilled to have Alex Jimenez, the dynamic founder of Travel Fashion Girl and Women’s Travel Fest. Alex and I have been friends since 2012, and it’s been incredible to witness her journey from a fashion blogger to a trailblazer in the travel community. In this episode, Alex shares her inspiring story, from overcoming challenges to taking bold risks. Tune in to hear about her latest ventures, the power of travel, and how she continues to make a significant impact in the world of travel and beyond. Click here to read about when Alex interviewed me in 2012.

Show Notes

• Origins of Travel Fashion Girl: Alex discusses how Travel Fashion Girl started, focusing on packing lists and traveler interviews.
• Impact of Community: Alex reflects on taking over and merging Women’s Travel Fest with Travel Fashion Girl.
• Balancing Personal and Professional Life: Insights into managing multiple roles as a new mom and entrepreneur.
• Inspiring Others: Alex’s commitment to empowering others through her work and community efforts.
• Overcoming Pandemic Challenges: Alex’s resilience and the evolution of Women’s Travel Fest during and after the pandemic.
• Taking Risks: Alex’s approach to risk-taking and how it has shaped her career.
• Balancing Multiple Roles: The challenges of managing entrepreneurship, motherhood, and travel.
• Future of Women’s Travel Fest: Exciting plans for the upcoming event in LA.
• Reflecting on Achievements:: Alex looks back at her adventurous past and her bravery in taking risks.
• Travel as Refresh: How travel remains a source of rejuvenation and inspiration for Alex.
• Supportive Friendship: The value of ongoing support and friendship between Lisa and Alex.

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Welcome to Make Your Own Map! I’m Lisa Niver, and today’s episode features a conversation with the incredible Alex Jimenez, founder of Travel Fashion Girl and Women’s Travel Fest. Alex and I go way back, and I’m thrilled to have her on the show to share her inspiring journey from a corporate fashion career to becoming a leading voice in the travel community. We’ll dive into her experiences with risk-taking, community building, and the transformative power of travel. So, sit back, relax, and get ready to be inspired!

Lisa Niver

I am beyond thrilled and excited to have my very good friend, Alex from Travel Fashion Girl, here with us on the podcast. Alex, you are amazing. Welcome.

Alex Jimenez

Lisa, I’m so thrilled to be here today with you. Thank you so much for having me.

Lisa Niver

So, for people that don’t know, Alex and I have been friends since 2012. We actually met when she was living in Thailand in the Travel Blogger Think Tank house, and that was really the beginning. My website started in 2010, so it was early in my website, and you were very involved in early internet, evolving social.

It was almost before social. We met because you tweeted at me.

Alex Jimenez

I remember when I started Travel Fashion Girl, I was always on Twitter, and really that was the main original place I met people. I was following your blog and your social, and you were in Hua Hin. And I said come to Koh Samui and you did.

Lisa Niver

This was twitter in 2012. I wasn’t sure if it did anything. And not only did you tweet, come to Koh Samui, you invited me and said you’d interview me for Travel Fashion Girl.

Alex Jimenez

That’s true. I had  just launched Travel Fashion Girl, the month or two months before you came, and I was doing an interview series on the blog, showcasing different travelers, not just fashion styles, but how they packed, what they packed.

I still love that. That’s the origin of how I started Travel Fashion Girl, interviewing people on the road. So, you were one of the people that I interviewed, literally, on the road.

Lisa Niver

I loved that you thought I had fashion style. I was so excited. I thought I would change all my plans to meet this woman.

And we’ve been friends ever since. And you grew Travel Fashion Girl from an idea to an enormous community. So, tell people about Travel Fashion Girl, because I think one of the early things was the packing list.

Alex Jimenez

Yes. So, the reason why Travel Fashion Girl existed was because I’d been backpacking, essentially, for five years long term at that point. And I was so tired of packing all the wrong things and overpacking.

And I wanted to pack lighter. So, I started interviewing people on the road, other travelers like you and finding out, well, what did you pack? How did you pack?

Are you happy with what you brought? It was information that I didn’t find online.

You’d go to some forums and you’d see a packing list per se. It was really driven towards a male hiker at that point. — pack three quick dry tees, a pair of cargo pants that turn into shorts, and three pairs of underwear that you can flip inside out to get more wear out of them.

I remember looking at the packing tips from people in forums, again, not websites, and I didn’t find any resources that could help me.

I was trying to figure out–how can I do this? So, I started the packing lists, and they still really are the bread and butter even as the Travel Fashion Girl has evolved.

In order to pack efficiently, you’ve got to have a packing list. In order to have the right packing list, you’ve got to know what to pack. You’ve got to understand your destination and all the things.

And that’s expanded so much now. It all started with packing lists and how to pack. And now the community is growing and growing further.

Lisa Niver

The community is huge. And now you have products. So, tell people about your amazing Compass Rose packing cubes.

Alex Jimenez

Now the community is massive. I started by creating a website with packing lists and packing tips. I started a Facebook group in December 2013. So, it’s been over a decade. The business has grown tremendously. It’s always been because I’ve really listened to what the readers wanted, what the community wanted. This is my latest product, The Compass Rose travel accessories luggage scale.

Lisa Niver

Oh, that’s brilliant.

Alex Jimenez

I started Compass Rose travel accessories out of the need again, because the products that were out there in 2013, 14, 15 weren’t what people what needed.  I started the product line with my slim packing cubes. I changed things up with mine, I made a YouTube video back in 2013 and it was on how I packed carry on only for full time travel.

I used another brand’s packing cubes. But I didn’t use packing cubes the way they were marketed by companies, which is to organize clothing, right? I use them, yes, to organize, but also compress the clothing.

So I devised my packing technique. When I imagined what the best packing cube would look like, obviously, you need the best materials, things that are not going to rip. So all of my materials for the compass rose travel accessories packing cubes are super hardcore. I wanted to make sure that they’re going to be durable.

You can put as much as you wanted in there, and they were going to close and zip and not tear like with other products that I’ve tested. Other packing cubes weren’t the right size. I was traveling carry on only and all the packing cubes were too large for carry on bags. They’re meant for regular size suitcases.

That was my the other major differences that I fixed the size made them specifically to fit the carry on size, even now that I have my larger packing cubes, they’re still meant to fit perfectly in a carry on. And in addition to that, let’s make them more functional. I color coded and added numbers.

So that way, the functionality, the ways that I use packing cubes myself was the focus. This all came from my personal needs, whether it was a website or the products like the cubes. The products that we developed were things that the community wanted, like the travel adapter, which I’ve also just relaunched.

I asked the community back then, What do you want us to produce? What are the products that you need? And then we did our best to make them happen and continue to do so now.

Lisa Niver

We should also mention that before you were living in Thailand, and before you were backpacking, you worked in the fashion world.

Alex Jimenez

I did. I that is my background. I worked in for the second largest company in the fashion industry. I worked there for six years before I quit my corporate job and went traveling.

So I do have that experience. And as a long-term traveler back in the day, before people were traveling with laptops and working remotely and nomads or whatever, I was trying to figure out how to travel long term. I kept thinking how do I keep going?

Lisa Niver

And I’m going to put a link in the notes to the video that we made together in 2012. When we went to the best lasagna in Thailand with the travel blogger think tank. So two things are very memorable for me about you of the many because we’ve been friends a long time.

We’ve seen each other in many countries. So one is that you wanted to interview me about fashion, which was a shock for me. And I did wear my shirt with stars because you made me feel like a star when you invited me to speak at Women’s Travel Fest which made me an international speaker because the conference was in Mexico.

So tell people about this incredible conference where you bring women together, you empower people. Women’s Travel Fest is connected to Travel Fashion Girl, but also separate. Women’s Travel Fest is coming to LA March 7-9, 2025.

Alex Jimenez

Well, thank you so much for coming, Lisa. That’s so sweet. I love it.

I love how you incorporate fashion into your emotional feeling and having me here today. So thank you. I appreciate it.

Women’s Travel Fest has been going on for over a decade. As I was saying before, I’ve always done what makes sense for the community. In 2019, I started holding in person meetups.

It was really sort of the next level. I was looking at starting a conference for my community. And then 2020 happened. And one thing led to another, I found out the Women’s Travel Fest, which was had been running for a decade already at that point, was going to be sold to somebody.

And I said, #1 I love this conference. It’s such a special space. And #2, I wanted to have a conference for the travel fashion girl community, why not combine the two, and may be able to continue this beautiful space that Kelly Lewis, the previous owner had created. I wanted to bring together that wonderful community and help it keep going and thriving, as well as have a place for my travel fashion girl community and merge them together. I had this vision.

This year was the first year I did it on my own. It was in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Lisa was a speaker. Thank you so much for coming over there and talking about how to be a PR Maven in which you absolutely are. It was it was a wonderful experience.

Next year for 2025, it’s going to be in LA, where I’m from. It’s never actually been in LA before. So that’s also pretty exciting. Join us March 7-9 2025. I can’t wait.

Lisa, hopefully you’ll be there as well. And ‘ll get a chance to see you in person again. That’ll be your third Women’s Travel Fest because you came to the one in New York in 2023 to support me. When I said, Lisa, you have to be there. I can’t tell you why it’s so important for you to be here. But you have to because nobody knew that Kelly was going to be handing the torch over to me, we were going to announce that I was taking over Women’s Travel Fest in New York. So thank you for being there, Lisa.

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Lisa Niver

That’s one of the things that you’re discussing is that people need community. And you and I have been together through engagements, weddings, divorces. Now you’re a new mom.

So that’s another piece —  one of the plates you’re juggling is raising your child in two countries and traveling as a business owner and seaking as an entrepreneur. You’re showing people how to show up.

It’s very impressive. So I think we need to take a breath and say, Alex is awesome. And for people listening, I’d love if you could speak for a moment, because I know that you’ve been very honest in your writing and on social media that there have been struggles and challenges.

So maybe a lot of people, especially you mentioned, you had the meetups and then it was 2020, which is, of course, the global pandemic. It happened to all of us. It impacted us in travel, just like every other field.

So with struggles, which we all have, is there something that you turn to? What helps you in these challenging times to not quit? Because the way you get somewhere is, I always say, fall down seven, get up eight.

What refreshes you? What helps you think, okay, tomorrow I’ll try again?

Alex Jimenez

Wow, that’s like the worst question ever, Lisa. It’s so hard to answer. Oh, okay. It’s a challenging question for a million reasons.

Lisa Niver

Do you have a mentor or you have a mastermind support team or you hired another person? Is there a strategy that helped you that other people could access?

Alex Jimenez

Ultimately, it’s a community. So it goes back to that. This is the worst question ever because I still feel like a new mom and entrepreneur and investor and all these things that I do. I’m like, I’m so bad at…

Lisa Niver

Wait, okay, hold on. Can I reflect back to you what I think you do? Would that help?

Alex Jimenez

Okay.

Lisa Niver

So I noticed that one of the things you did for Travel Fashion Girl, I mean, for Women’s Travel Fest, was that you had a lot of things that were very grounding. There was music, there was journaling, you brought in experts to help. And then I noticed that you took yourself after the major conference to a new location.

You went to Japan and stayed in a capsule hotel. And I thought that for me, I imagined watching you do that, that it really shifted your perspective to focus on how you do love traveling and that you can still go on your own.

Alex Jimenez

Yes, there you go. Traveling is refreshing and rejuvenating. Just a little more challenging to get up and go nowadays.

But yes, that was very necessary. And obviously, that’s what’s helped me-traveling is what I am passionate about.

That’s how I ended up with Travel Fashion Girl and the journey and inspiring people to travel. And that’s also what Women’s Travel Fest is about. And it is about coming together for the love of travel and the impact that travel has.

And that’s a great reminder of how much I need travel in my life, because it has an impact on me. I think because traveling is so much more challenging right now for me to do as a relatively still new mom, it is really restorative. That’s what rejuvenates me, that’s what refreshes me.

And the theme for the Women’s Travel Fest in Playa del Carmen was the impact of how travel can help us as individuals, how it’s not just about taking pictures in front of a shrine, and posting on social media. It’s so much more. In allowing travel to actually have its impact, how it can impact you by being present, and giving it that opportunity.

And you’re right, because I don’t get to do it all the time, because on a personal level I feel like it has to be something I do every single day, like meditation or yoga. But it’s travel, I go, I travel, it lights me up. Without it, it feels like my spark is dimmed.

With travel, for me to take off, and travel alone –this year was a massive thing. Being able to go really rejuvenates my soul. That’s what I wanted to share with people through the music and the journaling, and helping people at the conference this past year be present, and be able to experience that the things that used to make me feel so good about traveling around the time when I met you. I would still travel with a journal and journal on the go. And really, I would be disconnected because I didn’t have a job online, right?

I didn’t have a reason to be online. It was wonderful to float around the world. I still do when I travel on my own. I do that. That’s why I don’t really share my travels online, because I’m just enjoying them being present. And that’s how I refuel myself.

But what keeps me going from a business perspective, is the community. Building these things for the community, whether its products, or the information that we shared on Travel Fashion Girl in 2020, everybody was devastated by the pandemic. But a part of the reason why Travel Fashion Girl came out of 2020 and came back stronger is that we listened to the community, what they wanted, what they wanted from us, how we could help them so they could help us.

And in this case, now, it moves on to the next part of Travel Fashion Girl, which we’re going to be officially launching soon is our new community that’s off of Facebook. It’s going to be a new private community. And that’s a really big deal.

It’s something that I would have never thought about doing. Something that scared me, and really something that wasn’t in my plans at all. But the community asked for it this year, due to, as you mentioned, some issues that we’ve encountered as a business with Google and Amazon and Facebook over the past year. So the solution to that was given to me by the readers.

And they said they want a community; they want to continue on. It’s humbling to know that, me starting a website about packing, how to pack, what to wear, it really became something so much deeper with people that love it. It became so much larger than that, something more meaningful. That’s what motivates me is being able to celebrate the love of travel and how it can impact you with others as well.

Lisa Niver

A great follow up from that is the speakers you selected for Women’s Travel Fest really went deep. I loved the conversation you had about being moms and your travel style. I loved that basically whatever you said, she said, “Oh, yeah, I’m the opposite.”

There was this big space for how women business owners who are mothers of young children have a variety of ways to be in the world. There’s no cookie cutter. I also love that you are so good at encouraging and promoting the Latina Travel Fest. You’re a big supporter of that new conference and that it’s not a competition. It is a collaboration and the deepness of feelings that you created this space for was really impressive.

Alex Jimenez

Thank you. I appreciate that. There’s space for all of us to support each other in travel as women.

There’s enough room for all of us. For me, it’s about connecting people and giving them a platform, giving you a platform, giving other speakers a platform, a space to be seen to have their messages share their experience. It is to go deeper within yourself because we have to have these honest conversations. At this point, I’m an open book. I don’t have anything to hide from you.

Being able to have those conversations are so important and being able to use travel as a vehicle for growth and to share a truth and to connect with others. It’s important. And there’s a variety, like you said, the way she travels isn’t the way I travel, the way she mothers isn’t the way that I mother, we’re completely different people.

And likewise, there is a travel community for everybody, because not everyone’s going to resonate with the same thing. Or maybe some communities will just speak to someone differently, but we can all uplift each other.  I’d love to be able to continue working alongside and supporting other owners of other leaders of travel communities. My main thing is I went to an all-girls high school.

I love the empowerment that I learned there. I’m have a really strong mother figure as well. So to be able to empower others and to get to do the travel. When you put it that way, Lisa, you are opening my eyes to all this.

It really is a blessing to be able to do all of this.

Lisa Niver

I really think you’ve built something incredible. And it’s funny, I’m sure we’ve talked about it before, but I forgot, but I also went to all-girls high school. I think it makes a difference.

The president of the student council is a girl, the president of the math club is a girl. I have a new class — Travel Writer 101 on Udemy–it’s an appetizer, all the different pieces you need, social media, video, press trips and writing.

And my second class, actually, I would never would have had without you because when you invited me to speak, you actually gave me a topic: “How to be a PR Maven.” When I opened your email, honestly, my first thought was to write you back and say– this is not what I’m going to talk about. But I trust you.

So I did it. And now that’s going to be my second class I’m building.

Alex Jimenez

That’s so cool. I love that. And I can’t believe that wouldn’t have been the first thing that you offered up. I don’t know if other conference owners do that but I look at what you submitted. And then offer this is actually what you should be speaking about. I’m glad it worked out with you because I’m doing it to other people.

Lisa Niver

You have a genius that you look at people and see what could be. I think people offer to speak on topics that are not necessarily so much of a reach. I probably suggested a topic about being brave and my book.

And you said to me– what’s amazing that you’re doing right now is the promotion of the book. So THANK YOU!!

INTERVIEW of Lisa on Women’s Travel Fest:

Related to my book, I have a question I’ve been asking all my podcast guests, which is– is there a brave-ish challenge that you’ve completed that you’d like to share?

Or is there something that’s a reach for you? Obviously, you’ve got a lot going on. You have these beautiful Airbnbs that you’ve redesigned. You have a young child. You have multiple businesses. You’re a rock star. But is there something else where you think– Oh, if only I could?

Alex Jimenez

In reflecting over the decade of my journey and remembering that I started traveling long term in 2008. It seems so long ago now. But I don’t think it’s something about me being brave now. It’s reflecting on the person who did that originally and how brave I was then.

I look back at 25 year old me and think would I hitchhike through Africa again? Would I have been sharing a room with all these strangers that I met while backpacking Southeast Asia? Half of the stuff that I’ve done, would I do that right now?

Looking back at the person who did all these things, I think—WOW! you did that.

Looking back at me over 10, 15 years ago, I think that’s really cool, because I don’t know if I could do that.

Lisa Niver

For the people that are listening, a lot of people say to me, I want to travel like you, I want to be a travel writer, which is why I started that class on Udemy of how to be a travel writer.

Because often people ask me the same thing, and I want to help them. You were working in fashion, which was at one point your dream job. And then your dream changed.

So for people that maybe have their current dream job, but have a new dream or want to be in travel or want to come to the conference? What would say to them about travel and change– It’s worth the risk or don’t give up?

What inspired you one day to say I am never going to work again at 830am or whatever it was. And you said– Nope, that’s over.

Alex Jimenez

It’s always worth the risk and I thought, well, what’s the worst that can happen?

I didn’t hate my job. I had no problem with my cubicle job. I wanted to be in the fashion industry for as long as I can remember. I wanted to own my own business in the fashion industry since I was 6. At 13, I had these different business ideas that I was working on.

Even in high school, I had a business. I always wanted it. I saw myself climbing up the corporate ladder in my company and I loved it.

But when I took a leap of faith and took some time to myself to travel, I was taking three months off at that point. It was a big deal in 2008, like who did that?

But I was always intending to go back to work. It was always my plan.

Life unfolded in a different way and opened up new opportunities for me. I really was very focused on paying attention to where things were leading me. I operated on my gut. Like this feels good. That doesn’t feel good. Or, I really want this.

And with travel, what was the worst thing that can happen? I took three months off and wouldn’t have a job when I got back, and that actually did happen. After my three month break, I took in between jobs, the job I was going to said– there’s a recession now, so we can’t hire you anymore.

What did I do? I was in India applying for jobs online somewhere else, got a job while I was in India. Someone hired me and then I had to say no.

What is the worst that can happen? That’s what you have to ask yourself.

I didn’t come up with that. I asked somebody else and it really makes sense. Like a year from now, could you go back to work?

If you needed to, anybody could go back to work. I can go to work at McDonald’s and get a job. There’s no reason why you can’t.

You can always start over. You can always go back.

What would I do if something happened to Travel Fashion Girl or it evolved, due to the current changes with Google, would I do something else? What are the options?

It was scary then, but the most practical way to think about it is, what are you willing to risk? How much can you take? Taking that risk as a 25-year-old woman without kids, a car, or a mortgage, that was way easier to do. Now, it would be more complicated to take that challenge.

But now there’s a lot more resources than ever before, online you have remote families, you have single mothers, women in their fifties, sixties, seventies, starting over, whether they had children, whether they don’t have children.

What’s the message right now in 2024, that women can do anything. They’re doing everything and they’re capable of doing everything. It’s a wonderful time to be a woman and really kind of pave our own way.

Lisa Niver

That was awesome. Are you running for president? I will vote for you.

I was just in Canada to see the polar bears and I was staying in Winnipeg and my last name’s Niver and 40 minutes from Winnipeg is a town called Niverville. I asked, could I be mayor for the day? Maybe you want to be mayor for the day of Los Angeles.

Alex Jimenez

I don’t want to be mayor anymore, but when I was in high school, I would say that.

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Lisa Niver

One of the things you said, which was brilliant was about taking risk. The flip of that, that I used to think about when I left also in 2008, I went for a year was, if I don’t go, how will I feel? Will my regrets outweigh the risk?

Before I have to let you go, let’s talk about how people will be regretful if they don’t start participating in Travel Fashion Girl and Women’s Travel Fest. How can they find out more? How can they get a ticket? How can they get involved? Where do they find you?

Alex Jimenez

Well, travelfashiongirl.com is where they can find out all the information on how to pack, what to wear for anywhere in the world. It’s not about fashion as much as it sounds like, it’s really about function. We talk a lot about the practicalities of destinations.

So don’t shy away from the word fashion if you don’t feel fashionable or fashion is not as much of a priority. And then check out our products, Compass Rose Travel Accessories. You can find them on Amazon.

Women’s Travel Fest find us on Instagram or our website. The conference, the event for Women’s Travel Fest is happening in Los Angeles March 7th through the 9th, 2025. We’d love to have you there and we will give you a code to share with your audience.

USE MY CODE: BRAVEISH for a discount on your tickets for Women’s Travel Fest

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Lisa Niver

I would love to be there. Thank you. I’d be happy to share a code because everyone should get their tickets right away and for the first time ever it will be in Los Angeles!

Follow Alex everywhere on both Travel Fashion Girl and Women’s Travel Fest.

And Alex, again, I am so appreciative of you because you made me fashionable and you made me an international speaker.

I am delighted to know you and be your friend and be in your community.

Alex Jimenez

Lisa, thank you so much. I’m so happy to be connected with you and to maintain this friendship with you. I love how supportive you are.

I look forward to our continued support of one another and being friends for many more decades. Thank you!

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Alexandra Jimenez is the founder of Travel Fashion Girl, a leading platform that helps female travelers pack smart and travel stylishly. With a background in the fashion industry, she transitioned from a corporate career to create a thriving community of globetrotters. Alex also organizes Women’s Travel Fest, an annual travel conference, which she has successfully merged with her own brand, creating a unique space for women to connect and explore their passion for travel. Her journey includes balancing motherhood, managing multiple businesses, and continually finding inspiration through travel.

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What is one brave step you’ve taken in your life or career that seemed daunting at the time but proved to be worth the risk? Share your story with us!

The post How Alex Jimenez Transformed Her Passion into a Thriving Travel Community appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Navigating the Freelance World: Insights from David Hochman

In this episode of “Make Your Own Map,” Lisa Niver chats with the inspiring David Hochman, a renowned freelance writer and the mastermind behind UPOD Academy. David shares his wisdom on building a successful freelance career, the importance of confidence, and how to make the most out of the writing community. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to elevate your writing game, this episode is packed with actionable advice and motivation to help you on your creative journey.

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

Engaging Quotes from David Hochman

1. “At a certain point, you just have to say WHY NOT ME? Why shouldn’t I be the one to tell this story?”
2. “If you can’t tell a story at a party in 10 minutes, you can’t tell a story in writing.”
3. “You get about 45 seconds with an editor—make the beginning of anything you send absolutely brilliant.”
4. “Thumb Slam! It’s that one word that’s going to unlock so many doors for you.”
5. “A writing community isn’t just about getting published; it’s about finding your people, your support system.”

Key Points

1. Importance of community and support for freelancers.
2. Embracing the “Why Not Me?” mindset for building confidence.
3. The “Thumb Slam” concept for confidently sending pitches.
4. How the Pomodoro technique boosts productivity.
5. Tips for breaking into travel writing.
6. The value of personal connection to the places you write about.
7. Crafting strong opening lines in pitches.
8. The success of the UPOD Scholars program in supporting diverse voices.
9. Importance of organization and using tools like Notion.
10. David’s personal challenge of writing his own book proposal.

TRANSCRIPT of our interview The Power of Community: How UPOD Academy Transforms Writers
Lisa Niver:

I am so honored, delighted, and excited to have David here with me today on Make Your Own Map. Oh my goodness. I would not have the freelance career that I have without you and UPOD Academy. Thank you so much for being here.

David Hochman:

I’m thrilled to be here. And I will humbly say that it’s all about you and you just make so much stuff happen. So I feel like it’s the mutual admiration society.

Lisa Niver:

Thank you. Truly, I think that the workshops that you’ve held and I came once live, I know now you have them online, and you just had one, was that the 55th UPOD Academy?

David Hochman:

It was the 55th weekend that we’ve done this, which is crazy. There have been hundreds of speakers, thousands of students. I mean, it’s been crazy. It’s been amazing!

Lisa Niver:

The gift you’ve given of creating this community for writers and editors to be able to connect. It’s,Truly remarkable what you’ve done. I love being part of it.

David Hochman:

It’s the favorite thing that I do. I like it even more than almost all the writing that I do just ’cause it’s community. It’s all the things that when you’re a freelancer, you don’t get. You don’t get community, you don’t get support. Even when you tell the people in your family what you’re doing, they don’t quite understand. So it’s nice to have that kind of people around you who can at least be listening to you and get it.

Lisa Niver:

I’m so grateful to have you here. I don’t even think that I introduced you, but you are a renowned writer. You’re a phenomenal editor and I love that on your LinkedIn bio it says you’re a freelance whisperer.

David Hochman:

That’s right. I speak softly and I help freelancers do what they do best.

Lisa Niver:

It’s so incredible because you’ve been published everywhere, The New York Times, AARP, Food and Wine. You went to journalism school. Did it all start with your famous TED Talk or what was the beginning?

David Hochman:

The beginning was being interested in things and not wanting to have two days in a row that were the same. I don’t like working in the same place two days in a row. I don’t like going back home the same way. Being a writer lets you live that way where every day– there’s novelty in everything. As a reporter, as a journalist, as a travel writeras someone who interviews a lot of people, I get to remake my life every single day. And I don’t mind that I’ve been doing it for a long time and it just keeps things interesting. It’s never boring. I remember in journalism school, somebody said, you may not make as much money as other people. You may have days when you feel like banging your head against the wall, but you will always say, at least I didn’t go to law school <laugh>. So I think about that sometimes. <Laugh>, yes,

Lisa Niver:

I know for myself when I first got introduced to you and UPOD Academy, which for anyone that’s wondering, UPOD stands for Under Promise Over Deliver, which you definitely do. I watched your TED Talk and the thing that resonated for me and that I still think about since I watched that talk is how you spoke about why not me?

David Hochman:

It is just about confidence. Any idea that you have, there’s a question that an editor is going to have or a publisher’s going to have, or a podcaster producer is going to have, which is of all people on Earth, why would this be you? And at a certain point you just have to say WHY NOT ME? Why shouldn’t I be the one to tell this story? Why shouldn’t I be the one to go on this adventure? Why shouldn’t I be the one who can do this research and get to this place? Rather than thinking that this is something that other people do.It starts with confidence. And if you don’t have that, it’s hard to do the rest. You have to believe this is something you can do. If you want to write for the New Yorker, it really helps to think why shouldn’t I be the one pitching this? This shouldn’t be other people. I can study this as a target publication, see what they’re doing, reverse engineer my my story so that it matches and hits the sweet spot of what they do. It’s not easy, but you can say this could be me. This should be me if that’s what you want to do. We only have this one shot at doing this.

Lisa Niver:

That’s the thing I’ve always taken away from when I’ve watched the interviews or been part of the UPOD weekend, when you talk to the editors, is it really has instilled a lot of confidence in me. I remember listening to the interview you did with Alan Henry from Wired, and at first I just kept thinking, I’m never going to write for Wired. And I watched someone else live pitch to Alan, a story. And at the end when he was so excited and in fact accepted and published that piece, I thought, that’s a story???? I have a story if that’s a story. The community part really helps people level up that you see someone else do it and, and with why not me? That’s been incredible. How long has it been now since you created UPOD?

David Hochman:

UPOD has been around since about 2011, but I’d been doing it for years before that in my living room and for MediaBistro. I’ve been doing some version of this for almost 15 years.

Lisa Niver:

Wow! That’s so amazing. Now I have a question –I’ve never understood what is Thumb Slam?

David Hochman:

Thank you for asking. It is the outcome of WHY NOT ME? It is this idea that when you have an email that you’ve gotten the confidence to send or a proposal that you’re sending to an agent. It could be a pitch that you’re sending to The Atlantic. It could be a high stakes email that you’re sending to have lunch with an editor or an agent. You have that email and you’re ready to send it and you take your thumb and with all the confidence of Why Not Me, you slam it against the Send Key and you say Thumb slam, boom! I literally sit here on my couch when I have like a big story that I’ve written or a big pitch that I put together and I’ll just say THUMB SLAM. A bunch of people in UPOD now do that too. It started as a bit of a joke that became a real thing. It’s that one word that crystallizes that feeling of I must get this out there. My voice matters. I’m going to push through fear and believe in this process.

UPOD ACADEMY: Lisa Niver in the photo in blue dress from UPOD in Playa Vista in 2016

Lisa Niver:

I think the greatest thing about UPOD is to go into the Facebook group or to go to the workshop and connect with real other people that have helped me. Editors from UPOD have reached out to me and I’ve sold them travel stories, people I didn’t even pitch, they came to me. It’s such an incredible community to bring all those people together. And one of the greatest things, can you talk about Pomodoro technique because that has helped me so much.

David Hochman:

I love the idea that if you can’t tell a story at a party in 10 minutes, you can’t tell a story in writing. The Pomodoro technique is you work for 25 minute intervals and then you take a break. You push through, you get off Facebook and Instagram and do the work, then you take a little break. It’s a five minute break and then you get back to it. When you’re really focusing, it’s super helpful. If you look up Pomodoro technique, there’s a whole system that gets you through the day.

David Hochman:

I also use Notion. It’s an organizing website that’s a to-do list. You have it on your phone and tablet and everything. You can organize your to-do list, whether it’s a life list or a writing list or a business list. Then you say I’m going to get these things done. It’s Monday, I’m will work for two hours and 20 minutes, then take a break, then work for another hour, then exercise. I like having that grounding. When you work at home and when you work by yourself and for yourself, you need to have organization. Having the time organized helps me.

Lisa Niver:

I agree. For me, I like to do 18 minute blocks. Sometimes I do 18 minutes of writing, especially when I was working on my book. And then I’ll use 18 minutes to clean up my office. The focused attention has really made a difference for me. I’m going to look Notion. Thank you.

David Hochman:

Notion is really great. Also the two minute rule: “If there’s something you can get in two minutes, just get it done.” And also that idea of do the hardest thing first. If you have a hard email or if you have a really deep concentration, do that thing first and then things get easier during the day. I’m pretty self-disciplined and I do that regularly. It’s not easy for everyone. I know it’s easy to just sort of let things drift away and put the hard things off till tomorrow, but I like doing the hard stuff first.

Lisa Niver:

I do too. Which makes me think of writing my book, there were so many hard times and there was crying. But I I had a one hour session with you when I was so overwhelmed with the marketing piece about my book. And I remember emailing you, I need five sessions. I’m never going to figure this out. and you said let’s do one first. And after I had that one-on-one coaching with you, I knew exactly what to do. And in fairness, I’m not sure they ever opened it because I have over 75 press hits from my book and the publishing company got me one. I know that a lot of freelancing requires you to be focused and think why not me. I know you just had an amazing weekend session with UPOD. Are there a couple of takeaways you want to share with people about freelancing?

David Hochman:

Today I went through all the wisdom and insights from the weekend and put them in a post in our Facebook group. One of them was when you are writing to agents or editors, you get about 45 seconds max with them. Make the beginning of anything that you send absolutely brilliant. Don’t waste time with hope you’re well. And get rid of the word “JUST” especially women say the word just, just checking back or just thought I’d send this. It’s a way of minimizing whatever message you’re sharing. And take out hope you’re well. Try to not give them the same old, same old and get right into it. Somebody said when you’re pitching an agent open with the line that you would put on the back of your T-shirt, go into your book or your proposal and look at the one line that is the greatest and that would be on the back of your T-shirt to promote your book. Put that right at the top of your of your email.

Lisa Niver:

I love that.

David Hochman:

We talked a lot about personal essays and going to the edge of your comfort zone and revealing something of yourself. I have created another wacky neologism for that, which is soy cat. So these are not lactose intolerant cats <laugh>, but stories only you can tell. That’s the heart of everything as a writer. Why you and why not me? Why am I the person who needs to tell this? Why is this a story? Sometimes that’s about something has happened to you in your life where you’re the only person who could really tell this. Sometimes it’s about reporting that you’ve done that is beyond anything that anybody else has done or that is like more work than they want to assign somebody else. So you’ve already done it, that’s your soy cat. It could be access to something true access. We had the editor in chief of New York Magazine’s The Cut and she was said, so many writers will pitch me and promise, hey, I have access to Beyonce, blah blah, blah. They don’t have access. But if you have true access, then that’s a story only you can tell. It’s important to think about what are the stories that only you can tell?

Lisa Niver:

You have had access to some incredible things. Tell us about your recent yacht experience.

David Hochman:

It was for Virtuoso. A company I love because they send me all over the world and it was for a cover story on The Ritz Carlton yacht. They creating floating hotels that are the un-cruise. The word cruise is never mentioned. They don’t do anything cheesy. It’s like a high seas low cheese adventure. It was amazing.

Lisa Niver:

One of the things that people always say to me is, how can I be a travel writer and go on on these amazing journeys like you, so I started a TRAVEL WRITER 101 class on Udemy. One of the things I highly recommend in my very basic level class is to join your UPOD Academy community and find fellowship and figure stuff out. Could you give someone who’s really brand new or really wants to break into travel writing a few words of wisdom about how to get started or pitching or where would you recommend someone start?

David Hochman:

We were just talking about this at UPOD because we had Sarika Bonsal who’s the editorial director of AFAR as a speaker. She was so great. You just said to me “I wanted to go on your journey.” And she said, actually it has to be the opposite of that. It used to be in travel writing that someone would parachute into a place and write about that place with fresh eyes. But now it doesn’t make sense to do that. You need to have, and editors will really only assign you if you have some connection to a place. So if there’s a personal story or a family story or a legacy or a reporting piece of it that makes you the person who we would send there, there’s a family recipe that you want to discover.

David Hochman:

There’s something about your birth father that you want to discover. There’s something about these traditions that you want to go to a place. Your mother came from this place and you want to go to this island. Sometimes it’s about starting in your own backyard and starting wherever you live and making that your place and that your connection. But if not, think about all the people in your life and all the true stories that you have where you can then reconnect and make that narrative arc / pitch that you send. When you do send that pitch, and I was kind of shocked about this, at least for AFAR and for the Washington Post and for Travel and Leisure, they want 150 words or less. Encapsulate your pitch in 150 words or less– the no fat, just give us the story. If you can’t tell it in 150 words, you really don’t know what the story is.

Lisa Niver:

Wow. I can’t wait to listen to all the new editor videos from the last UPOD Academy. For all the people who are now so inspired, they want to be writers, they want to be part of UPOD, what’s the best way for them to get connected?

David Hochman:

I mean, Facebook, believe it or not, old fashioned Facebook is still the best place., We have a private group called UPOD Academy and that’s still where the daily action takes place. You can message me at the group and tell me that you leaned about me from Lisa’s podcast. And there’s always something happening. A lot of people tell me it’s the only reason they go on Facebook. You can email me Davidhochman@mac.com, It’s pretty low key. It’s like that cruise, it’s like the anti-cruise. It’s the anti-group. I don’t like to overwhelm people with too many announcements It’s just — This is where we’re at. Come share your stuff.

Lisa Niver:

I love that you now have a scholarship. So tell people if they’re thinking about being part of a UPOD workshop, you also have scholarships for people to attend.

David Hochman:

It’s called the UPOD Scholars program and it’s really a way to get non-white writers in front of A-list, editors, agents, producers, et cetera, for free. It’s been incredible. Things have come out of this program that were completely beyond my expectations. People have ended up with huge book deals and they’ve been on Good Morning America and they’ve won awards and there’s so much that has happened. It continues to be a true silver lining of the pandemic. ‘Because people from all over the world who don’t normally get access to editors at The New Yorker and The Atlantic and big five publishers can now be there on Zoom and pitch these ideas. And then there’s a real openness to getting voices that have not been traditional voices in the media. Because it’s been so white so male for so long that now there’s an openness to it and there’s a desire for it. I love literally stepping back and just letting this happen on screen. I turn my screen over and connect a writer to a powerful agent and the magic happens.

Lisa Niver:

The way I started this conversation is the only way it can end. That your workshop and the UPOD Academy and being able to show up in the group really changed my whole career as a freelancer. I do not believeI’d have a traditionally published book deal without the clips that I got because of being part of UPOD.

David Hochman:

That’s amazing to hear. I love that. You in turn have inspired so many people by showing how to market a book and showing how to get out there and just believing in it. And you being yourself and not being afraid. I feel like that’s the BRAVE-ish quality that we’ve all taken. So congratulations back to you.

Lisa Niver:

Thank you. Because it’s good to manifest and put stuff out in the universe, I like to ask people because I did a book about being brave. Is there some BRAVE-ish challenge that you feel like you’ve accomplished or is there something that you’re thinking you really want to take on next that’s a good challenge for you?

David Hochman:

Recently, someone asked me if I have a book in me and I’ve always said no, I’ve done a lot of ghost writing. I’ve done a lot of co-writing, but I recently started putting a book proposal together and I’m excited about it. And so it may or may not come to anything. It’s hard to sell a book. It’s hard to even write a book proposal, but I’m working on it.

Lisa Niver:

Wow. Keep me posted because I have promotion suggestions for you. I know you’re off on an adventure soon. Can you tell us where you’re going next?

David Hochman:

We’re going to Mexico City. We had traveled all over Mexico for many, many years for different stories, my wife and I. And then last year we went to Mexico City for the first time and then we went back immediately a month later. And then we went back another time and this is now our fourth time going in a year. And now our son is there for a school fellowship. So we’re going to visit him and his girlfriend and we’re excited.

Lisa Niver:

I’ve never been to Mexico City, but it sounds like I need to go.

David Hochman:

It is definitely an amazing place that surprised me. I was always putting it off. because I thought there were more interesting places in Mexico. It is endlessly fascinating and lovely and delightful and not hot in the summer because it’s at a high altitude. Just great food, great people. Less expensive than being in Los Angeles.

Lisa Niver:

That sounds perfect. And you could run UPOD from anywhere.

David Hochman:

You could do UPOD from anywhere, although we’re only going to be there for four nights.

Lisa Niver:

Thank you so much for coming on my podcast for all that you do. I’ll put in the notes of the show how people can find you and links to UPOD Academy. And again, I am so grateful and appreciative. Thank you for all that you do.

David Hochman:

I’m so happy to be here. I’m thrilled to be part of your world. So thank you.

In this insightful episode of “Make Your Own Map,” Lisa Niver interviews David Hochman, the founder of UPOD Academy and a celebrated freelance writer. Together, they explore the essence of freelance writing, building confidence as a writer, and the importance of community. David shares his journey from journalism school to becoming a prolific writer and mentor. He also offers valuable tips for aspiring writers, including the power of the “Why Not Me?” mindset, the Pomodoro technique, and strategies for breaking into travel writing. Whether you’re a seasoned writer or just starting out, this episode is packed with practical advice and inspiration to help you navigate your creative career.

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Show Notes

[00:00:00] Introduction

• Lisa Niver introduces David Hochman and expresses gratitude for his influence on her freelance career.

[00:02:00] The Power of Community

• David discusses the importance of community in the freelance world and how UPOD Academy provides that support.

[00:05:30] The “Why Not Me?” Mindset

• David explains the significance of confidence and why aspiring writers should embrace the “Why Not Me?” attitude.

[00:09:00] Thumb Slam Concept

• David shares his “Thumb Slam” philosophy, encouraging writers to confidently send pitches and proposals.

[00:12:45] The Pomodoro Technique

• David and Lisa discuss the Pomodoro Technique and how it helps in maintaining focus and productivity.

[00:16:00] Breaking into Travel Writing

• Tips and advice for those looking to start a career in travel writing, including the importance of personal connection to the places you write about.

[00:20:30] Writing Tips from UPOD Academy

• Key insights from the recent UPOD Academy weekend, including the importance of crafting strong opening lines in pitches.

[00:25:00] The UPOD Scholars Program

• David talks about the UPOD Scholars program and its success in supporting non-white writers.

[00:28:30] Future Plans and Personal Challenges

• David reveals his latest challenge: working on his own book proposal, and his upcoming travel plans.

[00:31:00] Conclusion

• Lisa wraps up the episode, thanking David and highlighting the impact of UPOD Academy on her career.

https://www.davidhochman.net

WATCH on Amazon

Join Lisa Niver as she sits down with David Hochman, founder of UPOD Academy and freelance writer extraordinaire. In this episode, they dive into the world of freelance writing, exploring the importance of confidence, community, and the “Why Not Me?” mindset. David shares his journey, offers practical tips for breaking into travel writing, and discusses the power of the Pomodoro technique for staying productive. Aspiring writers won’t want to miss this episode filled with valuable insights and inspiration!

Show Notes

[00:00:00] Introduction

• Lisa Niver introduces David Hochman and expresses gratitude for his influence on her freelance career.

[00:02:00] The Power of Community

• David discusses the importance of community in the freelance world and how UPOD Academy provides that support.

[00:05:30] The “Why Not Me?” Mindset

• David explains the significance of confidence and why aspiring writers should embrace the “Why Not Me?” attitude.

[00:09:00] Thumb Slam Concept

• David shares his “Thumb Slam” philosophy, encouraging writers to confidently send pitches and proposals.

[00:12:45] The Pomodoro Technique

• David and Lisa discuss the Pomodoro Technique and how it helps in maintaining focus and productivity.

[00:16:00] Breaking into Travel Writing

• Tips and advice for those looking to start a career in travel writing, including the importance of personal connection to the places you write about.

[00:20:30] Writing Tips from UPOD Academy

• Key insights from the recent UPOD Academy weekend, including the importance of crafting strong opening lines in pitches.

[00:25:00] The UPOD Scholars Program

• David talks about the UPOD Scholars program and its success in supporting non-white writers.

[00:28:30] Future Plans and Personal Challenges

• David reveals his latest challenge: working on his own book proposal, and his upcoming travel plans.

[00:31:00] Conclusion

• Lisa wraps up the episode, thanking David and highlighting the impact of UPOD Academy on her career.

Connect with David Hochman at UPOD ACADEMY

TRIBUTE to David: After 50 workshops, we made this video to say THANK YOU! A rising tide lifts all boats

MORE OF MAKE YOUR OWN MAP? LISTEN on APPLE PODCAST: MAKE YOUR OWN MAP

“What’s the one story you’ve been holding back from telling, and what’s stopping you from pitching it today?”

The post The Secret Weapon for Aspiring Travel Writers: UPOD Academy appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

I’m thrilled to interview a powerhouse in the world of personal development, a bestselling author, and an expert in courage and leadership. Margie Warrell‘s passion lies in empowering individuals to lead more purposeful and courageous lives by challenging them to step outside their comfort zones and embrace life’s challenges. As Margie told me, “Courage is uncomfortable. Courage is also learnable, but courage is also contagious.“

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

Transcript of our interview is below:

Lisa Niver:

Good morning. I am so excited to be here with Dr. Margie.

Dr. Margie Warrell:

Good morning. Good to see you too, Lisa.

Lisa Niver:

One of the things that I’m so excited to share with everyone who’s listening to us is I have a new book. My book is Brave-ish: One Breakup, Six Continents, and Feeling Fearless After Fifty. And the first of your books that I found was called Brave, and it talks about 50 acts of courage. I know that you have seven books now, but I appreciate in all of your books how you’re really talking about the importance of courageous conversation and courageous acts. How did this get started? You are from Australia, you’ve lived around the world, you’ve raised children, you’ve done so many impressive things, but what made you focus on bravery and courage?

Dr. Margie Warrell:

Well, Lisa, I grew up on a dairy farm in the Aussie bush. I had very limited horizons. My parents both left school at 16 and most people actually where I grew up still live where I grew up or many do. I just knew I wanted to expand my own horizon and that required an act of courage in its own way, overcoming all my own doubts and fears of have I got what it takes and am I good enough. I set off and moved four hours away to go to university. I feel like I have been living outside my comfort zone for much of the time since, which was quite a few decades ago. I also traveled around the world, as you said. One of the things that struck me the most as I’ve met people across so many different countries and cultures and lived in some of them for a period of time myself, is that as humans, we’re so often held back by our fear of failure of not having what it takes, of not being good enough, of being exposed as inadequate or unworthy or unlovable in some way.

Courage to me, it is not the absence of self-doubt or misgivings or being afraid of being found out. It is just deciding that something more important lays at stake in being willing –to quote Susan Jeffers “feel our fear and move forward anyway.” Even writing my first book many years ago, I had four kids who were age seven and under at the time, which was an act of courage. I never studied writing, I didn’t know where all the apostrophes go, et cetera, but I feel really called to do this. If I look back on my whole life story, so much of it has been me practicing walking the path of courage over fear in so many different ways.

Lisa Niver:

I know for myself, when I was leaving my marriage, people kept saying to me that I was brave. I kept looking the word up in the dictionary because I did not feel brave. I felt anything but brave. I actually really appreciated in your book talking about the doing things anyway and trying to figure out the life that you want to have. In you book, you have 50 courageous acts. How did that come about? What inspired those 50 courageous acts?

Dr. Margie Warrell:

In my book, Brave, which was my third book, the reason that book came about, I’d written two books at that point, Find Your Courage and Stop Playing Safe. People said, fantastic, very helpful, but how do I actually do some of these things? How do I say no to someone because I hate letting people down. I’m a bonafide people pleaser. How do I give someone feedback? How do I set a vision? How do I deal with rejection? How do I pick myself up when I’ve had a fall? 50 Brave everyday acts of Courage came about because sometimes we want to be brave, but we just don’t know how to be brave. That book was very much inspired by that. 50 is the number of different ways that I could readily categorize different ways we can be brave.

Lisa Niver:

I love that because in my book I did 50 things before I turned 50. In your book, You’ve Got This, you talked about for your husband’s 50th birthday, your whole family went climbing together and that was very courageous and full of challenges. Can you talk about how did that happen that you’d made this family choice to do something courageous together?

Dr. Margie Warrell:

Yes, well, <laugh>, there’s a long story, the short version of it and the medium size. Ironically enough on his 49th birthday, I knew it was the next day. I remember the day before I knew it was his birthday the next day, but on the actual day, life was busy. I was working away. He was off at his work. We often speak to each other throughout the day for a quick call. We spoke four or five times, I just forgot it was his birthday. Finally, my daughter arrives home from high school and she walks in the door at four o’clock and said, “Hey mom, what’s for dad’s birthday dinner?”

Lisa Niver:

<Laugh>

Dr. Margie Warrell:

He started laughing and he said, “I was wondering how long it would take you.” So, I said,
What do you want to do for your 50th birthday?” And he said, I would really love to go on a safari in Africa and he shared that with the kids. One of my sons, Ben, who was 13 at the time said, “Africa is really cool, but wouldn’t it be even more cool to climb to the rooftop of Africa?” He did this whole PowerPoint presentation complete with all the details of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is at the rooftop of Africa and it sits at 19,000 feet and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he got us all really excited and I thought, wouldn’t this be a cool thing to do for my husband’s 50th birthday?

I set about the job of all the logistics and managing it all, but it really was Ben’s idea. We decided as a family that it would be a really cool thing to do as a family to mark and honor my husband’s 50th birthday. Let me just say Lisa, that it was actually way harder than we had imagined it would be. It is. I had done some altitude climbing with Andrew but the kids hadn’t done it. I don’t think any of them could have known what it is like to be hiking at altitude when you do not get the full quota of oxygen into your lungs. My youngest at the time, Matt was 13. The younger you are the harder it can be for your body to adapt to the thinner air.

So it was a grueling climb on Summit Day. The whole trip was a week of hiking, but Summit Day was nine hours to get from base camp at about 18,000 feet up to the top. We did it very slowly with a lot of breaks, some vomiting. I had a wretched headache, I felt nauseous. There’s something about when you have other people around you who are all working toward a goal. None of us wanted to be the one that gave up. I thought about it multiple times, but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with the kids saying– mom gave up. She said it was too hard. We all just lifted each other up, literally sometimes physically, but also just emotionally <laugh>. You can do it -one more step and we’ll have another break, another three steps and we’ll have a break. I think it speaks to the nature of courage.

Courage is uncomfortable. Courage is also learnable, but courage is also contagious. And when we dare to do something that’s bigger than we’ve done before, when we dare to risk falling short and failing, it inspires other people around us. It makes it safer for them to raise their sights and to do bigger things and scarier things. And I don’t think we should ever underestimate the impact we have on others when we decide to be brave with our lives.

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Lisa Niver:

It’s really beautiful that your family has also been a part of this. You are one of seven children and raising four children and you lived in Singapore, you’ve done so many incredible things. I love the comment you made about the airplane that in order for the airplane to take off, it takes 25% of the fuel to get in the air. Because I know for a lot of people trying to be courageous, the beginning is so hard and I really appreciate the 50 steps you give people. Another thing that’s problematic, and maybe you can speak to this, if it’s universal or worse in the United States, is we don’t have a great definition of failure. In your book, you talk about what failure really is. Can you help people redefine failure as part of the process and not the end.

Dr. Margie Warrell:

Yes, it is part of the process. Let me just say this, the greatest reward we get from acting with courage and being brave in any of the many ways we can be brave is not what we achieve from it. It’s not that we had the incredible trip around the world or we climbed to the top of the mountain because we might not have got to the top of that mountain. There was a strong chance.  You don’t always get to choose how badly altitude impacts you and it can impact very fit people. But it’s not about what you achieve. It’s not about whether you fall short and fail when you are trying to do something. It’s who you become in the process. And so failing at something shows that you actually have got the guts to try. Don’t over personalize it, make it mean something.

Failure is an event. It is not a person. You are not a failure. You just tried something and didn’t succeed at it. You put effort towards something and didn’t land the desired outcome. Sometimes we get an even better outcome though. It’s not what we think we wanted at the time. But looking back, we can say, I’m really glad that happened because I wouldn’t be who I am now and where I am now. Had it not been for that failure, that relationship breakup, that job that didn’t work out, that business that didn’t take off because I ended up doing something else and I learned something else. We have to be careful in the stories that we tell ourselves that we are not spinning ourselves a yarn that we are a failure. No, you tried something, you got result B and you wanted result A, learn the lessons, mind them for the gold that they hold.

Examine it, do an autopsy on it. What happened, what did I miss? What did I not do? Maybe it was totally out of your control. Maybe something that was seismic in the world was happening- I think of 2020 –people who were opening a restaurant in March, 2020 or something, right? Maybe it failed, because it was just what was going on. You are not a failure. But even if you launched it and it didn’t take off, you just didn’t know things. You didn’t know all the things you needed to know. And now you know more so take the lessons. Maybe you needed to secure more financing. Maybe you needed to get more stakeholders on board. And you thought that just because you had the best idea that was enough.

No, you needed to get a coalition of other people supporting you. Maybe you needed to manage people differently. Maybe you didn’t handle an issue and it got out of control. Maybe you didn’t repair trust when it was damaged. And that had a ripple effect. Do not tell yourself a story that you are a failure. Look at the failure for what you can learn from it. Failure is just another word for iteration when we’re in a business environment. The word mistake comes from the Latin misstep. It’s a misstep in a direction where you took a step in a direction that didn’t get you what I wanted. Move your step in another direction. Don’t keep stepping in the same direction if it’s not working. Don’t fall for what’s called sunk cost bias where we keep doing more of what’s not working. We don’t want to acknowledge that I’m on a failed course here and sometimes we can get caught in that. Yes. We’ve have to be so careful in our relationship to failure, how we interpret it, what we make it mean, and how we sometimes wrongly internalize it to be about who we are.

Lisa Niver:

That was really beautiful and helpful and I love that. I’ve never heard that about mistake and misstep. That’s amazing. I like that. Learn the lesson and trust your wings, not the branch. Sometimes we learn to fly on the way down. We’re filming in October, it’s breast cancer awareness month. And you mentioned Covid. One of the things in your books is your write about who there’s been a lot of challenges in your family. You wrote about when you were in Papua New Guinea and got held up and had a miscarriage, your loss of your brother and your own personal challenges with food. If someone’s feeling very bereft, your stories can help them feel less alone. When I was getting divorced, people said to me you’re so brave.

I looked that word up in the dictionary because I did not feel brave at all. I’d love if you could speak about -don’t put yourself in a mental wheelchair.  I guess it’s part of how we view failure, but for people that already feel very, very stuck. What are some of the maybe helpful steps that they could reach out for? I know you talk about asking for help and dealing with your brother. What can we share with people at this time? How can they do more self-care?

Dr. Margie Warrell:

The phrase that I like to use is self-fullness. It’s not selfishness and it’s not selflessness, which are both two sides of the same coin. They’re both dysfunctional and they don’t serve us and they do not serve others. Self-fullness- that is filling up your own cup because others can’t drink from an empty cup. You can’t give what you don’t have. I’ve had to work at that. I still have to work at that. I had to work at it a lot more when I had young children at home. You have to prioritize your children’s needs. They need to be fed, nappies, diapers need to be changed. You’ve got to put your kids first in the morning when they get up versus you going off for an hour and a half to do a yoga class because you have children.

So I get that there may be people listening to this who think, Hey, I’ve got a whole lot of responsibilities. I can’t just go off to a spa when I want it. I can’t even afford it. But, there’s always something you can do that helps to top up your cup and in doing so, it expands your bandwidth to do everything else better. The heavier the load that we are carrying, the more crucial it is for us to prioritize what empowers us and what helps us bring our best selves to whatever problems and pressures that we are dealing with. When I was a kid my dad used to take us out in his old rusty tin boat and sometimes it would spring a leak and he always said, “boats don’t sink because of the water around them, they sink because of the water that gets in them.”

Boats don't sink bc of the water AROUND them but from water that gets IN them. Given the storms raging right now, don't let them pull you down or off course. Rather CHOOSE to model the values & mindset you want to see in others. That's #leadership & it's needed more than ever. pic.twitter.com/TB2qJVrRPG

— Dr Margie Warrell (@margiewarrell) November 1, 2023

When you are dealing with a lot of churn and a lot of stormy waves and a lot’s going on around you, it’s easy to feel like you are going under. It is just so much going on and you can feel down on yourself, down on life, down on your luck, down on everybody else treating the people who love you the most, the worst. And that’s where we have to just take whatever amount of time you can take, even if you can only do 10 minutes in a day, take 10 minutes and go for a walk around the block and listen to some music, and sit under a tree. I can read something that speaks to my spirit. In my book, You’ve Got This, I wrote about the importance of having daily rituals and practices. When I say rituals, I’m not talking about going to mass every day. I’m talking about the small little things that you do that just help to fill you up physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I feel very passionately about prioritizing those things and how I start my day because how I start my day sets me up for the day.

Lisa Niver:

You spoke about how challenging it can be for people with young children. We also see challenges with the sandwich generation, people caring for young children and caring for their elderly parents. It can be very challenging to ask for help. One of the other things that is really important is forgiveness. We talked about redefining failure. One of the hardest things for people, myself included, when I left my marriage is thinking about how –you make a comment about don’t carry the past weight into the future and that we can have a life as big as we dare. And at the end of life, people regret the things they didn’t do. There is a misunderstanding about what does it mean to forgive that it’s not letting someone who harmed you off the hook, but it’s about carrying that weight yourself. One of the things that really is challenging for people, when they’re trying to be brave and move forward is— I read once you cannot drive your car, if you only look in the rear-view mirror, you can’t go forward. Can you help us think about how to redefine forgiveness?

Dr. Margie Warrell:

Yes, absolutely. I’ve written about forgiveness a lot because I see it causing so much suffering for us. As we’ve heard, it’s like drinking a bottle of poison and waiting for the other person to die. We have to make a distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation. They’re two different things. We might never reconcile with someone. But that doesn’t mean we don’t let go of the anger that we’re holding onto. They’ve got their life to forge, they’ve got their conscience to deal with, that’s their stuff. But I’m not going to hold onto this in myself because it’s eating me from the inside. Forgiveness does begin with forgiving ourselves, forgiving that part of us that may have trusted someone.

Maybe we stayed in a situation longer than in hindsight, we should have. Not paying attention to signs, not listening to our gut continually making excuses for something, turning a blind eye, et cetera. For our own failings. None of us are perfect. Jesus said in the Bible, Let he, who among you who hasn’t sinned, throw the first stone. We love to throw stones, but none of us get it right all the time. For myself, sometimes some people are harder to forgive. We can hold onto those vindictive thoughts and just be sitting there kind of wishing something bad would happen to someone and it would serve them right. We have to forgive ourselves for being human too.

We’re all human. None of us are perfect. We’re not all loving all the time. The more we can extend grace to ourselves and extend grace to others the more it frees our energy to move on and make the most of our lives to be a person that lifts ourselves and lifts others and isn’t bogged down in blame and resentment and bitterness and vindictiveness. That’s how life works. I look at this as our deep work of being a human. The deep human work to continually shed that which keeps us from showing up as the highest holiest, bravest, best version of who it is we can be. We are many selves and we have many aspects of who we can be. Continually peeling off those layers to quote Ann Lamar of what keeps us a stranger to the best of who we are.

Lisa Niver:

That was very beautiful. I do think those are incredible goals for ourselves. You write in your books about setting goals, and in my book, I talk about being brave. I’ve been asking people on my podcast before we finish, and you’ve shared so many brave challenges, obviously living on multiple continents and climbing the highest mountains. But is there any brave challenge that you want to share with us? Maybe something you’ve already done or something that you’re planning to do next? What’s something that’s on your list? What challenge are you looking forward to?

Dr. Margie Warrell:

Oh, thank you. I’m currently writing my next book, which is in itself a challenge because I want this book to impact people in a way beyond any of my previous books. So that is a challenge. I’m also looking at what the next season of life holds in terms of where am I being called to step up in bigger ways in the world beyond what I already have done now that the season of the day in, day out raising of children is past. I have a strong ethos around using our gifts for good in the world. I’m not sure what that is actually Lisa, but I’m just sitting with it. It takes a level of courage sometimes and I’m not as good at this to just sit in the questions and in the not-knowing and to be patient and wait for the path forward to reveal itself versus going out and trying to figure out what that path is. Sometimes I need to trust that I’m going to get clarity over time versus being in the doing and sitting in a place of being versus in the doing. That’s a muscle that I have to flex myself and strengthen is just to be versus to always be doing.

Lisa Niver:

I think that is a good lesson for everyone to think about being more of a human being than a human doing. If people want more from you, obviously they can find your books. You have books everywhere, Amazon, and on your website. I know you have the Train the Brave Challenge, but tell people where can they find you and what would you recommend if someone is new to your work, what book should they start with and, and how can they get more of you?

Dr. Margie Warrell:

Thank you. I would invite you to just go over to my website margiewarrell.com and I have my own Live Brave podcast that you can check out wherever you listen to podcasts. And jump on Amazon and check out my books. I would recommend my book, Brave, but if you’re feeling really stuck and you just want to reset or a new vision for your life, I’d recommend starting with Make Your Mark, a guidebook for living a brave hearted life.

Lisa Niver:

You are such an inspiration, Margie. I really appreciate you spending this time with me and my listeners. I’ve been working hard on what does it mean to be brave, and your books were really helpful to me, so thank you.

Dr. Margie Warrell:

Oh, my pleasure, Lisa. Thank you for inviting me onto your podcast.

LISTEN on APPLE PODCAST: MAKE YOUR OWN MAP

Learn more about Margie and her climbing adventure in Kilmanjaro with her family: Click here

“Growth and comfort can’t coexist. Just because something is hard and uncomfortable doesn’t mean its bad. Embrace the discomfort; look for the growth.“

The post Courageous Living: Margie Warrell on Embracing Challenges appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

I loved interviewing Jen Ruiz, Jen on a Jet Plane, to learn more about her as an accomplished travel content creator, author, and lawyer. Jen has dedicated her life to exploring the far corners of the globe, uncovering hidden gems, and sharing invaluable travel tips with her audience. Her insatiable passion for adventure has taken her around the world, and she is a true authority on all things travel. Get ready to be inspired, as we embark on an unforgettable journey with Jen, unraveling her remarkable tales and learning about her portfolio of projects.

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

TRANSCRIPT from our interview below: (filmed 19 July 2023)

Lisa Niver:

Good morning. This is Lisa Niver, founder of We Said Go Travel and author of Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless after 50. I am so honored and excited to be here with Jen. Hi Jen.

Jen Ruiz:

Hi Lisa. Thank you for having me.

Lisa Niver:

I loved hearing you speak at Women’s Travel Fest, and I know everybody there in New York was so excited to learn from you. And, the accolades just never stop. You have the TED Talk, Amazon top bestselling books, and you have a brand new project! Congratulations.

Jen Ruiz:

Thank you very much. I work hard.

Lisa Niver:

You do work very hard and I loved watching your TED talk and we’ll put it in the notes if people want to have the opportunity to learn from your brilliance. My book has 50 challenges before I turned 50. Many people talk to me about ageism and how we represent older women. You’re talking about being 29, turning 30, and the stereotypes of the box of “this is what women must do.” Talk about your TED Talk and 29 turning 30 and what inspired your life of being on the road.

Jen Ruiz:

Absolutely. So for me, it was very much a pressure because I’ve always been an overachiever. It’s just been a lifelong thing for me. Turning 30, which is a big milestone birthday, I feel like it’s the first milestone birthday where the birthday matters not in an eager way, but in an anxious way. Because at 10, you’re not realizing it. At 20, you’re wanting to get to 21 so you can drink, but 30 becomes the point where you’re like, oh man, it’s getting real. Now, I’m an adult and there are things that are expected of me. Am I where I want to be in life? It’s where you really start reckoning with yourself. And as a woman particularly, as a single woman, who was very successful in her career. I had already started getting a lot of comments about why I wasn’t married, why I didn’t have children, if I was at all worried about my clock stopping, being able to have healthy children, having geriatric pregnancies.

What was wrong with me that I was still single, what is my fatal flaw that has made all men decide to run the other way? And so it felt like even though I had achieved so much up until that point, that I had still failed in the most quintessential way of what is expected of a woman, which is to be a wife and a mother. And I hadn’t reached that by 29. I had so much pressure on myself to try to reach that in the way where in my twenties I worked so hard to mold myself to be what I thought men wanted to try to accommodate them. Now as a 35 year old woman, none of that is happening. I will not bake you your favorite meal while dressed in really amazing clothing.

All of that is something that I did in my twenties to try to prove my worth. And I realized that despite doing all of that, I didn’t get the results that were expected of me. I felt like there was something inadequate about me as a result. My option was either to take that year and continue trying to mold myself, continue swiping on dating apps, continue trying to find somebody and be the perfect person that they might one day want to marry. I could take that year and actually try to live for myself, actually send off my twenties in style. Actually take that last year of my “wild and free youth days,” right? I’m very aware of the passing of time. I was very aware that I was not going to get my twenties back and that I had spent my twenties living for others, achieving things, going straight through law school, straight to taking the bar straight into practicing law.

I hadn’t actually really taken the time to do anything for me. I had a Tinder date and we were supposed to spend New Year’s Eve together in New York. I thought this might be a really fun thing. I’ve never celebrated New Year’s in New York, which I’m actually so glad I didn’t do because I hear people wear diapers to go there <laugh> because you have to stay in the same spot for over 12 hours. It actually sounded horrible and I think I dodged the bullet there as I did with all the other men that it didn’t work out with. But I thought at the time I had glamorized this guy who was not my boyfriend, he’s made that very clear, but who I’ve been dating for six months.

We had plans for New Year’s. He was in med school and he ended up ghosting me in early December. At this point, of course I had paid for the tickets. Of course I had paid for the hotel room. Of course I had done everything right because this is the poor med school guy. And I’m just so desperate to get him to go so that I can celebrate New Year’s with a partner and have a midnight’s kiss and not be watching my parents kiss at midnight or everybody else kiss at midnight or trying to not have random guy kiss me at midnight, which is how all my other New Years had gone. I want that quintessential New Year’s. And I didn’t get it. I got ghosted early December and I got stuck with these two tickets.

I ended up trading that all in and using that money that I had spent instead to take myself to Athens, Greece, where I celebrated the New Year’s by myself. I actually celebrated it on a plane. It was midnight when I was, flying on my way into Athens. And I remember thinking wow, I really love celebrating New Year’s on a plane. Because there isn’t a countdown. No one’s trying to kiss me. I don’t feel inadequate. Nobody even knows what time it is. Because everybody’s come from a different place. This is the best new year I’ve ever had and it’s just been a minute into it. My birthday’s January 3rd, so the beginning of the year coincides with a new year for me. It’s a big transition time. I spent that birthday really finding joy in my own company.

I did all the things I wanted to do. I remember I specifically found a woman from a Rick Steve supplement that I reached out to her and splurged on a private tour with her of the Acropolis Museum. She was so educated and she knew so much and all the guards knew her. Even when they were closing, we were able to stay 15 minutes extra. It really felt like I was a VIP with her. At the end of that she said, you’re going to find your person when you find them. In the meantime you have a home here with me in Greece anytime you want to visit. I remember feeling so lifted by all of those interactions that when I came back, I thought to myself, how can I keep that feeling going for the rest of the year so I don’t slip back into that fear, that insecurity, those feelings of inadequacy. I wanted to stay empowered. Stay really happy naturally just for existing, which is what traveling was bringing me. I decided to take 12 trips in 12 months as a challenge. I was working full-time as an attorney, so it was going to be a challenge to figure out how to afford it. It was going be a challenge to figure out how to get time off. And all of those challenges kept me hyper-focused on my goal instead of anxious and panicking over turning 30.

Lisa Niver:

Wow. I I think it’s so true what you’re saying, that there’s this little box that we put women in, and you’re right, it’s about feeling inadequate and feeling shamed. And we do this strange thing when people get into college instead of saying– wow, we’re so proud of you. We say, “What’s your major?” And when I got married, people asked me immediately, “When are you having a baby?” And for you turning 30, “What’s wrong with you?” In my twenties, I ended up at medical school and I had to make a choice. Did I want to spend all my 20s in this building all day long? Do I want to be in training all of my twenties? I’ve been in school forever. And I ended up going on leave and leaving graduate school. I ended up working at Club Med. That’s what started me on traveling. I thought, “Is this the life I want?” So you did this challenge 12 trips in 12 years and you are an attorney, but I loved what you said in your TED Talk that you actually had a side hustle. You were teaching English to afford these trips.

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Jen Ruiz:

Yes. 12 months, not 12 years.

Lisa Niver:

YES, 12 trips in 12 months. And you’re working on a book about it?

Jen Ruiz:

Yes, I am writing a memoir about that year in particular. It was definitely challenging. I ended up taking 20 trips to 41 cities across 11 countries and I used all my sick leave. I called out sick from a hot air balloon in Albuquerque for the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Festival. I called out sick to go to Epcot, for a VIP taping of the Chew. I remember thinking I hope my boss isn’t watching me on TV right now eating this delicious chocolate croissant <laugh>. I really felt like the time is now, if I don’t do it now, I’m not ever going to get the chance to do this again. When I was at a private firm, I never took my sick days or any leave.

I would work Thanksgiving Day and Christmas day. I remember being at a party on Christmas day and being at a pizza party that they took us to after one o’clock. I remember thinking it would be a better gift to just let me go home instead of being here at this obligatory Christmas party with all you people that I don’t want to spend Christmas with <laugh>. It was horrible. I had already sacrificed so much that I didn’t allow myself to feel guilty about using every single hour that had been allocated to me as time that I had off. I was able to afford the trips by taking on a second job teaching English online every morning before work. I would, not have the energy to do this now at 35. Not even now just a few years later.

I don’t know how I did it then, the young energy of the twenties. But, I would be teaching from 2:00 AM to 8:30 AM I’d very quickly throw on a suit and then I’d head into work at 9:00 AM. I would do that to make an extra 1500 to $2,000 a month because when I had asked for a raise as an attorney, I’d gotten a $5,000 raise and it came out to an extra hundred dollars a paycheck or something negligible. Whereas making that side hustle money allowed me to actually have a real cushion where I could pay for those trips. I needed to learn how to budget within that amount, find affordable flights through travel hacking and budget airlines. I went to the library. Those still exist and they are my favorite places.

I rented out the entire section. You can take 22 books at a time. I would take an entire pile of books home and read how to travel better. Scott Keys, who’s the owner of Scott’s Chief Flights, had a few books that were out and that was basically my bible of how can I save money on these trips and how can I get there for the money I have allocated. I made it work and at the end of that year had used up all my leave. I still had one other trip booked in February of the next year to Portugal that I had found for $300 round trip.

I still had one or two sick days left. Part of my strategy was to take off a Friday or a Monday, I’d go for a long weekend andI’d time it around a holiday. I was very grateful to have coworkers that were happy to step in if anything happened while I was gone. I purposely didn’t schedule things for days that I knew I was going to be away. And I remember that trip in February for Portugal. I actually did schedule an orthodontist appointment at the time because I wanted to feel justified. I actually did go to the doctor today on this sick day that I have used. And I remember my boss textedme when I called out sick and said, “You’re only supposed to be out sick for actual sick days.”

I said, “I’m in the doctor’s office right now.” I’m here in the doctor’s office this morning and then in the afternoon I was supposed to be leaving from Miami, which was a two hour drive from Naples where I was working. That whole interaction with my boss and being called out even on that day where I actually was not on a balloon but actually in the doctor’s office rattled me so much that I made it all the way to Miami and I didn’t realize that I had left my passport in the house. At that point I was too late to go back the two hour drive to Naples and make it back to Miami. My flight was so cheap that they were not able to reschedule me on the next flight going out that weekend.

So I lost everything that I had planned for that weekend in Portugal. I ultimately didn’t go and I was so angry. I didn’t want to let that weekend go to waste so that weekend I went home and I thought something’s coming out of this weekend one way or the other. And in those two days, I wrote my first book. By March, I had self-published it. In April, it was already a bestseller in eight categories. Later that year, I won a reader’s favorite award and then by end of April I quit my job.

Lisa Niver:

Wow. You are definitely a one woman force!

Jen Ruiz:

<Laugh>.

Lisa Niver:

In your Ted talk, you mention the pressure on women as mothers and wives and living up to the standard, like you’re joking about I’m not going to cook in my fancy clothes, but many people feel pressure that they can’t even take a sick day when they’re sick. I think that’s evolved somewhat with the COVID rollercoaster. Certainly the time you’re talking about 2017, a couple years before that it was different and there still is pressure. So some people are listening– thinking I could never do this. I could never work in the morning. People have a lot of excuses. Basically what you’re saying is I committed. What inspired this love of travel? Did you travel with your family when you were very young or did you study abroad? What made travel so appealing? What hooked into your psyche about getting out?

Jen Ruiz:

I realized I have always been the same person. Even as I look back, hindsight being 20/20, I’ve realized certain things. Taking the sick days for work, I used to cut school a lot in high school to do what I thought were mental health days. I had straight A’s in high school, so I would tell my mom, I’m taking a mental health day today. I’m going to the store at the mall to try on pretty princess dresses and the pretty prom dresses and then get some ice cream. I had the flexibility because I was such a good student because I was already doing well on the SATs because I was already getting straight A’s because I was already in all the AP classes and I wasn’t suffering.

So my mom gave me leeway. Now I didn’t have leeway to go out at night after the sunset and the automatic lights came on, on the street I had to be in, because I was still the first daughter and my mom was very overprotective. But I did get leeway during the day on how to spend my day. So I realized that I’ve always been that same person. I’ve always still taken those days and felt that as long as I have my things together, as long as I’m still performing, why do you care what I do with my time? If I have the same output, if I’m still getting A’s, I got a full scholarship to college. So that’s the goal of doing well in high school. I’ve just always felt like I should be in charge of my own time and how I do it.

And that’s why I thrive now as an entrepreneur because I do have that self discipline. My mom was a teacher and later worked her way up to be a principal. So sometimes she would come and take a cut day with me. She would say, I’m going join you. Let’s go for lunch at the Colombian restaurant. Those are my most fond memories. I can recall one or two things I actually did in school, but every single day that I cut school with my mom, every single day that I went and actually enjoyed myself were the formative things in my mind where I thought this is what it’s all about. It’s not just about sitting in a desk and doing the routine and being a warm body in a chair. It’s about actually living.

I never got to go to summer camp. I never got to go to anybody’s sleepovers. I could have people come sleep over my house, but I could not sleep over anybody’s house. I could not be out past a certain time at night. So she made it fun during the day. Instead of going to summer camp, we had mommy’s great summer camp. Since she had the summers off, instead of me going to a sleepaway camp, we would do a different educational activity. We would go and visit Longwood Gardens in Philadelphia. We would go to Amish country and learn about how the Amish people lived and try their delicious home churned ice cream which is so good.

Very early on, it sparked an interest in me in learning. And that’s why I love traveling. I just got back from Oklahoma and people are surprised to see me in Oklahoma. There’s something to be experienced. There’s something to be seen. There are stories to be told. There are people to meet everywhere in the world. And I get just as excited about going to Oklahoma as I do about going to Thailand. To me, they’re equivalent because I’m going to have fun everywhere I go, meeting new people, learning new things, seeing that. And that’s something that she really instilled in me from a young age. When I graduated high school with honors/cum laude, full scholarship to college my mom and I went together and did a trip to Europe.

She had never been to Europe before. My mom is Puerto Rican. She had been raised on the island. She hadn’t really traveled much. And this was our first international trip. And so she did it at the time through AAA and Trafalgar, the tour group. And she paid so much money for that and she was in the middle of a divorce, so she really didn’t have the money. I knew that it was a stretch for her to pay for that trip for two weeks in Switzerland, Italy, France, the UK. All the major hits around Europe in Rome, Venice, Paris.

I realized pretty quickly while in Italy, our first stop– there was one meal where they were feeding us peas and ham. I remember saying, “Mom, why are we in Italy eating frozen peas and ham provided by the tour group? I could throw a rock and hit 20 delicious pasta restaurants right outside of this hotel.” At the time, because I still love libraries, I used to go to the library every day after school for about three hours until my mom got off work and could come and pick me up. A library is my safe space. I had gone to the library and I had rented the Europe for Dummies book and it says that we can go here, here and here.

I’m pretty confident that I can get us to these places just with the knowledge in this book. Let’s ditch the tour. Let’s keep them for the intercity transport obviously, and the hotel nights that we’ve already paid for. But I’m done. I refuse to eat frozen peas and ham in Italy. I know I can do better. We ditched the tour and we went around like Rome at night and we took a day trip out to Stonehenge that she’d always wanted to see and that wasn’t in our itinerary. She said, “Are you sure?” And I said, “Yes, mom. You just get on the train and then you get off the train and then you’re there.”

I had taken public transportation for high school. So I was already very familiar. I got us around Europe with the Europe for Dummies book and we had a better time with the itineraries that I picked from the book then with whatever was pre-planned professionally by Trafalgar. That was my first instinct where I can do this travel thing and I can do it well. When I was graduating law school, I realized that I had done seven years of schooling without any study abroad period because I was so busy running for student government, being on the model UN team, being super over involved. I actually purposely took a class in international law to be able to then apply to work with law reform commissions around the world for summer. I got accepted to work with the Australian Law Reform Commission in Sydney.

The year before I graduated law school, I spent a summer in Sydney, Australia by myself. Everybody else doing this program was going with someone else from their school. I went on my own, I knew I would figure it out. That was my first time being literally across the world, a whole different opposite time zone from everybody I knew. I did not know anybody. I think for the three week mark–when you get really hit with homesickness, where you’re like, oh, I miss all the foods. I know I miss talking to people. But once you make it over that hump, then you actually think this is awesome. I never wanna go home. I loved Australia. I had a great time. I mean, I met a kangaroo, a koala while I was there.

I saw the Sydney Harbor bridge and the Sydney vivid lights. I met a handsome guy there who was one of the cutest guys I’ve ever dated. I had a whole time there in Australia that was amazing. I knew I liked travel and it wasn’t something I had a lot of time for when I started practicing. The year before my 12 trips in 12 months challenge, when I transitioned from the private law firm to the nonprofit law firm where I at least had federal holidays at least I didn’t have to work on Christmas at least I had, 4th of July off, I actually did a mini challenge and I took six trips that year to Machu Picchu, to Barcelona, to Rocky Mountain National Park. I loved it so much that was part of what sparked the then 12 trips in 12 months challenge. And now it’s what I do for a living.

Lisa Niver:

Yes, you do. So you have five bestselling books on Amazon where you are really helping people do some of what you did. You have the flight information and you have this whole series of incredible books and your memoir is coming next year, which will be even more inspiration. One of the things I think that people don’t realize is how much in the moment you have to be when you’re traveling. When you’re out, you have to focus on finding where to eat and the train. For me, it is very invigorating. One of the things in your TED Talk, you talked about loneliness as an epidemic and loneliness as something dangerous. People do get so worried, who will I go with? Who will I talk to? Can you speak about that. I know for myself, when I was traveling in Asia, if you are by yourself, everybody wants to know what are you doing? And if you stay in a hostel, everybody bands together, I went to the Xi’an Warriors from a hostel and we all went on the bus following the directions from the Lonely Planet. Get on bus six and get off after four stops and walk six blocks. Just like you said about Italy, it doesn’t seem that hard.

Jen Ruiz:

It can be intimidating, especially for women who have this fear of going alone, of eating alone, of safety. Having grown up in Philadelphia, gone to law school in Baltimore, which are crime heavy places, I felt like I could survive pretty much anywhere. I’d taken self-defense classes. I know avoidance is the best self-defense. If you see something crazy, walk across the street, give yourself distance to be able to react. I love eating alone. It’s my favorite thing to do. I do it all the time, even when I’m home, because it means I can eat anything I want and stuff my face completely. I don’t have to worry about being dainty. I don’t have to worry about anybody watching me.

Jen Ruiz:

I can always get the appetizer, the drink and the dessert. I don’t have to pick one. I can do all of them. And then abroad you actually have wifi in restaurants, it’s much less of an issue. But at the time, sometimes cell service was spotty, so being at a restaurant was the one place where I can actually take my time and decompress. I can look through my pictures, upload things, message my mom, make sure she knows I’m okay. I could take that time just for me. And I loved it. I have always been asked, a table for one, and then next thing you know, everybody wants to talk to me. I just came back from Easter Island where I sat down trying to mind my business have a calm dinner.

Jen Ruiz:

I really wanted to have a fancy fish, something really nice. By the time I left dinner that night, which we closed down the restaurant, my entire table was full. Everybody had come to talk to me, first it started with the waiters, then other people from other tables. And I thought, this is what happens. Because when you are in your element, I feel like I’m a light. I’m shining a light and I attract people and I attract things to me. I had an entire opera dedicated to me in Florence because I got there early, which for Italian time is like super early, right? So I was there before anyone else and I spoke to some of the people that are here at the ticket booth and the performers.

Jen Ruiz:

I just was happy and excited. I had good energy and I had paid an extra $20 to sit in the front row. Which I don’t think anybody my age did as there was nobody my age at an opera in Florence. It just wasn’t the top billing for people. But I was really excited to be in this intimate setting, which felt like a church turned performance venue where you could really hear the acoustics. I was really loving it. Halfway through the opera, the man stopped to say we wanna dedicate a song to a special lady in the front row. And I’m looking around wondering who are they dedicating this to? And it’s me. I’m a special lady. And then this man sang to me in the most beautiful Italian song with his deep voice.

Jen Ruiz:

It was so wonderful. And it’s those moments where I feel beyond elated and I just can’t believe that that’s my life. And I get to live in that moment, in that body, it makes me feel alive. It can go either way when I’m vibrating on a much lower frequency, when I’m angry, when I’m annoyed I can chase people away without them even coming near me, right? Like they sense it and the next thing you know, they do a beeline and all of a sudden everything around me is clear. But when that energy is on in the right way, it is endless. The amount of things that come to me all the time, all the free things, everybody that wants to show me stuff, everybody that wants to give me gifts. Like, it’s insane.

Jen Ruiz:

And it really just comes from being happy. I know that that’s crazy and it’s not something that we as Americans really know about or ever live in that element, but just having that attitude of gratitude, curiosity, happiness, to be there, just a general excited energy, it brings so much to me. Whereas I feel or most of us, we live in a state of constantly stressed out, constant scarcity and that repels people and it repels experiences. When I was coming back from one of the trips, I remember telling my brother exactly this and how I just feel so different when I’m traveling than I do when I’m in the office. I feel like a completely different version of myself and I don’t like who I am when I’m in the office. I don’t like who I am when I’m in the courtroom, almost like a warrior trying to like decapitate the opponents, being so vicious and so mean.

Jen Ruiz:

And I love who I am when I’m traveling and my brother said, why don’t you figure out a way to have that same energy all along? I said, ” You are right. I shall quit my job and I shall do this all along. I should just travel all the time. You are correct.” He said–that’s not what I was saying. I still feel that way even though I do it for work, which makes it a little bit more serious than when I do it for leisure. I never get somewhere and forget how lucky I am that people are there to share with me their life’s work. Waiting to meet me excited that they can show me what they do in hopes that I can share it with others.

Jen Ruiz:

It is such a privilege to do what I do and that’s why I don’t care where it is that I’m doing it. I met two indigenous artists in Oklahoma last week and they were waiting there for me the entire morning just to show me their paintings, their textiles. They said- we’ve researched you. We’re following you on Instagram. We’re so excited to meet you. And it’s an honor that people feel that way about me. And even if that meant that I was up at 4:00 AM to catch the 6:00 AM flight. Immediately, I get energized when I have those interactions. And that’s why I know I’m in the right career.

Lisa Niver:

Wow. Well you are definitely a masterclass in being open to opportunities and being grateful and forging your own path. Because you said I’m not giving into the societal pressure of this is what’s meant to be or supposed to be. You are living many people’s dream life as you know. Before we close, I’ve been asking all my guests since my book is coming out soon. I did 50 challenges before I turned 50, and obviously you did your 12 trips, but it was really 20 ‘before you turned 30. I’ve been asking people the most worthwhile challenge and I think you’ve shared so many already. Maybe there’s something about if you give a challenge to other people or what is next for you? You have this huge library of successful books. You’ve clearly traveled all around the planet. Is there a challenge that you are looking forward to or something you haven’t done yet?

Jen Ruiz:

I’m still trying to be the very best version of myself. So right now I am doing a lot of personal challenges. I’ll be running my first half marathon next February. I really want to get in the best shape of my life because I feel like I’ve been very critical on myself, on how I look. I’ve never worn a two-piece bathing suit, even when I was in my twenties. And I could have then. I look at it now and I can’t believe you thought you didn’t look good. Are you crazy? Now it’s, it’s much difficult in my thirties. I’d like to be the healthiest version of me. I’d like to really feel strong and so that’s something that I’m working towards getting to the gym regularly, training for that half marathon, being healthy outside and also being healthy inside.

Jen Ruiz:

I’ve done a lot of work — different therapy, different coaching, really wanting to figure out what are my triggers, how can I better manage them, how can I be more kind and forgiving to myself, less judgmental, things like that. And doing the deeper work that I don’t think you really even think about until you start to see, well, how can I improve myself? Because I think it’s so easy to say it’s everybody else that’s wrong. Instead of what is it about me that I still need to work on? And I still have a lot of things that I’ve identified. So it’s felt very much like an internal and external journey to try to be the best version of me that I can. And I don’t know that this is something I can put a timeline on or be like by the end of the year I’m gonna have it nailed down pat.

Jen Ruiz:

My money mindset was a big thing I had to work on when I switched from law because I thought do I deserve to get paid to do what I do? Do I deserve to be paid more than I did as an attorney? Was being an attorney a more important job than what I do now? Should I just be so grateful to just be hosted instead of asking for money for the work that I do? And so I’ve worked a lot on mindset, I’ve worked a lot on internal things and it’s constant work. I’m very interested in continuing to develop myself internally and externally so that I can be really proud of that final product. I still feel like I’m rough around the edges and I’m trying to shine and mold it and make it into the best it can be. I don’t know that that’ll happen before 40, before 50. It’s probably ongoing. I find myself still sometimes falling back into scarcity and I have to remind myself –you are abundant. You can make things happen so it’s not a set timeline that I can say I’m gonna write 30 blog posts in 30 days or anything like that. But it is my biggest challenge at the moment and something that I’m interested to committing a lot of time to.

Lisa Niver:

Well I can’t wait to keep following you on your journey. I know everyone else is excited about your upcoming book, your current books. So where do people find you? Do you have a certain platform? What’s your best website? How can people learn more?

Jen Ruiz:

Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me at jenonajet plane.com, like leaving on a jet plane. And same thing on all the socials, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook at @Jenonajet plane and on Amazon-my books are under Jen Ruiz.

Lisa Niver:

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. You really are inspiring and I can’t wait to read your books.

Jen Ruiz:

Thank you, Lisa. Likewise.

LISTEN on APPLE PODCAST: MAKE YOUR OWN MAP

The post Jen on a Jet Plane: Journeying Beyond Borders appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

I am inspired by all that Beth Santos has created. It was an honor to speak to her for my podcast after meeting her in NYC at the Travel and Adventure Show where we were both speakers. Her LinkedIn says that she is disrupting travel for women but I believe she is changing the world for women! You can watch our interview on YouTube, read the transcript below or listen on your favorite podcast platform.

Wanderful‘s book club will discuss my new book, BRAVE-ish, on Dec 16, 2023. I hope you will join us and I cannot wait to read her new book, Wander Woman, coming on March 5, 2024. Learn more below about Wanderful, Wanderfest and see you in Utah for Women in Travel Summit in April 12-14 2024.

Another title for this interview was “Maximum Beth: Disrupting Travel for Women, Changing the Wander World Worldwide – A Community Builder’s Journey” If you are traveling in Boston, make sure to eat at her Ula Cafe. Thank you to Beth Santos for making time to share her incredible journey!

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

TRANSCRIPT from our interview below: (filmed Sept 28, 2023)

Lisa Niver:

This is Lisa Niver and I am the author of Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless after Fifty. I am so beyond thrilled and excited to be here today with Beth Santos. Hello Beth. Welcome. Thank you for being here.

Beth Santos:

Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Lisa Niver:

Oh my goodness. It is. I’ve been researching you and it’s hard to sum you up because you are a force of nature. I appreciate that your social media is called Maximum Beth, because I think you are constantly at maximum capacity, what you’ve accomplished for women. I know you focus on women in travel, but I think that you are really changing women in business and women entrepreneurship for everyone, so thank you.

Beth Santos:

Aw, I really appreciate that. That’s really sweet. Maximum Beth is what they called me in college, so the name stuck and I like to keep busy.

Lisa Niver:

One of the things I noticed since you brought up college, let’s start there, is that you have a lot of places that you worked in conjunction. Being in an acapella group is a very specific kind of music where everyone’s piece makes a big difference. You really have to bring everyone along or it doesn’t work.

Beth Santos:

Absolutely. That’s an interesting insight. I also did crew in college, which is very similar to that. Everyone works as a team. Everyone has to put in their unique part, and you make something. That’s how I’ve always viewed leadership. Honestly, in running a business, you are salesperson, number one. When I say sales, it doesn’t always mean financial. It also means you have to sell this idea to every single person that works with you, who collaborates with you. Your team has to believe at least close to as passionately as you do about the work that you’re doing. Otherwise, you’re not going to get as far as you want to go.

Lisa Niver:

I did wonder about that. How did you get involved in crew? It’s a tough sport. 4:30 AM workouts.

Beth Santos:

It’s funny. My husband now is just like, really? You were an athlete. My current hardcore workout is pulling weeds in my garden. But no, I loved it. I actually did it in high school first. I grew up in coastal New Hampshire and so you would do any kind of workout if you saw the view that I went out with. We would do afternoon workouts when we were kids. It’s just something that I fell in love with. When I went to college, I thought I’m going to keep this going. 4:30 AM Yes, it’s pretty rough. But also there’s a lot of comradery in it, to all be together and to see the sunrise. It was a really magical time in my life. I don’t know if I could do it now, but I loved doing it then.

Lisa Niver:

I’ve read a lot of research about women CEOs that make a big impact. Most of them come from an athletic team background and understand how to bring people together and what coaching is required.

Beth Santos:

Yes. I believe that. Absolutely.

Lisa Niver:

You’ve brought together a hundred million women with Wanderful. That is incredible.

Beth Santos:

Thank you. Yes, it’s been a lot of fun. It all comes from, when we first started, I was in business school and I was interacting with the startup ecosystem. A lot of businesses start with an idea, and then the second thing they’re trying to do is they’re trying to build a customer base. For us, it was always the opposite. We always had this community and this understanding with each other. It started from when I began blogging and built an audience and then realized we have all these women who are having a lot of the same pains. Let’s create something that addresses that. It evolved organically in its own way. It’s been really fun to just continue to serve the community and to give them great ways to connect with each other and to feel confident and supported in travel, which isn’t always how the travel industry makes us feel as women.

Lisa Niver:

Absolutely. So 2009, kind of the beginning of the blog ecosystem you started Wanderful.

Beth Santos:

Yes.

Lisa Niver:

Then you came up with the Women in Travel Summit, which is about 10 years old now, right? This is going to be the 10^th year?

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Beth Santos:

Yes!  We started our very first one in 2014. This year is our 10th one. And then we’ll have done it for 10 full years next year.

Lisa Niver:

It’s really incredible. And 500 people came to Puerto Rico?

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Beth Santos:

Yes. Over 500. It was our biggest one. It was 550 people and 50 million impressions.

Lisa Niver:

You are a force. And then you invented something else new in New Orleans. Tell us about WanderFest.

Beth Santos:

I started with a travel blog. I was doing a lot of my own travel which developed into an online magazine, which then developed into a community. It was actually over COVID that we leaned even more into the community aspect of things because none of us could travel anywhere and we all wanted to be in touch with each other and to share our travel stories. So we’ve really built out a lot since then. We’ve been evolving for forever. I feel like every year we’re a different company. Women in Travel Summit (WITS) was something that came about kind of happenstance. It’s a travel creator summit. So in 2014 we had been thinking– we’ve started this travel blog. It’s turned into something. We’re seeing a lot of other people and other women that are building travel blogs.

Let’s bring everyone together. And then it took off. WITS has been around now for 10 whole years. And we thought, our biggest event is a travel creator event, but actually our community is mostly travelers, just women who love to travel. We have a very outspoken and very important component of our community that’s content creators and small business owners. But if you look at sheer numbers, most women are just travel lovers. And so we thought, let’s bring them together and celebrate travel and sisterhood. We got an outdoor plaza in New Orleans. We had music, it was a celebration of travel with the context of travel being culture and being world culture and being the experience of trying new things.

It wasn’t all travel workshops; we did a second line parade. We learned about the history of the New Orleans Baby Dolls. We really leaned into local culture. We had music. We had the first and only all women brass band that did a performance that we all danced to. We had all sorts of like small woman-owned businesses that had tables. It was a lot of fun kind of bringing everyone together. The weather was not the best. It was very, very cold. That’s the only thing I probably would change for the future. The day before the event, it was 75 and sunny, we woke up that morning and it was 39 and the wind was so strong that cinder blocks were being pushed by the wind across the stage.

The weather was horrible and a lot of the women went to the mall next door. At Forever 21, they bought hats and coats and then came back to the festival. As a traveler, you learn that the weather is weather. If you travel to Rome for the first time and it’s raining, you still have to go and enjoy it. You don’t just say, oh, I’ll come back next time. So that’s what I love about travelers.

Lisa Niver:

I love that because I agree that you have to take advantage of what it is. Particularly as women, there’s a lot of things that we can’t control and we have to keep moving forward. And so for anyone who’s listening, we’ll link to all of these amazing things that Beth is talking about WITS, the Women in Travel Summit, and Wander Fest. And during Covid, you invented a cafe as well?

Beth Santos:

I didn’t invent it. I actually took over Ula Cafe. It’s a cafe that’s been in our neighborhood in Boston for the last 15 years. It was being sold in the middle of the pandemic. My husband and I looked at each other with no restaurant experience whatsoever except waiting some tables in high school and college. We saw a community gathering space. Community is something that I have always felt a calling for in my professional career. I feel pretty good about my business capability and knowledge. And I thought, maybe we should do it. And we did. We took it over. We’ve been running it now for two years. It’s taught us so many things. There were so many lessons to learn along the way, but I actually think it’s made me a stronger business owner, even for Wanderful too, because these are two very, very different businesses.

And at the core it’s about community and connection. I think for both of them, you know, Wanderful is online and international ULA Cafe, which is our cafe is in person and face-to-face. But I think at the end of the day, both are tools that you use to connect with others on a human level. But the business model is wildly different. Learning both of them so intimately has actually supported the other ones. We’ve gotten better at our marketing with the café. For Wanderful, we’ve understood business economics better and been able to apply those to some of our products and services. It’s been great to be able to run both side by side. But for the first couple months, it was a pretty wild story. All the things that we had to learn <laugh>

Lisa Niver:

And there are so many different kinds of regulations and food safety and staffing for a café!

Beth Santos:

Everything was different. The building inspector would come by and we didn’t know anything about anything. But it was great. We had a great team. The group that sold the café to us, we were the underdogs. There were many other businesses that were vying for the cafe that were going to break down the café as it stood and then reopen it as a second or third store franchise. They took a bet on us. We were local in the community. It’s the café that’s five minutes down the street from us. We wanted to keep it what it was and jmake it better. We made this whole pitch deck about it and what our vision was. And I like to think that people saw something in that and that our community was really excited to support that. That’s what has carried us and a lot of humor and patience. <Laugh>.

Lisa Niver:

Yes. You have your hands in many different businesses. I love on your LinkedIn that one of your jobs is a very busy 168 hour a week job with a lot of details. Can you explain to people about this job you have on LinkedIn?

Beth Santos:

So, a few months ago, I was thinking about my role as a mom. I am tired of us not giving parents the credit that they deserve for the work that they’re doing. I run a household. Every time I make travel plans, I’m making plans for four people. I run two businesses and get dinner on the table, and I thought, I’m going to add this to my LinkedIn because this is a job too. People have done it before. If people did that more, whether they’re parents or whether they’re caregivers of another kind, we forget that we have this whole other part of our professional careers.

Part of it too was me seeing myself fully. It sounds like I do a lot and I do do a lot, but I think I, like anyone else, I’m always comparing myself to other people and the accomplishments of other people. I remember there were times when I’d be down on myself that I didn’t do X, Y, or Z. And then I think, I’ve been raising two humans at the exact same time. Why am I not acknowledging how valuable and important that work is? I put mom in chief. I decided to phrase it like a real, I’m using like air quotes real job, where I basically said, you know executive assistant, primary social planner responsible for four ongoing executive calendars. Because that’s really what it is. All the things you have to remember and do, and your brain is working a mile a minute, and you get paid for none of it. In fact, it’s pretty expensive.

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Lisa Niver:

I think it’s brilliant. People are starting to recognize more and more the 168 hours of unpaid labor. I think the reason why as parents and women, the air quotes come up is because it’s not paid labor. It is real work. When your child is sick or you have to go in the ambulance with someone, you have a different impact at work the next day because part of your brain is exhausted. And concerned. And you’re trying to make so much happen in the relationship part of our lives. We talk about in business, people work with people who they like, but the people that are closest to us in our family, somehow they don’t get recognized as taking up space in our brains and our day. I loved what you did. I agree travel planning for four calendars with two kids, they’re both in elementary school right now, or littler?

Beth Santos:

The youngest is two, she’s just about to start daycare and my older daughter is in first grade.

Lisa Niver:

Those are busy times when you’re still tying shoes for people. And I believe you’re having an addition, right?

Beth Santos:

Yes. In January we have our third coming.

Lisa Niver:

We wish you happy and healthy. In Hebrew, we say B’sha’a tova, that the baby should arrive at the right time, healthy and a great addition. We know that you’re doing so much with the WITS summit, the café, Wanderfest and the ShesWanderful Community. And like me, you have a book coming out.

Beth Santos:

I love this work. I love the travel industry, I love entrepreneurship. I actually started writing this book years ago. I have like this message I want to share about, traveling by yourself. I wrote the very first chapter, the introduction, when I was pregnant with my first daughter. Then I had her and went into the whirlwind of being a parent for the first time. Then got back into it when I was pregnant with my second child and said I think there’s something here. I really want to write this. And it just so happened it was like the stars had aligned. I found an agent very quickly. She found a publisher very quickly. And the book deal was signed three weeks before I gave birth.

For my maternity leave, I had time sitting and thinking and nursing and thoughts with myself. I had just talked to Dr. Anu Tarana, who published a book called beyond Guilt Trips, Mindful Travel in An Unequal World. I was talking with her about her book and she said, she’s a mother, she has two kids. And she said she wrote her books seven minutes at a time because seven minutes a day was all she had to work on it. And hearing her say that gave me the validation to say, you know what? I can do this. I don’t need to be sitting down for 10 hours a day. Granted, I did sometimes, but I felt this is something I can actually do. I started and I just finished all of the rounds of edits and all of the back and forth with the copy editors on Friday, which today is it less than a week ago. (recorded Sept 2023)

It’s at the publishing house, and I am relaxing now. They that a book is like a baby. But I actually think writing a book is like if you had to go through labor for nine months, just the labor part and then afterward, all the fun stuff happens. So it’s like the reverse of having a baby in my mind. But yes, we’re very excited. Wander Woman How to Reclaim Your Space, Find Your Voice, and Travel the World, Solo is coming out in spring of 2024 on March 5!

Lisa Niver:

That is so exciting. I love what you said about writing in seven minutes and small drips, because for my book, I did 50 challenges before I turned 50, and one of the things I always tell people is to start with very small steps. Those little things add up, just like the seven minutes of writing adds up. Just don’t give up.

Beth Santos:

It becomes more manageable when you think about that. I mentioned there were plenty of days I wrote more, but sometimes your brain stops you with those expectations so much. If you think I have to set aside four hours today to write, you’re never going to do it. But if you say, all I need is 10 minutes, then you might find that time that you needed later. You’ve been able to kind of convince yourself this is doable. I can do this. And actually to get started.

Lisa Niver:

I know you have 50 cities where you have Wanderful meetups. What’s the best way for someone to get involved? You have the Creator Summit and Wander Fest. When someone comes to the site, what are they finding? How do they get involved? What’s the best step?

Beth Santos:

Everything related to Wanderful can be found at our website, which is sheswanderful.com and that will connect you to our membership. There’s a monthly fee for members. You can be a travel member, you can be a creator member where you actually get support on your career as a content creator. There’s a small business membership. And then it lists out all of our local hubs around the world including our global events, our trips. So everything that’s going on there you can find right on our website.

Lisa Niver:

That’s amazing. And what about people that are listening to you –you’re a serial entrepreneur, you’ve done so many things and they think I, I have a small business idea. Do you have any recommendations for someone that’s thinking about it but hasn’t really taken too much action?

Beth Santos:

The first thing you want to do is you really want to just research the market and understand is my idea viable now. Back in the history books, I actually taught social entrepreneurship at a university. One of the things that you learn in entrepreneurship is never, ever start with the answer first. Don’t ever just say, I have an idea for a cool travel backpack that does X, Y, and Z, because you’re not looking at it from the problem. You should always think about your business as what is the problem that’s out there that my business is solving for. If you have an idea, I want you to actually take a step back and think about what problem is my idea solving for? And really get deep and dirty with that problem.

You need to really understand it in its nuances. Why are people facing this? Who is facing this problem? What have been they been trying to do that hasn’t been working? And that might actually change your idea around a little bit more. And then after that, what you want to do is research and see is anyone else already doing this? And if it’s not, widely used across the board, I think you have a really compelling idea that you could move on. There’s a lot of pressure now to just drop everything and start a business and leave your full-time job and take the leap and take the plunge. I see absolutely no harm in doing this part-time and working your nine to five. Work on this new business after hours or during your lunch break or whenever you have time for it, because it does take a lot of time and energy to really make this into a career and to make money from it. Unless you come from a place where money is not an issue, you should be thoughtful about how much personal investment you’re putting into this, both financial, but also time and not give yourself the pressure to have to dive in. That’s the only legit way to do it. You can do this at any pace, just like writing a book. You can do this at any pace you want to do. So those would be my primary pieces of advice.

Lisa Niver:

That is such good advice. Now, I want to take business class with you. Do you have workshops on this at Wanderful?

Beth Santos:

I used to. I haven’t done it in a while. I used to run a Prosperity Circle that I might bring back at some point. It was a mini-MBA with everything I learned getting my business degree. It was actually super useful for people building digital companies and communities and modern-day businesses especially in travel. We had a good group going. Teaching takes a lot of work. I wanted to really give my students all the attention they deserved and remembering everybody’s business in addition to running my own business was a lot. But maybe one day I’ll bring it back, Lisa.

Lisa Niver:

Is some of this business acumen in the book? Is the book a memoir? a business book?

Beth Santos:

That’s a great question. It is part manifesto, part self-help guide, and part memoir. Actually, many of the concepts that I talk about, I base them in my own real life experiences as a traveler. This is the book that I wish somebody had handed to me when I first started traveling alone. The book talks about how to do it. It also talks about the broader issues that women face when they travel for the first time and might be unprepared for including the gender dynamics in new places. Your identity, the realization that you’ve been treated a certain way in your own home city your whole life.

And then you go into a new place and you realize, wow, people look at me different here, they perceive me differently or they expect things differently from me. My book talks about sexism and about safety. I wrote about being aware of the impact that you make as a traveler when you go somewhere. I talk about reentry and the really complicated feelings that come out of coming home and realizing that you feel different. And a lot of that feeling is internal and a lot of people might not see it on the outside. And how do you reconcile that? It’s really an honest supportive real talk nonfiction about the things that people aren’t telling women when they prepare to travel the world.  Why travel should be for everyone, why it’s not always marketed that way. And hopefully giving women the confidence and enough information to feel like they can do this and they can take that next step toward that travel life that they’ve been wanting for themselves. My book is available for pre-order now. You can find it on Barnes and Noble. You can find it at Target. The publisher is Grand Central Publishing, which is a Hachette company.

Lisa Niver:

You are such an inspiration. I read on your website that 85% of travel decisions are made by women and you’re providing so much information and inspiration for people to go travel, to be business owners, to take credit for all they do as chief executive of the family. I have so enjoyed spending this time with you. I appreciate you and  wish you so much health and happiness with all of these incredible additions that are coming into your community and your company, the Café, a child and your new book. You definitely are a wonder, Wander Woman.

Beth Santos:

Thank you Lisa. It’s been a real pleasure and I’m looking forward to reading your book, BRAVE-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty. I can’t wait to dig in.

Lisa Niver:

Before I let you go, as a last question I’ve been asking people since my book Brave-ish is about challenges, I’m not sure there’s anything else because we’ve talked about a lot of things that you have taken on, but maybe instead of a challenge you hope to accomplish, maybe you could talk about a time when you didn’t feel so courageous or brave, but you had to take a step anyway.

Beth Santos:

Let me start with this, a lot of people misunderstand what bravery and courage are. We think to ourselves that being brave means you’re not afraid. Being brave means that you’re very afraid and that you do it anyway. I also believe that if there’s something that makes you nervous, that is a signal that you should do it. You should try it because, life is short. We only have so much time to make mistakes and I always tell my husband, now it’s not as funny because we have a cafe, there’s always Starbucks. Like there’s always something that you can do. I have been much more of a risk taker in my professional life than maybe a lot of people would be because, there’s always Starbucks.

All of it scares me especially, as a parent. It becomes a lot scarier because you realize I could eat ramen every day and not have any quality of life, but I’m not going to let my kids live like that. It’s really terrifying to step into the place of trying to make a business work and also trying to be a parent. In our American system, there’s not a lot of support for parents of any kind or caregivers of any kind. You do feel very alone doing that, even if you are parenting with a partner or a big family. That has definitely been the most challenging part of my career to date is finding the unique ways to balance that, to push back against the system, to push back against expectations of professionals and for professional women. And still asserting that I can have it all, that I don’t have to choose the way I want to live my life. And that just that plain and civil fact has been something that every day is absolutely terrifying. But yet, it’s almost like you don’t have a choice. You really don’t have a choice either. So you just keep pushing forward.

Lisa Niver:

Thank you so much. I am inspired and I think everybody listening is inspired that all the risks that you’ve taken and all these seeds that you have planted have bloomed into this incredible garden. And I can’t wait to be at Wanderfest and see you at the Women in Travel Summit. Thank you and I and all my listeners wish you the best.

Beth Santos:

Thank you so much, Lisa. Likewise.

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Melissa DaSilva Makes Magic: Three Decades of Dedication to Making Dreams Come True in the Travel Industry

Thank you to Melissa DaSilva, president of The Travel Corporation Travel Brands, for joining me on my podcast to talk about travel. She focuses on Making Travel Matter. We have met at many travel conferences around the world from the 10th annual Women’s Travel Fest in New York City to Travel Classics International at Ashford Castle in Ireland. For the last thirty years, she has been helping people realize their dreams and helping local communities.

I know from my travels that when we meet people in other places we realize we are all more alike than different, now more than ever, we need to remember that all over our planet, parents want their children to grow up happy, heathy and in safe peaceful countries.

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Lisa Niver:

Good morning. This is Lisa Niver. I’m the founder of We Said Go Travel and the author of Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After 50. I did 50 Travel Challenges and some of them were with the incredible brands that Melissa DaSilva makes happen.at The Travel Corporation. I’m so excited to have you here today.

Melissa DaSilva:

I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Lisa Niver:

It is my great honor. I felt so happy to hear you speak at the Women’s Travel Fest on the panel about women traveling over 50. And then we were so lucky to be together in Ireland at the amazing Red Carnation Property, there’s no other hotel like Ashford Castle.

Melissa DaSilva:

I agree. It is one of my favorite places on earth. And speaking of being 50, that’s where I celebrated my 50th birthday. So my two best friends and I, we decided to take a lifelong trip to Ireland and we ended it with three nights at Ashford Castle. And I have to say that being treated like a queen on your 50th birthday is the way to go.

Ashford Castle Photo by Lisa Niver at Travel Classics Ireland, the property is part of TTC Red Carnation Hotels

Lisa Niver:

Oh my goodness. I mean, I can’t say enough about Ashford Castle. You and I were both there as part of Travel Classics Ireland the most recent time, and I’ve been there twice. And for me, walking with the Hawk, the falconry that’s in my book, because that is one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

Melissa DaSilva:

I agree. It’s one of my favorite things to do when I am at Ashford as well. I just think there’s something so wild and powerful about it. And yet, just Majestic and I’m not a huge bird fan, but there’s something about the birds of prey and the hawks that they really take your breath away. They really do.

Lisa Niver:

That’s one of the things that all of your travel brands have in common is searching for those key experiences. You don’t want go to some place that looks the same as when you’re at home and do something you could do around the corner. You’ve flown on this flight and you’ve made this effort. When I was on Insight Vacations Luxury Gold on the Motor Coach, that we had some incredible experiences. We were at dinner in Rome and all of a sudden we were having a private concert.

Melissa DaSilva:

The thing that I love best about a guided vacation, and for any of your listeners who don’t know about the brands that I represent, I actually represent six fabulous tour brands and we really have something for everyone. And it’s, everything from ConTiki, which is our youth brand, all the way up to, as you mentioned, Luxury Gold, which is our high-end luxury brand for the more discerning traveler. We really do have something for everyone. But the thing that they have in common is that we are able to connect our guests with people and experiences that they wouldn’t necessarily even know about, let alone be able to book on their own. And so it makes it really special to be able to deliver that and to watch people have these really transformational experiences that is what makes travel to me so special is to your point, it’s being able to really connect with the destination and the culture in a way that’s deeper than just ticking something off your bucket list.

Lisa Niver:

When I was in Ireland the very first time I was in Dublin at St. Patrick’s Day with Brendan Vacations, I went to see Newgrange, which is a thousand years older than the pyramids.

Melissa DaSilva:

Tthe world is so huge and you and I, we travel avidly all the time and our list just gets longer and longer and longer. It’s not like we ever make a dent in it because we hear about all of these phenomenal places and experiences and add new ones. And that’s why we have six brands and we travel to all seven continents because literally you’ll never get to the end of your list. Brendan Vacations is super special, has a very special place in my heart. We’re able to create custom vacations for whatever the traveler really wants, which is what makes it really special because it’s tailored to whoever it is that’s planning the trip. So, whether you are like me and you’re 50 and you’re planning a big celebration or maybe you want to do a family reunion or you want to trace your heritage, that’s what makes it really special for us is to be able to do that for people.

Lisa Niver:

So obviously you have a wealth of experience and these incredible brands, but what brought you to travel? Were you an early traveler? Did you go on vacation with your family? Did you choose study abroad or summer camp? What inspired you to just have wanderlust in your blood?

Melissa DaSilva:

That’s a great question. So I actually didn’t travel internationally at all when I was younger, but my mother had been one of those women who after college she went and lived in Europe for like three months. In the sixties, she was a very early adopter of women’s solo travel. I heard her stories my entire childhood growing up. And I wanted to do that. I wanted to go experience the world. I also grew up in a very, very small town. I’m from northern California, right by Lake Tahoe, this tiny little ski town called Truckee. And for me, the world just seemed like this big, big, big place that I wanted to explore but didn’t know how. My goal in life was to get a job where I would get paid to travel. I didn’t have a lot of money and going on vacation; it seemed out of reach for me.

I wanted to get a job where I could get paid to travel. I went to school in media and journalism and I thought that’s what I’ll do. It’s the only job that I knew of where I could be someplace else and still be working. When I was at UCLA, I had friends that were traveling all the time and I said, how are you doing this? And they said, we work at the travel travel agency on campus. And so I thought, I need to do that. So that’s where I got a job. That’s what helped pay my way through school. And I remember I had an internship my last year of school with MGM studios in the PR media department and I hated it.

So I quit and picked up more hours at the travel agency andthe rest is history. I was at a travel agency for almost 20 years between that job and another one. And then I’ve been here for going on 11. I’ve been over 30 years in the travel industry. When you work in this industry and you get to experience all the amazing things that travel provides, it opens your eyes, it brings cultures closer together. It really does show us how the world is very, very small and how really we are more alike than we are different. That’s incredibly special and it’s really hard to even think about a job that would do anything different. I feel very, very fortunate and grateful that this is the job that I ended up with and it makes me extremely happy to come to work every day, being able to bring people’s travel dreams to life.

Lisa Niver:

That is true. You are a giver of dreams.

Melissa DaSilva:

I am <laugh>.

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Lisa Niver:

That’s amazing. I had an early job in travel after I learned to scuba dive and I was teaching and I could not afford exotic scuba vacations and I went to work for Club Med. And after that I worked on cruise ships. But I always thought about being a tour guide and I have to say the tour guides I’ve met on your different brands have all been incredible people. How do you discover these people that are part of your guided tours that bring the whole experience to life?

Melissa DaSilva:

I think what’s really interesting is if you talk to anybody who’s traveled on any of our trips, they will tell you that their travel director was the best travel director on the face of the Earth <laugh>. And they will battle it out. And I think that’s amazing ’cause it means that really every one of our travel directors is doing a phenomenal job. There’s a couple of things that we look for. Obviously they need to know about the destination. They have to be extremely, not just well-versed, but they need to really know if not live in that destination. But the thing that’s more important to us, I think than that is that they’re actually fun people that you would want to travel with. Nobody wants to travel with their old high school history teacher, right? You want to travel with somebody who’s engaging and exciting and also inspired by the destination that they’re in and who at the end of the day you want to hang out at the bar and have a drink and hear about their experiences.

Melissa DaSilva:

That is critical and important when it comes to us identifying who’s going to be a good travel director. And then of course we continually invest in their ongoing training. More importantly things that are changing in terms of the service delivery and the expectations that our guests have. We’re constantly putting them in the seat of the guest, we call it our personal development training. Once a year we run these trips and severy other year the travel directors are on them where they sit as the guest and then learn from and critique their peers and receive feedback themselves. They’re not just the person sitting at the front of the, the coach, they’re sitting where their guests sit so that they can get a really good perspective of how they can do better and deliver a better experience for our guests.

Explore Iceland’s natural beauty on a unique photography workshop trip hosted by @ThatOneBlondKid & @jacobriglin! We’re talking erupting geysers, cascading waterfalls, and a full week of travel, collaboration, and creation Learn More: https://t.co/NphgNk2mq7 pic.twitter.com/i66009cLXw

— Contiki (@ContikiUSA) September 13, 2019

Lisa Niver:

Many people ask me, how can I travel like you? And when I talk about some of the projects that you have, I get a lot of pushback from people. They say: I do not want to be on a bus with 40 people and I don’t want to wake up every morning early. I know having been on Insight Luxury Gold that every day was really fantastic and seamless. What response do you give to people with all these different brands that have so many levels and so many experiences, especially, for women over 50 who might not want to travel alone, but they don’t want to have too many rules.

Melissa DaSilva:

Now, more than ever, women like myself over 50 who are looking to travel, we’re very, very deliberate and specific about where we want togo, the new places we want tovisit. We want to go on the less traveled destinations. Going with a guided brand is really advantageous for that. It, it delivers that security in the framework, but it also doesn’t restrict you. So to your point, there is a ton of free time built in. You can use that to do your own thing, to go off to be spontaneous or you can use it to hang out with newfound friends. I do think that those of us that travel solo, we do like the mix. We want time to self-reflect. We want time to, experience things on our own. But I do think travel is also really special when it’s a shared experience.

Melissa DaSilva:

And so even if it means coming together at the end of the evening and sharing a meal and a glass of wine and saying, what did you do today and what did you learn and how was your experience same or different than the one that I had? And how special is that? I think that that’s really important. I do think that tours sometimes get a bad rap. There is a misconception as you say, based on how things were 40 years ago. And when I tell you that we are evolving on a yearly, weekly, monthly basis, we get constant feedback from our guests. Every single guest provides us feedback and we are constantly acting on it. So when I say to you we have six brands with a travel style for everyone, I mean that if they want to travel, we can find a trip that has a slower pace, slower starts or a faster pace. If they want to tick everything off because they know that this is the only two week vacation they get. We can go in depth in one destination. We could spend all seven days in one city or we could hit five countries in 10 days. It’s really up to the guest and what they want to do. And I think that that’s really important to know is that it is not a one size fits all to your point. We can really find the perfect trip depending on what it is that that guest is looking for.

Lisa Niver:

And so as an example, I saw one of my cousins last night and she’s getting divorced, she’s over 50, she doesn’t want to travel alone. She really wants what you’re saying, to look around on her own, but have people to have dinner with at night. Are there trips that are more focused to women over 50 or people that want transformation? Or how does that work?

Melissa DaSilva:

All of our trips are open to anyone. In that sense I would say you will find 15% of the travelers on any of our trips are traveling on their own. But we do have trips with our brand Insight in particular where they can choose to travel on a trip with only women, with a female travel director, with even the drivers are women. The other thing that’s really special about those trips is that the experiences that we’re picking are highlighting women owned or women run businesses. Everything that we do is going to be giving back as much as possible to the local economy. But those trips specifically, we want to make sure that we empower those women-owned businesses. That’s really special because as a traveler, not only are you getting that experience, but you’re also able to give back a little bit.

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Lisa Niver:

Well, I remember on my trip when we were in Italy, we were doing some of the things with Treadright, your philanthropy arm.

Melissa DaSilva:

We’ve evolved that a little bit. Treadright is our nonprofit organization that oversees all of our sustainability efforts. And within each of our brands we are committed to make travel matter. And what I mean by that is we have identified 571 projects now. Our new report just came about our make travel matter experiences. And no matter what trip you go on, on any of our brands, we’re always going to have at least one, if not more than one. And what that means is we have built them into the itinerary. So people who are traveling with us, regardless of where they’re going they are going to be giving back to the communities that they travel to. And that could be something that gives back to either the planet or the people.

Melissa DaSilva:

The majority of our experiences are actually giving back to the communities that we visit or the wildlife. So particularly let’s say you’re traveling to Africa or maybe the Galapagos, we’re going to make sure that we’ve got some some conservation efforts going on, but it’s not like you’re volunteering per se. What we want to do is give back in a meaningful way that is sustainable. A really great example that I would love to share is we work with a woman named Marta in Tuscany and Marta is a weaver. She weaves on a 900 year old loom back from the Renaissance Times. And she is, we believe the last woman who actually was weaving on this type of loom, she learned it from her grandmother who learned it from her grandmother who learned it from her grandmother. And she’s an artist. I mean she will tell you straight up that that’s what she is.

Melissa DaSilva:

She is an artist, but she was not able to sustain her business and she was weeks away from having to close her studio when she was connected with the Treadright Foundation and we were able to collaborate with her. And now two of our brands, both Insight Vacations and Trafalgar have trips that go in, they visit her studio. Our guests get to watch her weave on a 900 year old loom. I get goosebumps, right? They get to hear about her stories from her grandmother and she’s been able to build a business that now is gonna be sustainable. She’s able to have a apprentice, now. So her niece is her apprentice. So this craft, this artisanship is not going to die after 900 years because we were able to form a really beautiful symbiotic relationship with her. Our guests get an amazing experience and Marta, this wonderful woman that we work with in Perugia, she gets to keep this beautiful studio in this tradition alive. That’s what I mean when I say that we’ve got these make travel matter experiences. We are making travel matter in a really meaningful way.

“The best restaurant in town, with a sunset view”- Cruise Manager Louisa in Ristorante Rialto onboard #SSLaVenezia#ExploreUniworld pic.twitter.com/ZpT31P3SbP

— Uniworld Cruises (@UniworldCruises) October 6, 2023

Lisa Niver:

And there’s no way you would’ve known this, but I actually was there. I have video from that day and it was so amazing. And I love that of all the places on the planet that you could have picked, you picked one that I actually have been to, which is like a good synergy of how this travel life works, right? <Laugh>. We saw each other in New York at Women’s Travel Fest, We saw each other in Ireland. We both love Ashford Castle. Early on in my writing career and I met Patricia Schultz, I learned about your brand because she was the ambassador for the Trafalgar brand.

One of the things that I’ve been asking all of my guests, because my book is coming out, Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty. I did 50 challenges before I turned 50. What are you thinking about maybe personally and professionally, what is something you’re either very proud of a challenge you’ve done or, or what challenge are you looking forward to next?

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Melissa DaSilva:

For me personally, I am looking to do some more adventurous travel. My oldest daughter is off to college in the fall. I’ve got one more at home. We’ve been doing family vacations for the past 18 years, which is fun and I love it. But I’m ready to get back to some destinations that the kids aren’t as excited about. So <laugh> I definitely want to do some more hiking and camping and I really want to do Machu Picchu and hike the Inca Trail. I am desperate to get to Egypt, so I can’t believe I haven’t been yet. Those are some places that I’m looking to get to. And those are absolutely places that I would not travel by myself and on my own. I would definitely want to go with a tour.

Melissa DaSilva:

From a work perspective, we are continuing this focus on sustainability. While we’ve done, I think a phenomenal job of embedding all of these fantastic experiences for our guests, the other thing that we’re doing, which is a little bit less visible is on the back end, is all of the work that we’re doing on our road to net zero. We’ve committed that by 2050, we will be completely net zero. When we originally launched our plan in 2020, we were looking for carbon neutrality. And as we all know, that’s just not good enough anymore. Every year using our science-based targets, we are making roads and inroads to being completely net zero. That is a super important initiative for us that we’ll continue to work on. That again, doesn’t get any visibility, but will make us very proud at the end of the day when it is done. Because it’s critical for all of us that work here, that we are leaving the world in a better place than we found it for generations of people to be able to travel. We feel like we’re stewards. We want to make sure that we’re doing good.

Lisa Niver:

I think you’re definitely doing great, and I know you’re just back from an adventure. I appreciate that you made time to talk with me. I think it’s very inspiring for people to see the the way that you shifted in your early career. You thought you were going to do one thing, and then you worked in the travel agency. You were inspired to travel like your mom and, and you’re making that happen. That’s so inspiring.

Melissa DaSilva:

Thank you so much. Travel is in my soul. I knew I always wanted to do it and I feel very, very again fortunate that I get to do this every single day. I’m excited to come to work every day and, even after everything that the travel industry went through in the past three years, just being able to be part of the recovery– that’s also very, very special. And, being surrounded by an entire team of people globally who are so committed to making sure that our guests have amazing vacations is it’s very, very special.

Lisa Niver:

I agree with you. I worked on the cruise ships for a long time and at September 11th everything shifted so considerably. And then these past few years, like you’re mentioning with the covid coaster, it’s been again so challenging. In the United States where we both are filming today, there was a lot of economic support and other countries don’t necessarily have that. Specifically, some of the places I visit, like in the Pacific Islands, it was desperate times for people. Tourism is a huge part of the economy.

Melissa DaSilva:

It’s huge. And I don’t think people really think about all of the different parts of the tourism economies. It’s not just the airplanes and the tours and the hotels. It’s all of those small businesses that support them, whether it be walking tours or even restaurants or the people that are doing laundry. There is such a huge portion of the world economy that is focused and reliant on tourism. It’s estimated to be one in 10 jobs are impacted by tourism in the world. And so if you think about that, that is massive 10% of the entire world. And so you’re right, there was not that kind of support everywhere and even where there was support, it’s still been incredibly difficult for the industry to return back to normal. And so being part of that, I think has been not only a challenge, but also extremely rewarding.

Lisa Niver:

We’re fortunate to have passports where we can acquire visas relatively easy and have access to transportation. Also, I, like you, feel very fortunate to have been able to go different places and I love that there’s such a big focus at the Travel Corporation with making travel matter and like you said, the amazing weaver. I look forward to doing more travel with your brands. I was so honored and I had such a good time at Ashford Castle. I definitely want to stay at more Red Carnation properties!

Melissa DaSilva:

They are magical.

Lisa Niver:

Travel is magic and you, Melissa, are magic. I really appreciate you making the time to come talk to me and my listeners about the incredible travel opportunities across all of your amazing brands.

Melissa DaSilva:

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here.

In our interview we talked about Brendan Vacations Newgrange tour that I took in 2015

I traveled with Insight Vacations Luxury Gold in Italy. Melissa talked about Marta Cucchi the weaver in Umbria that Treadrite supports–this video is about my visit during our trip:

My Insight Vacation: Read Part 1  Part 2 Part 3

and watch through 31 videos of my trip:

Together in Ireland

Melissa DaSilva is President of the TTC Tour Brands for North America with an industry career spanning 30 years. Travel is both a personal passion and professional pursuit. An avid and lifelong traveler Melissa has been to more than fifty countries and has lived in both the US and the UK. She has been recognized for an ability to rapidly adjust in a changing business environment, resulting in enhanced business practices, increased productivity, and profits.  She has a proven success record of recruiting and developing strong, collaborative teams and delivering consistency in multi-channel organizations.

Her contagious enthusiasm comes from a deeply held belief she shares with The Travel Corporation; travel helps broaden perspectives through the connectivity of shared experiences of adventure, exploration, learning and laughter showing how we are all more alike than different.  

Find your next holiday and MAKE TRAVEL MATTER!

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Lisa’s book: Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty

More about Lisa’s memoir: BRAVE-ish

The post Melissa DaSilva Makes Travel Dreams Come True appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Thank you Nikki Noya for joining me on my podcast! Nikki shared her passions and pursuits–she is a TV host, producer, philanthropist, Mom, Mrs. DC America, author, athlete and adventure-driven traveler!

Bobby Laurie, Nikki Noya and Lisa Niver on THE JET SET TV

Recently I was on her show, The Jet Set TV, for the second time. In 2017, she interviewed me about my 50 challenges before 50 project and in Sept 2023, she interviewed me about my book about my 50 before 50 project. I loved having her on my show to learn more about her as a TV host, philanthropist, athlete, Mrs. DC America and mom!

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Lisa Niver:

Good morning, this is Lisa Niver and I am the author of Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After 50. And I am so beyond delighted, honored, and thrilled to bring you my most incredible guest, Nikki Noya.

Nikki Noya:

Lisa, thank you so much for having me on the show. I feel like when we first met six years ago and all of the adventures that we’ve had in six years around the world, millions of miles and such stories. So thank you so much for now having me on your show,

Lisa Niver:

Nikki, when I came and interviewed with you, I was so excited–it makes me want to cry thinking about it now. I was so excited to be on your show and you were such a generous, kind interviewer. And we talked about my 50 things before 50 project and now I’m so excited the book’s coming out and you’re in my book.

Nikki Noya:

I know, but that’s what’s just so wonderful is because when you came on the show, I was just starting on my TV journey and you were actually one of the first people that I interviewed. So I feel like we both kind of grew up together and we were both, both of us were embarking on these two huge journeys of our life at that moment. And now look at us here.

Lisa Niver:

Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize I was one of your early interviews. You were so excellent.

Nikki Noya:

Thank you. I had no idea what I was doing, but I’m a hard worker. I’m an athlete, so I work hard. I listen and I try my best and I’m not afraid to make mistakes. But yes, that was one of the first interviews that I did was with you.

Lisa Niver:

Now on the Jet Set TV, you’re a producer and this is season eight?

Nikki Noya:

We are in season eight of the Jet Set.

Nikki Noya:

It is just incredible. And we continue to grow and we continue to expand the show. I recently traveled to Egypt and Iceland. I have been all over the world and the opportunities that are coming with each episode and with each season, we just keep growing. We also now have the Jetset Espanol. We’re going to start Jetset Kids with my daughter Samantha soon. We just keep growing and evolving and now I can’t even believe after this kind of weird post covid time that everyone just wants to do things. They want to get out, they want to be stimulated with culture, art, music, food. So now that’s our job to bring it to our audiences. We’ve actually never been busier than we are right now.

Lisa Niver:

You have had so much success. Your show is excellent. I love that you have the JetSet Espanol. And for anybody who maybe didn’t catch that just before Covid, you had a baby. And now your baby’s going to be part of JetSet TV kids.

Nikki Noya:

Yes, she is. Samantha is going to turn six in November. What I like about being a female business owner is that Samantha comes with me to the studio. She sees mommy at work, she sees mommy working with the team. She sees mommy not only in front of the camera but behind the camera and making the phone calls and doing the things. And then she also sees me on set and she is watching me. Now she say, mom, I want to start coming with you. So I thought, what a perfect thing that we can be together and what there’s no better education than getting out into the world. Soon, we’re going to start traveling a lot more.

Lisa Niver:

I think that’s so fantastic. There’s been such an issue at different conferences I’ve been at about representation and if you can see it, you can be it. For people that don’t know you, you grew up here in California. Was your first love that you were a competitive swimmer or volleyball. You’ve done so many things. I would guess first was athlete. Is that correct?

Nikki Noya:

First athlete, I grew up in a very athletic family. From the very beginning, growing up on the beach in Newport Beach, always being in the water. So the water is my first love. I started really swimming when I was quite young. I went to Junior Olympics and was a junior lifeguard. I went to nationals for junior lifeguarding competition. I’m quite tall, I’m, I’m almost six one. I saw this group of volleyball girls walk by the pool and I thought they look like me and they are having so much fun. I started playing volleyball and that led me to really my third love, which is traveling. I started traveling all over the world, playing volleyball and that segued into seeing this big world.

Nikki Noya:

My athletic ability was the conduit for me traveling. And then the next thing, I am in Europe and I am in Central America. I’m in Canada, I’m all over the place playing volleyball. It gave me the appetite for curiosity and traveling when I was really young. But if you would have asked me then if I would be a travel TV host and TV producer, I would have said, how is that even possible? But one thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another and you need to say yes and go for it and be brave. And now here we are.

Lisa Niver:

For people that are listening and following along, first you went to college to play volleyball and then you played in a professional league?

Nikki Noya:

Yes, I did. I lived in Germany and I played in Germany.

Lisa Niver:

You are a truly high level competitive athlete. One of the things I’ve known from athletes as you were in the Junior Olympics, you competed with the lifeguards. I’ve been talking to people about my book and there’s something about writing where you have to sit in your chair and write whether you feel like it or not. And when you’re a competitive athlete, you have to train even when you think I might prefer to sleep in today. So what kind of things do you tell yourself? What motivates you? Is it because you’re on the team, for the competition you want to do better than the day before? What gets you out of bed with all of these ongoing pieces?

Nikki Noya:

If you were to ask anyone that knows me, they know that winning is my favorite thing. I really love winning. I love having a goal and working towards that goal and then coming out in first place. I was born that way. I am very competitive in everything. I also love being on a team. I always loved my teammates. I loved just being with a group of people and we would all be having the most fun and going through hard things and going through excellent things and having fun and working together and then winning together is just the best feeling. It is the best feeling.

Lisa Niver:

So we know that you’re phenomenal in the water and on the court. Talk to us about being Mrs. Miami, Mrs. DC America, you competed in a whole new arena!

Nikki Noya:

I did. And this came out of nowhere. I was sitting on the plane next to the director of the Mrs. Florida America Pageant because I was traveling back and forth from Florida to DC and I was chatting with the woman. She said, have you ever thought of doing a beauty pageant? I said, I’m a little older. And explained, there is a whole division for you. You can try to be Mrs. Florida America. And I said, do I get to win a trophy? When she said, YES! I asked, What do I have to do? I entered, I said, yes, even though I had no experience in this. I had no idea what’s going on. But I said yes, because I thought it would be fun.

Nikki Noya:

I thought it would challenge me because it’s such a different thing, but it’s still a competition, which like. I said before, it’s a goal that I needed to work towards and I like doing that. So the next thing I know, I have a interview coach and I have a walking coach and I’m meeting all these interesting, amazing women that I wouldn’t have been exposed to if I hadn’t taken a chance and said yes. So I was Mrs. Miami and then I ended up being first runner up at Mrs. Florida. And when we moved to DC I said, you know what? I learned a lot and I had a lot of fun and it pushed me out of my comfort zone so hard. If we go to DC, I think I can do one more. I ended up winning the Mrs. DC America. I went to Mrs. America, some of my best friends are pageant women. I wrote the book Mom with my very good friend, Julie who is a legend in the pageant world. And I have this great group of women and it’s made me a better business woman and talk show host. I can get up, rock the mic, do all these things. It’s been a wonderful experience. Wonderful.

Lisa Niver:

I saw some beautiful pictures of you from the pageant and I love hearing about how it helped you so much. And I think what’s interesting is whether you’re talking about sports and the Olympics or winning or the pageant that it comes through, that you are really open to new challenges that you’re willing to say yes and you want to be part of the team and that you’re always learning,

Nikki Noya:

Always. I mean, nothing really happens in your comfort zone and nothing really changes in your comfort zone. And I just feel like, especially since my daughter was born, I have to say yes to everything and go for it so that she sees me doing all of the things and being fearless and taking chances, but being smart about it and working hard and having fun. And so she’s really given me just a totally new attitude. She really has. I’m really tired, but she’s given me all attitude.

Lisa Niver:

Yes. You wear a lot of hats so it makes sense that you’re using up all of the energy that’s available to you.

Nikki Noya:

Yes, absolutely.

Lisa Niver:

So you did mention when you were talking about Mrs. DC America and congratulations,

Nikki Noya:

Thank you so much

Lisa Niver:

That you wrote a book. So tell us a little bit more about being an author.

Nikki Noya:

So while I was at Mrs. America, Connecticut and DC are next to each other in rehearsals, and Mrs. Connecticut was Julie Kengi. And throughout that week we just became such good friends. We have so many things in common and we started talking about our paths to motherhood. And I have a wild story. She has a crazy intense story and we just thought, wait a second, we have these stories and then we’re talking to Mrs. Virginia and she has a crazy story about how she became a mom. And then we were talking to Delaware and we, we just thought that every woman has such a unique journey to become a mom. Let’s get our friends and family to write their testimonials, to write about their journeys, to write about their process because everyone has such a different story. And we compiled everyone’s stories and made the book Mom period.

Nikki Noya:

And we’re about to start Mom Period Part Two because so many of our friends and family said, actually I have a story too. If  someone can read what I went through and say, oh, I’m not alone in this. Or if someone can read about adoption or miscarriages or triplets or all the things that women go through and say, oh wait, I’m not alone. I have the support network. I have other women that have gone through this. And that’s why we’re going to do another one because every journey is unique.

Lisa Niver:

Yes, I agree with you. And a lot about writing my book was about feeling alone and wanting to know more It is so great that not only did you think about it, but you did it and you published it and that you’re going to have a part two is incredible. Congratulations.

Nikki Noya:

Thank you so much. It’s one of the things that Julie and I are so proud of and we hold this book. My story is written like a journal entry. I wrote through my entire I V F process. It is like reading my diary and it’s very personal. Some of it is funny, some of it is heartbreaking, some of it is so real because it’s real life. I want other women who are on an I V F journey who are hearing that they’re too old or they’re too this or a lot of things I heard in my I V F journey, but I didn’t stop.  I knew that I was going to be a mom one way or another and it ended up being more perfect and amazing than I could ever imagine. When I read my entry to the book, I cry and I laugh. I hope that everyone feels the same way too.

Lisa Niver:

That’s amazing because when I was writing my book, I would sit at my desk and write my story until I was pretty sure I was going to throw up and then I would lie on the floor.

Nikki Noya:

It’s a big thing getting what’s in your head and in your heart onto paper or onto the computer. How you have to go through all of the thoughts and all of the feelings and all the stories and all of the emotions to then literally kind of give birth to your baby, your books. It is a lot. It’s a lot. So I I’ll be right there on the ground with you.

Lisa Niver:

We have been on this journey of hosting and writing. Another way you’re helping people be prepared is Dress for Success. I know you’re very involved with that and feeling like you have the right clothes to be successful definitely makes a difference.

Nikki Noya:

Oh yes. I have been the Vice President of Dress for Success Miami for 13 years this year. I nominated myself as a lifetime VP because Dress for Success is an organization that is so dear to my heart. Dress for Success is an international organization and what we do is we break cycles. We break the cycle of abuse, we break the cycle of homelessness, we break the cycle of stagnant living. And when a man, a woman veteran, anyone walks into the doors of Dress for success, it’s much more than getting an interview outfit. You get resume resources, you get interview skills, resources, you get a community of people that want to take you from whatever situation you’re in right now, walk through that door to change your life. And the Dress for Success Worldwide community is one of the most dynamic groups of amazing inspirational people.

Nikki Noya:

We have offices all over the world. Wherever you are, you can go into the office and we will help you get that job interview. We will dress you for that job interview. We will get you all the skills so that you nail and get that job. And then once you have gotten that job, we still provide resources so that you can continue to flourish, continue to grow and continue on that path. Because a lot of the times the moms are the ones who change the trajectory of their family. So if the mom has changed her life, then her kids will not be in the same situation that she was in and on and on and on. So that’s why I say break cycles and when the women come back years later and their kids are thriving in school or when their kids wouldn’t have been in college if the mom didn’t go to Dress for Success. When I see those, it means the world to me and I will be with Dress for Success for the rest of my life. It is an amazing organization.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, I’m so interested to learn more about it. That is incredible. Now, I know your family is quite philanthropic and you have a family foundation is Dress for Success part of that or those are separate?

Nikki Noya:

They’re separate. Dress for Success is something that I am involved with and my Family Foundation does support that organization. We support education and environmental causes. For me personally, having women be in the communication field and having women be able to public speak and having young girls who are in college be able to go to class and learn how to do all of those skills that can sometimes be overlooked. Public speaking is a real skill. You need to learn and you need to practice it. And it’s not easy. And a lot of people are too shy and so many of this generation is facing down at their phones.

Nikki Noya:

I support a scholarship at the University of Rhode Island where I went to school for a female student to be in communication studies. I’m on the Harrington School Advisory Board because I really am passionate about the University of Rhode Island. They gave me a scholarship to play volleyball there. I had this incredible professor, her name was Agnes Doty. And after class one day, she pulled me aside and she looked really hard at me and she said, I have so many plans for you, you have it. So I need you to go out into the world and do big things because I’m watching. I had just done a whole class presentation. One of our assignments was to make a company and then present it to the class. And her that two-minute nudge was so life changing and she was so supportive. Now I want to do that for another female student because it only takes one scholarship, one class, one teacher, one mentor, one advisory board person to change the trajectory of a girls’ education, a girls’ career. As a female and as a business woman, I am creating the future!

Lisa Niver:

Oh my goodness, you certainly are creating the future. I also had a very close relationship with a teacher who is a mentor to me. And I do think you’re right, focusing on education and girls and bringing people up and I love what you’re doing. I’m so impressed and I’m so proud of you. And before I let you go, I know we talked about your mom book, but I believe you and the Jet Set team have a few other books.

Nikki Noya:

We do. I wrote a book called Fit to Fly, which was also one of my first projects with The Jet Set. That’s actually how I started on the show. I was doing fitness segments. That book is about how to keep your wellness journey going even when you’re traveling all over the place. We also wrote a book about traveling with families and being on a budget because a lot of people ask us on the show how to take my family traveling. People are worried about the cost of flights and which hotel to stay at. We wrote an easy breezy guide to travel on a budget with your family, here’s what you need to do, here are the steps, just break it down. Here are some options. And it doesn’t have to be so overwhelming if you follow our easy steps to do, because that’s also the premise of the show. We want people to go have adventures. We want people to travel with their family, go on girls trips, guys trips. We want people to get out and about. So that’s also what that book is about.

Lisa Niver:

Yes. So the show is in line with the books. The books are in line with the show. We want to get people out there. You mentioned you’ve been to incredible places recently, Egypt and Iceland. People always ask me this and I believe that you might’ve been to the top place on my bucket list, but where is a place that has your heart that you haven’t quite made it to yet?

Nikki Noya:

Oh, oh, Lisa, that is such a good question. I would love to go to Japan. I would love to immerse myself in Japanese culture. Japan is really on my immediate list, but my favorite place in the world might be Scotland. I think Scotland might be my favorite and I can’t wait to go back. The people, the majestic scenery, there’s something about Scotland that captured my heart. Have you ever been to a place where you thought I love it here. What’s one of your places that you think this is my place? Do you have a place like that?

Lisa Niver:

I do. I studied several times in Jerusalem and I always can’t wait to go back to Israel.

Nikki Noya:

Oh my God. That’s another place that I need to go to see Lisa. There’s so many places that I need to go.

Lisa Niver:

I know you have a big list, but for me, one of the subtitle lines on my book is Six Continents. So for me, I really, really, after my book tour, I want to go to Antarctica.

Nikki Noya:

Absolutely. Go for it. Would you do a cruise? Would you do an expedition trip? What kind of trip do you want to do?

Lisa Niver:

I would like to do an expedition cruise and I want to walk on the land and I want to kayak and I want to see the penguins. I want to do everything.

Nikki Noya:

Well, as soon as you do that trip, you’re going to have to come back on the Jet Set and tell us all about it.

Lisa Niver:

I would love to come back on your show. That was so much fun to be in studio with you. We have so many projects, and we met six years ago and I just can’t imagine six more years from now. Well let’s see. You have three or four books, so you’ll have a dozen books.

Nikki Noya:

I hope so.

Lisa Niver:

We’ll have a few new TV shows to talk about.

Nikki Noya:

I’m so excited to see this next chapter for both of us.

Lisa Niver:

We can’t wait to see what trophy you’re going to win in the future.

Nikki Noya:

I have the best team. They’re not just my team, they’re my family. Whenever we do get an award, it is always we work so hard, but we also have the most fun. So whenever we get an award, it is icing on the cake.

Lisa Niver:

People can look for your books online. Where’s the best way to find you and to watch the show?

Nikki Noya:

The best way is always either at thejetset.tv, all of our social media handles, or I’m at @NikkiNoya or thejetset.com. That’s always the easiest way. You can also watch us on Spotify. We have streaming platforms on Amazon and Roku, or Living Modern, which has all of our shows all the time. But thejetset.com is always the best way.

Lisa Niver:

Thank you so much for everything. I appreciate you interviewing me. I appreciate you making the time that I could interview you. I can’t wait till we can travel together with the whole family. I’m so honored and inspired and I love what you’re doing for the next generation.

Nikki Noya:

Thank you, Lisa. That really means a lot to me and like I said, what we’ve accomplished in six years already is just really awesome. So I can’t wait to see what’s next for both of us.

Lisa Niver:

Yes. Well thank you and good luck in the next awards.

Nikki Noya:

Thank you sweetheart.

More about NIKKI: Find her on Instagram, as VP of Dress For Success Miami, her Family Foundation and as Mrs. America.

Nikki interviewing Lisa in Sept 2023

After our first interview, I was an adventure correspondent for The Jet Set TV. See my segments about Park City, Monaco and the Solomon Islands:

In 2017, Nikki interviewed Lisa about her 50 challenges before 50 project on the Jet Set TV.

Then Nikki was interviewed on We Said Go Travel!

Thanks to Bobby Laurie for this tweet about the new episode in Sept 2023:

LISTEN on APPLE PODCAST: MAKE YOUR OWN MAP

Find Lisa’s book, Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty, at your favorite bookstore!

The post Nikki Noya: Taking Your Passions And Pursuits To The Next Level appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

It was my honor to interview the Travel Goddess, Samantha Brown. I first met her in person at the Travel and Adventure Show in 2016 and in 2023, I was a speaker at the same show!

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A post shared by Samantha Brown (@samanthabrowntravels)

Find Samantha Brown’s Show, Places To Love, on her website and visit her on Instagram. In 2024, it will be 25 years that she has been sharing her travels. As she says, “girl with the best job in the world.”

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Lisa Niver:

Good morning. This is Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel and I am beyond thrilled that today I am with none other than the travel goddess Samantha Brown. Hi, Samantha.

Samantha Brown:

Hey, Lisa. How are you?

Lisa Niver:

Oh, my gosh, I’m so excited to get to talk to you. I have been watching you at the travel show for years, and years and years and I am so excited. I even wore this map in your honor that I got to also speak at the travel show this year. I thought oh, my gosh I’m speaking at the same show as the goddess.

Samantha Brown and Places to Love at The Travel and Adventure Show 2023

Lisa Niver speaking at the Travel and Adventure Show 2023

Samantha Brown:

That’s wonderful. It’s nice to see you again.

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A post shared by Lisa Niver (@lisaniver)

Lisa Niver:

Oh, thank you. So, I know that you’ve been such a generous speaker and you have just inspired so many women. I spoke with Alex after the Women’s Travel Fest where you were the keynote speaker. And she was saying how for many people it was their longtime dream come true to be able to be there and hear you speak. That you really inspire so many women to get out on the road.

Samantha Brown and Lisa Niver at Women’s Travel Fest 2023

Samantha Brown:

Yeah, that’s probably what I am most proud of, and most shocked by in my career. I never thought I would be someone who people look up to. And I guess that’s why I do have the best job in the world is that I get told, on almost a daily basis, what my work has meant to someone else and that is phenomenally validating. So, not only do I have this amazing job, but the people that I have been able to be a part of their community in terms of whether they watch me on TV, or now they’re on social media or whatever it is. It’s just something I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be that person and I never take it for granted.

Lisa Niver:

I think that’s so beautiful. And as you said just now, and as it says on your Twitter bio, “girl with the best job in the world,” can you tell people a little bit about how did this happen? When you were little were you drawing on maps? Did you always want to be on TV? How did it happen?

Samantha Brown:

I went to college at Syracuse University for musical theater, and that’s what I wanted to be. I wanted to be an actress and I wanted to move to New York City, and so, at Syracuse I studied acting, singing, and dancing. And when you are in musical theater you are considered a triple threat, because you can do all three. And then I moved to New York City and I wasn’t threatening at all.

In fact, I was really bland compared to the unbelievable talent that is out there. Actually, I saw that you had Pauline Frommer as a guest and she was also in musical theater as well. I remember seeing her at the auditions, I knew she was a lot more successful than I was in theater, but you should ask her about that. So, we share that in common.

So, I just kept auditioning, and I got this strange job on the Travel Channel. I had to audition for it, to be their host for a new show called Great Vacation Homes. And my first reaction was what’s a host? Why am I auditioning for this? But I thought, okay, I’ll just get a reel because I wanted to go to Los Angeles to make it in sitcoms. So, that was my plan and I am so glad it did not work out. The Travel Channel really hit it off, I loved my time there, I had amazing experiences and I had a job I never thought I would have.

Lisa Niver:

That’s so inspiring. Because for a lot of us, when things don’t go how we planned, there’s often a feelings of being a failure or a mistake, but you’re saying it was the best thing.

Samantha Brown:

Absolutely. And it wasn’t like I turned my back on acting and musical theater. Because one of the things you learn in acting is that you never judge your own character. It’s all about understanding what your motivation is, and your motivation is always in another person. Your motivation in acting is always to get more from another person or affect the other person. It’s never you, that makes it too self-centered, so that’s something that you are taught in acting and I absolutely take that little chunk and I bring that with me.

That’s how I kind of got my start as a travel host because, for me, the show was never about me it was always about the other person. How do I get to know them? How do I get to be a part of their culture? What is it? What tactics can I use so this person understands I’m a kind person who they would want to spend time with. That little jewel is my guiding star. Even today, even though the name of my show is Samantha Brown’s Places to Love, the show is not about me.

Lisa Niver:

That’s really great advice for people, for a TV host, or as a human being, or a friend or in line at the DMV that there is something about the interaction about really learning something about someone else.

Samantha Brown:

Yes, it’s always the other person.

Lisa Niver:

That’s really impressive. I’ve heard you speak so many places when you were here in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theater for the Japanese National Tourism Organization or at the travel show and you always share such really useful tips. Can you talk about your ritual when you’re traveling?

Samantha Brown:

If I am in a place for more than three days, which is more than likely if I’m traveling and we’re shooting Places to Love, I will create a ritual. And that means I do one thing, the same thing, the same time every single day. And for me, it’s usually a coffee shop that I’m going to begin my day at. It’s right around the corner from my hotel, but not my hotel, but still a local experience where I can feel the ebb and flow of a location better. And I love that, because it just gives me a break. One thing about traveling, or my pet peeve of travel, is that it requires incessant thinking, right? When you’re traveling it’s always what am I doing next? Do I have the tickets? How are we going to get there? Is it going to rain? When are my flights? My flight leaves in three days. You never stop, and you want your brain to stop.

When you create a ritual, you just become more calm, you’re just more in the moment and that brain stops, and I love that. I love doing that. I’ve talked to people, who say we do that all the time. At the end of the day, we go to the same bar, and have the same drink and get to know the waiter. You create your own community in the short amount of time that you’re there, and it does wonders to really enrich your trip. I think as Americans, and I understand that different countries are watching this right now, but Americans we’re very productive, unfortunately so.

We see vacations as places as a second location to be productive that’s different from our work schedule. We check things off the list. We’ve got to do five different things today because, man, we’re never coming back here. And I get that. I get that pressure we put on ourselves to see and do it all, but this is a reminder every single day just to keep those challenges in check and enjoy life a little bit more.

Lisa Niver:

What you’re saying is so important. Get out of your hotel, see the local culture. Can you tell people a little bit about when you were in Madison, and you were a judge about mustard?

Samantha Brown:

I love mustard, by the way. I love all kinds of mustard, I collect it if I go to places, and in  France you have to collect the mustard. There is the Mustard Museum, it’s just outside of Madison, Wisconsin. The man who founded it is an adorable man who loved mustard as much as a lot of us do. He started collecting it and now you can experience mustards from all over the world. Mustard companies from all over the world send him their mustard, so you can experience mustard from Uzbekistan, and then he has from France, to Argentina. Some is spicy, some is more sweet, but every year he has a mustard contest. I got to be a judge and it was wonderful. I like the peppery stuff.

Lisa Niver:

I was in Destin, Florida, and I was a judge at the lionfish competition. Maybe, next year you will be a judge with the lionfish, because we’re helping the planet by eating the lionfish.

Samantha Brown:

And it’s good eating.

Lisa Niver:

I love to eat lionfish.

Samantha Brown:

Lionfish in a taco!! I totally agree, eat the invasive lionfish, definitely.

Lisa Niver:

I agree. I heard you also learned a sport from an Olympian in Madison.

Samantha Brown:

Yes. Becca Hamilton who is on the women’s curling team and she is, I believe, a world champion. They didn’t win the Olympics. That was her brother.

Her brother is a famous male competitor. They’re a duo and so the Madison Curling Club is where they were brought up This is where these two Olympians were reared, but she was fantastic. And I was telling her, I remember when they launched this sport in the Olympics about ten years ago and everyone was thinking what in the world is this sport? But we loved it.

I love the fact that you learn about the people who curl and they’re like insurance adjusters by day and they have this Olympic career on the side. It was so refreshing that they’re just like us. But of course they train a lot and it’s a hard sport, but it’s great. It’s a really fun sport and the way that Midwestern towns and cities really embrace this sport and make it more of a social thing. If you’re in a town that has a curling club go visit it, you’ll have a great time.

Lisa Niver:

I haven’t tried curling, but when I was in Ireland I tried hurling, not the throwing up kind, but the sport kind.

Samantha Brown:

Yes.

Lisa Niver:

I know that when you were in Ireland you tried some unusual things that we haven’t all heard of like blokarting.

Samantha Brown:

I tried hurling as well.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, you did. How did it go?

Samantha Brown:

That’s a very dangerous sport. That’s like a cross between baseball and tennis and you’re whacking a ball.

Lisa Niver:

And lacrosse.

Samantha Brown:

For blokarting, it’s very different and it’s actually not a sport, it’s just a recreation. They have beautiful beaches in Ireland and it’s this wind-powered cart. So, in the same way we all dreamed of having our own little go-karts when we were young, this has a little sail and so you can go sailing across the sand. It’s phenomenal. It feels so great.

I’m actually someone who’s very scared of being on the water, especially in the ocean, but I love the wind on your sails. Who doesn’t love that feeling? It gives you that feeling of being out there maybe windsailing, but you’re on terra firma. I believe it was developed, created in Northern Ireland. If you ever go, absolutely try it out because it’s just fun.

Lisa Niver:

I have to do that. I’m recently back from Ireland. I did falconry at Ashford Castle.

Samantha Brown:

Well, now you can fly like a falcon by blokarting.

Lisa Niver:

I like that idea. I know you travel with a teacup and there was a special tea in Ireland with a twist?

Samantha Brown:

Oh, yes, I did. Where was that? That was Glenarm Castle on the Antrim Coast of Northern Ireland. A beautiful castle, a Downton Abbey thing, and they’ve opened it up. The family still lives there and they’ve opened it up. They have a farm, and a dairy, and beautiful gardens and you can just enjoy. That’s a beautiful place. Actually, I experienced the high tea at a very upscale hotel in Adare, Adare Manor.

Lisa Niver:

They just had a big renovation.

Samantha Brown:

Yes, they did and it is like a six-star hotel. It is through the roof in terms of its luxury and beauty. And very few of us can afford this on a regular basis, but you can, as I always say, date the hotel, so I took it to high tea. It’s in this amazing room that is the second longest room in Ireland, second only to the library in Dublin.

Lisa Niver:

Wow, okay.

Samantha Brown:

They do wonderful cocktails and they put them in teacups so you’re a teetotaler!  I had a beautiful botanical gin and tonic with these beautiful pastries. It is one of these epic places for tea. Lisa, I think a lot of people enjoy tea in different places, very high-end, and this would be one of them, absolutely.

Lisa Niver:

I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say date your hotel before, but I love that.

Samantha Brown:

Yeah, just date it. If you can’t afford to stay there, take it on a date.

Lisa Niver:

That’s so funny. One of my favorite things about coming home from Ireland is preclearing at the airport that you come home domestic.

Samantha Brown:

I was just in Canada as well where they have that and there’s nothing better than that. And it’s so funny how it just takes all of the stress out of flying because you land and you’re now domestic. And I love preclearance airports. I think they’re a reason alone to go to a country and enjoy it. All of the airports in Ireland as well as Canada are preclearance airports.

Lisa Niver:

Were you filming something new in Canada or were on family holiday?

Samantha Brown:

I was there shooting an episode in Victoria in British Columbia. A beautiful little city on that gorgeous Vancouver Island. It’s the gateway to Vancouver Island as well as the rest of British Columbia. We were up there exploring its more sustainable methods in terms of what they’re doing to protect the wildlife, First Nations culture as well as great food. It’s just a beautiful place to be.

Lisa Niver:

I know when you travel one of the things you love to do is collect art and there’s beautiful art right behind you. Is that from one of your recent visits?

Samantha Brown:

Yes. Yes, that is Jenny Pickens, the artist, and she’s from Asheville, North Carolina, self-taught and I love her work. I met her as we were shooting an episode there and we focused on this really great shop called the Noir Collective. It is in a neighborhood that used to be considered the Black Wall Street of Asheville with many very successful businesses for Black Americans. It fell on some hard times because of rezoning, but this group of people is trying to bring it back. You can meet a lot of the local artists and see their work. And I love this piece because she’s sewing the world and it’s a woman who’s slowly mending or sewing the world together and it’s got a heart. So, I thought it is like my show Places to Love and she’s beautiful.

Lisa Niver:

That’s beautiful. I also really like when you put your season together that it’s a mix of domestic and international. We have so many great treasures of places to visit here in the United States.

Samantha Brown:

Yeah, I agree, and I always love to explore what I call the B-side cities. So, if you remember records, there’s the A-side and then there’s the B-side. And the A-side is the Rome, and the New York and the Paris. But then there are the B-sides and I think B-side cities just give you just as much as the A-side city, but it’s not as expensive, it’s not as busy, and it just gives you a better experience. So, with the United States that’s what we try to focus on, especially in these days where you’re hearing so much about just too many people being in the same place at the same time.

There’s plenty of room for all of us. We need to divert people to come this way and see this is a great place. So, we’ve done a lot of cities that people would never think of going to. And then when you find out all of the great art that’s there, food that’s there, activities, and you don’t have to spend 400 dollars on a hotel. People are really excited affordable travel.

Lisa Niver:

I think it’s great that you’re sharing all those places with people. And I saw on your social media about Big Sky, Montana. Was that for a recent filming, or we can watch that now, or does that come in the next season?

Samantha Brown:

We filmed that last year. That was a part of season six, so that’s running now. That’s a great place. Montana is a beautiful state no matter what time of year you go. Most people go to Montana in the summer, maybe it’s to get to Yellowstone, but winter, oh, my gosh it’s just magical. Not the cheapest place to go. Big Sky, Montana, is a resort and it’s 300 dollars a day for a lift ticket. But let me tell you as someone who grew up in New Hampshire, grew up skiing, the skiing is phenomenal and worth it. I skied in my jeans in ice-cold weather in New Hampshire and so to be up there out west where it’s just a lovely day, I think it’s an amazing place to be. I love Montana. I’m a big winter fan. I’m one of those rare people, Lisa, who love snow.

Lisa Niver:

I’ve seen a lot of different episodes and recently you were filming somewhere it was definitely not chilly. You were in Israel.

Samantha Brown:

I was, yes. And oh my goodness I still have dreams about it. It took me a week back home to really feel like I was back in the United States, because I just felt smitten. It’s like falling in love where you just can’t get your head out of the clouds. It was phenomenal. Clearly, I don’t have to explain what Jerusalem is and why you would want to go, but what I love about cities is that the whole world can seem like it hates each other, and when you go to a city that’s just not what’s happening. Everyone lives with each other. Cities are seen as these unfriendly dangerous places and a lot of the times it’s the exact opposite. So, it was wonderful discovering that for myself and I would love to go back. It was a trip of a lifetime, truly.

Lisa Niver:

I’m so glad you got to go there. I studied in Israel in high school and I spent a semester in college in Jerusalem.

Samantha Brown:

Oh, my gosh, I’m so envious. What a place. It’s magical, right. I see so many people like you, so it’s so youthful, there’s so many young people there. And it’s just there is an energy there that you just can’t help but get swept up into it. We met some phenomenal people and I’m really excited to share that episode. Because it’s just a special place and it really belongs to the world. I think that’s what people don’t understand is that Jerusalem is a city that belongs to the world.

And I feel that way about New York City, like we’re not really of the United States. I live in New York, I’ve lived here for 37 years, and it’s not the United States, it’s everyone’s and everyone comes here. And I felt the same way about Jerusalem. It’s like this is for everyone. There is no need to take sides. This is a place for everyone.

Lisa Niver:

I agree with you. I always can’t wait to get back again to Israel. I know people are going to want to know where do they see all of these incredible episodes? And when is season seven coming? So, tell us where is the best place to get all the updates?

Samantha Brown:

On my website, and you can follow me on social media. Of course, I’m on Instagram, and Facebook and I’m even on TikTok now. Samanthabrowntravels is my handle for most of those. The show airs in the United States on TV in a place called PBS, which are our public television stations. But you can also stream the episodes free directly from my own website, which is samantha-brown.com. Season seven, which we are working on now, begins in January. So, we still have a lot of shooting to do as well as editing, but it will be launched in January of 2024.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, my goodness that’s so exciting. I really appreciate with your busy production schedule that you took this time to talk to me. I really have been so inspired myself by you. Honestly it was such an honor to speak at the same show as you, the travel goddess, thank you.

Samantha Brown:

Thank you Lisa. And thank you for wearing your map shirt for me. I feel very special.

Lisa Niver:

Thank you so much for sharing your tips and your wisdom. And I know everybody can’t wait to catch up if they haven’t seen all six seasons already, and to see Israel and all the upcoming new cities that you highlight in season seven. Thank you so much.

Samantha Brown:

Lisa, it’s been a pleasure.                                           

Coming next season: ISRAEL

I love these tips to make travel BETTER: PLACES TO LOVE: HOW TO MAKE TRAVEL COUNT

Did you miss our latest “Places to Love” Season 6 episode, where we got to adventure in Madison, WI? Check our episode page to watch and learn more about all the fun we had and the wonderful locals we met!https://t.co/8WDnlGs82i#samanthabrown #placestolove pic.twitter.com/WflICtbLLH

— Samantha Brown (@SamanthaBrown) January 23, 2023

Samantha Brown is a two time Emmy Award winning Television personality and travel expert.

Over the last 20 years, Samantha has traveled around the world visiting over 250 cities in 75 countries and 45 U.S. states creating over 200 hours of engaging and informative television programming along the way.

Samantha started her TV career at the Travel Channel where over 15 years created many iconic travel series, including Great Hotels, Passport to Europe, Great Weekends and Samantha Brown’s Asia.

In 2018, Samantha moved from Travel Channel to PBS and her new show there, “Samantha Brown’s Places to Love” quickly became the highest rated travel program on public television. In 2019 she earned two Emmy awards (Outstanding Travel and Adventure Program and Outstanding Host for a Lifestyle, Children’s or Special Class Program) and has been nominated again every year since.

In Places to Love, she finds the destinations, experiences and most importantly, the people who make you feel like you belong to a place, and not just a consumer passing through.

Samantha’s fun-loving style has made her a revered and engaging television personality whose approach is less expert, less host and more a person you would want to travel with. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and 9 year old twins.

More interviews and talks with Samantha Brown

• Women’s Travel Fest Keynote Speaker 2023
• Samantha Brown in PRINT in the Jewish Journal 2023
• NYC 2023 Launch party for Season 6 of Places to Love
• 2019 interview: Places to Love Season 2
• Japanese National Tourism Organization Key Note Speaker 2018
• Los Angeles Travel & Adventure Show 2016: Travel Speaker
• Women’s Travel Fest 2014 Keynote Speaker

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A post shared by Lisa Niver (@lisaniver)

I loved Samantha Brown’s talk in 2016 at the Los Angeles Travel Show! You can read my notes in the instagram comments! “Be on a mission to connect with the culture…How do you belong when you travel? Be part of a new story….travel is an investment in your life!!” She ate ants, eyeballs and guinea pigs!!

LISTEN on APPLE PODCAST: MAKE YOUR OWN MAP

Lisa’s book: Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty

The post Journey into the World of Wanderlust: Samantha Brown, Travel Goddess appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Thank you Tony Phelan and Joan Rater for creating the moving and mesmerizing limited series, A Small Light about Miep Gies, who hid the Frank family from the Nazis during the Holocaust in Amsterdam. I met them at a Jewish Federation Los Angeles screening at UTA and at Stephen Wise Temple. Joan Rater told the audience, “People make choices and choices make history.” Miep Gies believed she was just an ordinary person who made a choice that anyone would make but we know that is not true. Would we choose to help? As Miep would say, “We can all turn on a small light in a dark room.”

A Small Light Screening by Jewish Federation LA at UTA

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Lisa Niver:

Good afternoon, this is Lisa Niver. I’m the founder of We Said Go Travel, and the author of Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents, and Feeling Fearless after 50. And I am beyond excited and honored to have the most incredible producer joining me today. Tony, thank you so much for being here.

Tony Phelan:

I’m happy to be here.

Lisa Niver:

I loved meeting you at the Federation event at UTA about your current project, A Small Light. I know it’s available for people to see now, and we are definitely going to talk about this show, which I think everybody should watch. I think they should have it in classrooms. I used to teach at Steven Wise Tempe, I taught in Culver City Middle School. Everybody needs to see your show, but before we get there–You have a long, very prominent, incredible career with movies and television, so can you give people a little bit of background? Who are you?

Tony Phelan:

Well, I am a writer, director, showrunner and my wife, Joan, and I write as a team. We have been on such shows as Grey’s Anatomy, Madam Secretary. We just created a show for CBS this past year called Fire Country.

Lisa Niver:

The top rated new show of last season.

Tony Phelan:

We’re very excited about that. We came to A Small Light having pretty much spent our entire career in television on network. A Small Light, which tells the story of Meap Gies, who was Otto Frank’s secretary and was instrumental in hiding the Franks as well as the other people in the secret annex. What Joan and I discovered through our research was that while she and her husband Jan were hiding the Franks, they were also hiding up to 12 other people in and around Amsterdam. And so this to us, felt like a wonderful opportunity to tell the story of the helpers of people who in Amsterdam during World War II, helped to hide Jews. And tell the story of people who, when faced with bigotry and antisemitism went out, could have chosen to do nothing, but instead chose to go out of their way to help their fellow man. It really felt like an inspirational story and a way to tell the story of Anne Frank from a different perspective. In partnership with Disney+ and Nat Geo, we created an eight episode limited series, which is now available on Disney+ and Hulu and really has some wonderful performances. The intention was to tell a historical story and wipe away the cobwebs and to really tell it in such a way that felt immediate and vital and exciting.

Lisa Niver:

It’s phenomenal. I saw it with an incredible crowd, and my parents saw it the following night at Stephen Wise Temple a big crowd. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it who’s watched it comes away with the same thing that it’s so compelling. For many of us, I grew up with a lot of education about the Holocaust and knowing about the Frank family, but I had no idea, which was one of the things you guys discussed that night, that she was so young and newly married.

Tony Phelan:

She and Otto Frank formed this amazing relationship. When he hired her, she was very young in her early twenties. By the time he asked her to help hide his family, she was newly married. She was just starting out in life, but was a bit of a hot mess. In a way that I think feels very relatable. She herself was an immigrant. She was born in Vienna. After World War I, there was a program to relocate children who were in the war zone to the Netherlands, which had been neutral during World War I. They had food and all sorts of services that were available to children. There was this strange reverse kinder transport that happened at that time that we discovered.

Meep was adopted by a Dutch family, and found herself wanting to stay in Holland. When she met Mr. Frank, who was an immigrant from Germany, they formed an immediate kinship because they shared a language. Mr. Frank then used Miep and her husband Jan, as what they refer to as their Dutch friends. And so put them in contact with all these other German Jewish emigres because they could help them navigate the social morays and the customs of the Netherlands and help them with the language and other issues. So that when it came time for him to ask for her help in hiding his family, she immediately said yes to the point where he said, no, no, no. Take a moment. Think about it. You could be arrested or killed if you were found hiding Jews.

She said, I don’t need to think about it. Anyone would do it. Well, we know that not anyone would do it, because not everyone did, but she did. Our research in the show was really about why was she so open to helping others. We think part of it was the fact that she was an immigrant herself. Part of it was what she later said in life, after the success of Ann’s diary, was that you don’t have to be special in order to help other people. Small acts of kindness can really do tremendous things. That was a message that we felt the world needed right now. We’re thrilled to bring that and the story of Miep and how she was the person who scooped up Anne’s diary after everyone was arrested in the annex and kept it in a locked drawer for Anne when she came back.

When they found out that Anne and Margot were not coming back from Bergen Belson, she gathered up the diary and walked it into Mr. Frank’s office and laid it on his desk and said, this is the legacy of your daughter. And then together, they made sure that the diary found as many readers as possible. After the war, Otto chose to live with Miep for seven years until he remarried, which is pretty remarkable that this boss and employee could eventually move into being really family.

Tony Phelan and Lisa Niver recording our interview

Lisa Niver:

That’s a lot of what you feel in the episodes of the show is about chosen family and choices. At the screening you reported that Miep always said– anyone would’ve done it. But we know, looking at the issues with bystanders, allys and upstanders, that she was an original upstander. When called into action, she was committed. I thought the contrast in some of the scenes where the friend is having the party and she’s wearing the fancy dress and skating and the opulence versus these people hiding. You really see how it was so tenuous for Anne every day, wondering if she could get food? Did they have the ration books? What was going to happen next?

Tony Phelan:

Not only that, but how do you live with the fact that you get to go outside? If you chose to, your life was not that different. As the Nazis were systematically ridding Amsterdam and the Netherlands of Jews, if you chose to collaborate or just turn away, your life was relatively unaffected. People ask us did we take some dramatic liberties with the story. We tried to stick to the historical record as much as we could.

But in the example of the friend that you bring up, that was an invented character, because we wanted to show that people who did not make the same choice she did. And how the fact that Meep was hiding this from her family, from her friends, caused huge rifts in her life. Even she and Jan, her husband, had to keep things hidden from each other. That put tension on their new marriage.

Lisa Niver:

All of your shows from Grey’s Anatomy to Fire Country have dramatic tension about real relationships. The smallest details to the largest details of what would you do create compelling shows with so much for people to think about. When there’s an accident in the street who calls 9 1 1? That’s a very small participation that I’ve been involved in different accidents. I worked on a cruise ship for seven years. I was a very highly trained first responder. So if there’s an accident, I’m going to call 9 1 1. I don’t think about it, but not everybody thinks I need to do something. And Miep really stepped up.

Tony Phelan:

These people were her friends. One of the amazing things about Amsterdam is how much of a kind society it was. From the 1600s, Amsterdam had been a haven for Jews across Europe. Not only Jews, but also LGBTQ people. Real people in Amsterdam could not wrap their heads around the fact that this was happening to them and their society. One of the things that we weren’t able to tell, but I thought was really interesting was after the Nazis invaded and took over the country, the Dutch were the only occupied people to launch a general strike against the Nazis. They basically said, you’re doing this to our Jewish friends and neighbors. We are gonna shut everything down and just not participate.

The Nazis couldn’t believe that this was happening. They expected the Dutch to welcome them with open arms being fellow arians. And they brutally put this general strike down to the point of leading the leaders of the general strike out into the street and just shooting them, which stopped the general strike. But that spirit was always there. When the Nazis first imposed Jews having to wear yellow stars, there were Dutch citizens who started to wear little orange flowers or little crosses to depict that they were Christians in defiance of the Nazis. If you’re going to label the the Jews as Jews, we are going to label ourselves as well. These little acts of defiance were pretty remarkable for the time. But yes, Miep did these acts of resistance, and at the same time, not knowing how many other people were doing them since everybody had to be very secretive about what they were doing.

Lisa Niver:

At the Federation event, you and your wife spoke about how this story chose you, that you were with your family in Amsterdam.

Tony Phelan:

We were with our family in Amsterdam. There’s a wonderful documentary about Miep called Anne Frank remembered that came out in the nineties, won the Academy Award for best documentary. That was the first time we ever saw her. And she was well into her nineties and was talking about Anne and finding the diary and her relationship to Anne. Then we took our kids to Amsterdam about seven years ago. While we were there, we were going through the Anne Frank Museum and reading the signs, and we were reading a sign about Miep. Our son had just graduated from Columbia, very smart, but hapless. He was just starting out in life and he was figuring out things. We read about Miep’s age when she first started working for Otto.

Tony Phelan:

And we thought, she’s just this young woman who does not know how anything works. And all of a sudden she has all these lives in her hands. So the act of figuring things out is the story. She and Jan were not super spies. They didn’t know what they were doing. They had to cobble it together as they went. And then, we left the museum, rented bikes, and we rode the route from the hidden annex to the Frank’s apartment about 45 minutes. We got there and we saw the Frank’s apartment building, and then we were going to get ice cream. We turned around and we saw there’s a park across the street from the Frank’s apartment, and we saw these 10 year old girls doing cartwheels. And we had this revelation of that’s Anne.

Anne was just a 10 year old girl doing cartwheels when history overtook her. The desire to make these people human and relatable became our stated goal. Many times when I watch historical dramas, the language and the way that they’re shot, there’s a real barrier between the viewer and the people. They speak in a different way. They wear different clothes. We wanted to clear all that out and have them speak in a more contemporary way and shoot it in a more realistic, grounded way so that barrier wasn’t there, so that the audience could really immediately relate to these people, and put themselves in the shoes of the characters and say, what would I do?

Lisa Niver:

There’s a interesting parallel that this story found you through your family, and you are a successful creator working with your spouse. How did you and your spouse find each other and find your way into being writing partners?

Tony Phelan:

We first met in 1988 in New York. I was a young theater director, and Joan was an actress. We met through mutual friends. Joan was always complaining about the fact that she hated auditioning. She wasn’t having much success. We would go to parties together. I would watch her tell these incredibly humiliating stories about her dating life before me. I finally said to her, that’s a show –you telling these humiliating stories is a show. Don’t wait for somebody to give you a job. We can create a job for you. We started writing together, and we went into rehearsal space with a tape recorder and recorded her telling these stories and then transcribing them. And then that was a script. Gradually over time, she started doing these shows and found a lot of success doing them.

We toured them around the country, and she had regular sit downs at various theaters and, and got a following for doing these. Over time we got some grants to write. I got a grant through the Williamstown Theater Festival to first write a play, and then do it. Once again, I had no idea how to write a play, but what I would do is I would find people on the street and say, can I have 10 minutes? We’d sit down and I’d press play on the recorder, and then I’d tell the story of the show. In telling the story over and over again, I found that I started deepening the characters and discovering connections between them. We all have that capacity. We’re all storytellers, but many of us have fear of actually taking a pen putting it to paper.

In telling, I got over that fear, and we started doing these adaptations of novellas. That’s how we started. And by the early two thousands, we were playwright /director/actors in New York. And were pulled out to California because we did a reading of a play that we’d done off Broadway that had had some success. And at this reading in LA nobody came except a few of our friends. It was very disappointing. After this woman walked up to us, at intermission of the reading and said, have you ever thought about writing TV because the dialogue in your play is really great. And we had not ever think of that. And she said– just stay an extra day, meet my boss and see if it’s something you’re interested in.

We’ve been banging our heads in New York for 12 years and met some success, but not as much as we’d like, so we thougth why don’t we try this? We moved out here with a three-year-old and once we got out here, met with a lot of open doors and a lot of encouragement. That’s how we did it. Those 12 years in New York were really instrumental in teaching us how to rewrite ourselves, how to work with actors, how to be open. Since TV is such a collaborative art form it is perfect for us. We’ve been very lucky. We’re at a point in our career now where we can really determine what kinds of shows we want to do. When we were first talking about Fire Country, the thing that drew us to that show was the fact that in California there’s a program for prison inmates to work on fire crews, and by doing that, they work time off their sentence. That felt like a great way to tell a family story about redemption and essentially retell the story of the prodigal son.

Lisa Niver:

All of your stories are focused on what we spoke about the night when I met you was about educating to activate and how does content shape culture. I definitely feel that as a theme in A Small Light and Fire Country and some of the themes in the early Grey’s Anatomy that you were part of. Another thing that’s really resonates for me is that you spoke about with Meip that after all that she did, that she still felt like a failure.

Tony Phelan:

In her mind, the people who she was in charge of were arrested, and only one of them survived. Despite her best efforts, despite her walking into Gestapo headquarters to try and bribe them free. She really genuinely resisted people calling her a hero because she just felt like she did what anybody would do. The thing that made her unique was she famously said that if she hadn’t done what she did, she didn’t think she would be able to live with herself. Something that we can all adopt, especially now that we live in such a divided country and a divided world, and especially now that we see the rise of antisemitism again. When I was growing up myself and many of the people that I was growing up with thought that anti-semitism was something that happened only in the past.

Anti-semitism is on the rise again, and it’s being weaponized by people to take power and frighten people. We have to be vigilant and we have to educate and we have to reach people at a young age. One of the things that I’m most excited about is the fact that A Small Light is on Disney+, which means that it has a worldwide reach and that it has a reach to young people who can access it, even if they might be in a community or even in a family where the ideas and aspirations of A Small Light might not necessarily be in vogue.

They can have access to it. I think that’s exciting. The other thing that we talked about the other night was when you and I were growing up, I was surrounded by Holocaust survivors. I had the opportunity to meet them, talk to them, hear their stories, and know when you would see people’s grandparents or parents who had tattoos know what that meant. That living testament was right there in front of you. And unfortunately, now that generation is leaving us. It’s incumbent upon us to figure out how do I keep the story alive? How do I reach that next generation who isn’t going to be able to speak to those people one-on-one? In its own little way, A Small Light can reach that generation and bring these stories to people in a way that they find accessible and they find terrifying. But relatable.

Lisa Niver:

I agree that it is at times terrifying, but incredibly relatable. Those small moments where it becomes clear that people knew what was going on–when he shows up with extra potatoes and the special strawberries. It’s clear that people knew and they wanted to participate in their way. They might not have been able to take the leap that Miep did instinctively.

Before we close, I am asking all my guests related to my book about feeling brave and taking challenges. Obviously we know that you and your wife have had this incredible experience with this story that chose you. But is there something additionally that you’re most proud of or something where you’re still reaching for a brave choice or a challenge, a story that you really want to bring to the world next, or something personal?

Tony Phelan:

The challenge is that you find a story like Miep’s that is so compelling. And it sets a high bar. We are talking about a couple projects that we find exciting. The story of Meep and Jan and the Dutch resistance is a once in a lifetime kind of thing. But we will certainly continue to tell stories that celebrate the human spirit and celebrate people in very real situations, having to make difficult, gray moral choices. Because it’s very easy to make a black and white choice. To make choices that go on day after day that take a toll and that are gray is much more challenging. And that’s certainly what I aspire to both in my work and in my family too.

Lisa Niver:

I, myself, and I know a lot of other people, really appreciate that you’ve brought into our homes, Grey’s Anatomy, Fire Country, and now this incredible, A Small Light. I loved what it said about Miep that we make choices every day and we can choose to do something good. And I love the quote that the title comes from Miep, that anybody can turn a light on, a small light on in a dark room. I really do think that’s what you’ve done with showing people what was it like day to day there during the Holocaust, during the war, and that people can make a choice to really help someone else in the community.

Tony Phelan:

That is Miep’s lesson — you don’t have to be special and even a secretary or a teenager, I mean, Anne always knew she was going to be a writer, but had no idea the impact that her diary would have, and she did it because she loved writing.

Thank you, Lisa for having me on the show. I hope your audience will check out A Small Light because it’s a show that we’re very proud of.

Lisa Niver:

Everyone can watch on Disney+, Hulu and NatGeoTV . Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.

Tony and Joan speaking at Stephen Wise Temple

I met Tony Phelan and Joan Rater at The Jewish Federation’s Entertainment, Media & Communications (EMC) Professionals Network and Sylvia Weisz Women’s Philanthropy exclusive screening of A Small Light, the inspiring, real-life story of Miep Gies, who played a critical role in hiding Anne Frank and her family during the Nazi occupation in Amsterdam. Following the screening, there was a conversation with Creators/Executive Producers Tony Phelan & Joan Rater and Executive Producer Peter Traugott.

The Jewish Federation is the central organization of Jewish Los Angeles. We put Jewish values in action to meet our community’s needs and make our voices heard on issues ranging from antisemitism to social services to ensuring a strong Jewish future. We care for our most vulnerable, inspire Jewish journeys, connect with and support the people of Israel and Jews around the world, and actively engage in Los Angeles civic life to build bridges with other communities. We accomplish this by working with our dedicated partners, our generous donors, and our passionate leadership.

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Lisa’s book: Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty

Sharon Spira-Cushnir and Lisa Niver at A Small Light screening at UTA

The post Heroes of the Holocaust: A Small Light appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Discovering the World’s Hidden Gems: A Behind-the-Scenes Interview with Craig and Earl from ‘The Good Road’ on PBS

Thank you to Earl Bridges and Craig Martin, longtime philanthropologists and best friends, who trek around the world to meet people who are making a difference, for taking the time to talk with me on my podcast. On their show, The Good Road, they share “a raw look at the messy and complicated business of global charity. Two philanthropy veterans and globe-trotters set off around the world to find good.“

Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform

READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Lisa Niver:

Good morning. This is Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel, and I’m here today with Craig and Earl from The Good Road. Hello!

Earl:

Hey. How’s it going?

Craig:

How are you, Lisa?

Lisa Niver:

I’m doing great. I can’t believe you just wrapped season four of filming for The Good Road. Congratulations.

Craig:

Thank you.

Earl:

It’s hard for us to believe, too. I think it’s when you start down this road you have no idea if you’re going to ever get through season one and now we’re at season four, looking at season five.

Lisa Niver:

It’s incredible. So, if there are people that don’t know, The Good Road is on PBS, and the two of you are long-time friends and philanthropists who are sharing incredible stories from all over our planet. Could you tell my listeners a little bit about how did this happen? You have both lived around the world. You care about our planet, and you have many interesting stories especially about water and the ocean. What made this happen? What made you wake up and say I want to be a filmmaker and we’re going to walk this road together?

Earl:

Craig, you want to kick it off?

Craig:

Earl and I went to school together in Bangkok, Thailand at the International School of Bangkok together. I was actually born and raised there, and Earl was raised there. His father started as an Air Force pilot during the Vietnam era. Then I was there because my parents were Baptist missionaries, so that’s why I was in Thailand. But we’ve known each other a long time. About five or six years ago, the company Earl and I were at evolved.

Earl asked me at the time, he had a company called Good Done Great. So, he asked me if I’d travel with another friend of ours from the International School of Bangkok, Patty DiMartini-Williams. So, they took me along to be kind of the shooter and storyteller on video for both of their companies. It was on that trip to Myanmar, Nepal, and Vietnam that Earl said he had an idea for a TV show which was like Bourdain meets philanthropy and I said- I kind of love that.

That kicked off our Good Road story. Incidentally, and somebody asked us this the other day when we were filming in New York, whether or not we had done a lot of stuff together through the years after our time in Bangkok. The reality is I had not seen either Patty or Earl since high school when we took that trip. We had stayed in touch on Facebook and things like that, but it was a cool reunion of our high school days. The three of us and then Earl and I of course continued on with our good friendship for many, many years in person embarking on this project together.

Earl:

I mean the idea is not very many people want to watch a movie about doing good. They don’t want to watch charity videos. Quite frankly, that’s the kiss of death. So when we first started, we called the show Good All Over, and people just wouldn’t watch our trailer. So, we wrapped it into this travel format, made it The Good Road, and the idea is that we’re going to take you to Thailand or Canda or Uganda or wherever and we’re going to show you some people that are going to introduce you to a world you may not have thought about. The formula basically is we’ll take you somewhere. We’ll try to highlight an issue. We’ve done anti-poaching, prison reform, maternal health, and all these other things. But the story that I like that I think illustrates the formula of the show best is when we went to Yangon, Myanmar.

We were trying to figure out, Burma has one of the oldest running civil wars in the world. It’s got the Rohingya crisis. It’s got this interesting kind of mixture of different foods and different ethnic minorities, and we were trying to figure out who is it that would make a good interview for us. We ran across what we thought was the perfect interview the second we heard about it. It was a punk rock band called Rebel Riot. You don’t expect to find punk in Myanmar because its oppressive military government, they’re super-conservative Buddhists, and yet this lead singer Joe-Joe is this tall guy with this big mohawk and the kindest face ever.

And it was those guys that were really tied into not only the larger punk community but the downtown community, the street kids. So, they’re feeding kids, they’re doing literacy classes in the middle of a median in downtown Yangon. I think that’s what we do. We flip whatever narrative that you thought you knew about a place, and we try to expose that place in a different way but it’s really character driven. It’s can we find somebody that can represent this area and show it to you in a way that’s very different than you’ve seen it before. That’s really the show. That’s The Good Road.

Lisa Niver:

I love that. I myself have traveled a couple of different times in Myanmar, and you’re right. It’s such a unique place. I loved being out on Inle Lake with the leg rowers. When people see the video there are surprised that they row with their legs? I think you’re right. Travel is such an amazing lens into what’s happening.

Craig:

I was just going to say part of the format comes from the fact that I referenced Bourdain earlier. Part of the format is, and we got a lot of affirmation from people in the TV business because of this but most people travel with a friend, a family member, just a really good traveling partner and his show, he was always kind of in one sense by himself. Not to be cliché but it’s kind of a buddy series because Earl and I, not only are we best friends but we both love to travel. So, we experience the travel together. That’s a huge part of the fun of it, so most of the things that people see on camera are very natural. When Earl and I experience somebody cool who’s talking about making big changes in their community. We were just in New York at Food Bank NYC, and we’re talking to these seniors at this community kitchen. I mean some of their stories are crazy.

There’s this guy, Gregory, who was working on Madison Avenue for decades as a writer, and Earl sees he’s this thin African American guy with a really nice suit on but he’s there to get his dinner. He says to Earl, where did you grow up? Where are you from? Earl says, Bangkok, Thailand and he says, hell, I know it’s Thailand. He was almost offended by the fact that Bangkok had to be clarified with Thailand.

Earl:

What other Bangkok is there?

Craig:

Yeah. What other Bangkok is there? We just love it. We just enjoy so much, and it does matter that we get to do that together. I think that’s an important part of travel is sharing the experience with somebody else.

Earl:

Yeah.

Lisa Niver:

I think you’re right. The other thing that you bring to the show is your long, long history of travel and living outside the United States and many people have visited Thailand but not many people have lived there. I studied abroad in college, but to have studied abroad at such a young age and be immersed and not study abroad, you lived there.

Earl:

We speak Thai. I always say that’s our bar trick, but it worked really well in a Thai bar. In America, no one cares if you speak Thai in a US bar. Having grown up there and then Craig went on to film in dozens of different countries for the organization that he was with and I had worked internationally. So, for us it’s always one of those if you get to know the places you know some of the language and you actually get to know the people.

What you won’t see on our show is us doing the top listicles- five place dive bars in Gurkha, Nepal or something like that. But you will see people. You’ll get to know people that are doing some interesting things. That could be professional baseball players, sculptors, activists. We were in New York City with a good friend of ours, Mickela, who has this Bare Feet show on PBS. She had us voguing in downtown Brooklyn. So, if you were there this last weekend, I apologize to everyone who saw that.

You talk about pride and it’s standing up and it’s having confidence and going down the street and being really proud about who you are as a person and just being with someone in that world wasn’t just a cutesy little dance that Madonna did. It was much, much more once you get to know why people do that. I think that’s what we get to do is expose it by the people that really care about it, and we find out just like the viewers do about some cool people all over the world.

Craig:

I would add, too, there’s an element of the way we grew up. There’s a cross cultural experience that happens only if you grow up in another country, and that cross cultural experience leans into the fact that we should all love and respect each other. We should try to identify and learn and understand another person’s culture before we made any kind of critique about it. In fact, it’s probably best to not critique other people’s culture because if you’re not part of it, if you’re not part of that group it quite frankly is annoyingly for you to be a critic of it.

So, for us that means being able to talk to…in the case of the voguing thing, we’re there for gay pride. I’m a heterosexual male, but you’re there amongst a lot of gay people. In that cross cultural experience, the only thing that I felt bad was I was screwing everything up because I’m such a bad and uncoordinated dancer.

Lisa Niver:

But anyone who’s watched Mickela’s show or danced with her, she’s such a great teacher. She’s so enthusiastic. She’s so welcoming. I think you’re right it’s a cross cultural experience. You talked about growing up in a specific faith-based reason for being in Bangkok. Can you talk about Season Four in Iraq with the kids in school?

Earl:

I was a missionary kid and not necessarily the best representative of the church always. And we all have our own journeys. So it’s not really a faith-based thing. In fact, I didn’t want to really go down the road of doing a lot of faith-based things. I just want to mention one little story.

We went to Mbale, Uganda, and we started to cover this husband and wife team, Adam and Kathy. Kathy was a neonatologist. Adam is an anesthesiologist. They were working in a really remote town. They had two tiny, little girls at the time. I remember saying why in the world? Because you can work in the UK where they were from and just crush it and then just send money down to someone else that could work in a maternal health clinic that was getting 200 kids referred in and they had a 50 percent mortality rate and see all the deaths. I mean to have someone else make your money and send it somewhere else to do it.

So, when we were asking them, why is it that you’re doing it? Were they to have said it’s because we believe that this is God’s will for us and things like that, I would have gotten it. I totally would have gotten it, but it quite frankly would have bored me because that story I’ve heard a million times. Instead what Kathy and Adam said is we’re not Christians. We’re Atheists. There was no mandate. It’s just humanity, seeing other humans, and then kicking in. So, sometimes it’s those things that, again, flip the narrative.

Iraq was interesting because Iraq is…Mosul is one of the most diversely religious cities in the world. They have thousands and thousands of a really large Christian population that’s been there for hundreds and hundreds of years. They also have the Muslims. You have some Jewish folks.

When we were there, most of what we knew about Iraq was really war coverage that you would have seen on the news. Now we’re inside of an elementary school. It was the 20^th anniversary of the US’s involvement in Iraq. As we’re going into some very conservative schools where they were held by ISIS and there’s still ISIS folks that go to those schools. You started seeing people that had parents who were ISIS and kids whose parents were killed by ISIS in the same classroom.

You say how can peace happen when these kids who are 11 and 12-year-old girls…they’re all one sex. So it’s either girls or guys. In this case, the girls, it’s like how do you ever trust that other person that’s right beside you. So, the organization that we were highlighting, Hardwired Global, does a lot of curriculum around religious pluralism and just getting to know each other. That’s a metaphor for the rest of travel. I mean you have to be together. You have to see each other and you have to see each other as humans. That’s what travel does.

So, we can watch travel shows but when you’re there all of the fears that you may have had going into a country beforehand, our first time going to Iraq, there’s a lot of misconceptions. By the time you leave a couple weeks later, you’re like I see them as people very differently than I saw it, and I think that’s the beauty of real travel.

Craig:

I would add to that in terms of Iraq that one of the hardest days that Earl and I had there was when we listened to these really young girls talking. One of the things that they said was a smack down on all of us adults and all of the people who really are complicit in warfare. There was this one girl who had lost her father because he was an ISIS fighter. She said–we children want not to have war. That’s just what we’re asking for — We just don’t want fighting.

Out of the mouth of an eight or nine-year-old–That’s pretty profound. What a message for the world. Earl and I both were shedding some tears.

Earl:

That was a heart-wrenching episode.

Lisa Niver:

You’ve gotten to experience so many different cultures. One of the things I noticed is you’re also looking at how does our planet continue. Looking at sustainable farming or stoney coral disease, Atlantic sturgeon. You have a focus on some of the crisis in our planet. Is there one place that sticks out for you that is the good news or the good road where they’ve really made great strides with helping?

Earl:

You mentioned the sturgeon. We did an episode right outside Richmond in the James River. For decades people thought that the great sturgeon were no longer in the James River. Now they’re coming back and actually they’re coming back in droves. The point from one of the scientists, he said, we didn’t do any remediation. We didn’t go through and do a lot of clean-up. What we did was we stopped messing up the river. We just stopped polluting it, and it restored. A lot of times, with almost anything, it’s like the doctor code- first do no harm. It’s stop doing bad and there’s space for good to happen. That’s the story of the sturgeon but that’s also a metaphor for a lot of travel.

Craig:

The same in the US Virgin Islands. The stoney coral disease came over from Florida where they had been dumping sewage into the ocean and it made its way and wound up in the US Virgin Islands. In St. Thomas at the University of the Virgin Islands, when we interviewed them in the water, which was kind of cool. I had never really done an interview underwater. But in the water you’re looking at these coral that may never be able to bounce back from this disease. It’s like Earl said about the river. You can try to be reactive to the things like this disease, but you’ve got to really be proactive and think about what we’re doing before everything goes to hell.

Earl:

I think when you talk about a connection and community, air, water, all of these things we all share. We’ll see the impacts in a country from something that’s happening very far away. In fact, when we were in New York City this last time, you started to see the ash from the wildfires that were happening in Canada. Look, we’re connected very closely and when you start to see the impacts that are happening in one place that impacts all of us…it doesn’t feel like the borders are so rigid anymore. It starts to feel like we’re occupying the same space. I think that’s another area that we get to explore with this show in the format that we do. Who is it that has these worldwide, global problems that they’ve received from elsewhere and then how do they take care of themselves?

There is a lot of stuff that just show how interconnected we are.

Lisa Niver:

Well, it’s interesting how it’s all sort of the same layer, right? The children are saying you’re making war and it’s hard for us to live. The fire in one place but the air doesn’t know where the border is. We’re all connected, the water. The lionfish is a huge issue that I’ve been writing about. This invasive species, rivers with pollution. Your show is very aspirational about how can we dream bigger, how can we work together and How can we find the good road?

Earl:

Yeah. That’s it.

Craig:

Earl referenced space earlier. I will say that last season, we did a couple episodes about space. One of the things that we talked about was the overview effect and being able to look back at the planet and realize that all the borders and all the things we put on it for ourselves, Earl, what’s the comment from the astronauts?

Earl:

They say once you’ve seen the Earth from afar then it changes everything. They call that an overview effect. They say that astronauts leave the planet as astronauts and come back as conservationists because you see the world from such an unlikely existence and how subtle any little changes are and how connected they were. So, I love that because if travel has the ability to change your mind or help you understand the world better then space travel even more so.

They talk about how transformative that experience can be. So, we highlighted an organization called Space Perspective that does exactly that. They’re starting to launch balloons into space so you’re 100 thousand feet in the air. It’s two hours up, two hours in space, two hours descent. You get that experience to see the world in a very different way. Travel is all of that. Travel is that experience that can really change you.

When I said you first go to Iraq and you’re not sure what to expect, I know for myself that if I have blind spots, misconceptions, or stereotypes, that it probably makes sense for me to go somewhere. I went to Sudan in January of this year. Again, it was a brief period while it was peace, and I was so blown away with how great that experience was afterwards because I had no clue what these people were like. Their Muslim traditions, they’re so welcoming. There were a million things I learned and saw about their hospitality, and way of life.

I think at the end of it, once you’ve gone and come back, then you start seeing those people, as not very different. It just breaks down all of these barriers that you have in your mind. For us, that’s the beauty of travel.

Lisa Niver:

Well that was an amazing summary of how fantastic your show is and why you’re about to launch season four on PBS. Again, congratulations on all of the awards and all the destinations and really bringing the issues around our planet into people’s living rooms. Before I let you go, could you just let people know first, season four, when is it coming? If they haven’t seen the first three seasons, where can they find you?

Earl:

There’s a couple different ways that you could see it. You could see it on PBS.org in their Passport app. You can also see seasons one through three on Amazon Prime. It’s ad supported, so it’s free. It’s on Delta Airlines and Roku. Google The Good Road for more options.

Season four will start airing in September of this year, 2023. It’s eight episodes per season. They’ll run them in primetime spots beginning of September.

So, season four will run September through October and then it’ll rerun for the next two years on PBS channel, so check your local listings or check it out on TheGoodRoad.TV.

Craig:

We’ve gotten into a cadence. Season five will probably also be in the fall, so we’ve gotten into a cadence now where you can see it every fall but also all year through Amazon Prime and PBS.org.

Lisa Niver:

Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I’m so excited for season four and to learn more about all the incredible characters and destinations and philanthropy projects. Thank you both for being here.

Earl:

Thank you so much for having us.

Craig:

Thank you, Lisa. Appreciate it.

Craig entering a school in Iraq season 4

Season FOUR GALLERY

The new season of The Good Road, Season 4 launches in September 2023 on GBH-WORLD and then on all PBS stations in January 2024 through American Public Television.

SEASON TWO: “In THE GOOD ROAD, Earl Bridges and Craig Martin – longtime philanthropists and best friends – trek around the world to meet people who are making a difference in their communities. In season two, the hosts explore places closer to home like Virginia, South Carolina and Puerto Rico, and destinations abroad such as India and the Burmese border, where the duo discover inspiring change-makers and the limitless power of good.” Watch on Amazon Prime more on Facebook and Instagram.

Earl Bridges is a self-proclaimed “philanthropologist,” filmmaker and tech entrepreneur who believes that authentic storytelling is key to fixing the world’s most pressing problems. He also advises, speaks and writes about the potential of corporate social responsibility, company culture and engagement for good. 

Craig Martin is a TV and film producer, director, writer and editor who has spent the past 30 years filming in war zones, disaster zones and remote villages in more than 85 countries. Craig has produced hundreds of projects, both long- and short-form, including the feature-length docudramas ‘The Insanity of God’ and ‘Free Burma Rangers;’ the Philanthropology podcast; and Confessions of a Philanthropologist.

Craig, Lisa and Earl recording for Make Your Own Map

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Lisa’s book: Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty

The post Empowering Humanity with The Good Road Hosts Craig and Earl appeared first on We Said Go Travel.