Sacred Business Stories w/ Jo Barnes

The 20-Year Audit: 13 Questions for Anyone Over 50 With a "One Day" List

My daughter Cerys has just spent four weeks with us: 2 in Vegas, 2 in Cabo. Last week she flew back to London 😢, and shortly she’s off to Paris with her friends to celebrate her 20th birthday, because at 20, Paris with your mates beats Cabo with your parents right? 20 years old. 😳 Which means twenty years ago I didn’t have a child. I hadn’t met Rhett. I didn’t know what an online business was, I hadn’t started travelling, and I was living a completely different life in a different country, doing work I can now barely remember doing. If you’d shown that woman a photo of me today, writing this from Vancouver while Rhett conducts his daily audit of the room temperature, she’d have thought - a) jeez dye those grey hairs Jo, and b) - wow that was a crazy ride! 20 years, gone in what feels like a long afternoon. We’re Not Getting Any Younger Here’s the cheerful part. Every year that passes, statistically, we have slightly less runway ahead of us than behind. I’m not being morbid; it’s just maths, and maths doesn’t care how morbid that is. I’m 53. If the actuarial tables are in a good mood, I’ve got 30 decent years left. Maybe 40 if I keep up the walking and go easier on the margaritas, which, having just spent two weeks in Cabo, I can confirm I have not. 🍸🤭 You know your rough number too. We all do, even if we keep it filed in the same mental drawer as the pension paperwork. How much time you have is largely out of your hands. What you do with it, though, is wide open. Look Back 20 Years. Then Look Forward 20. Where were you 20 years ago? What city, what job, what people around your kitchen table? What did your average Tuesday look like, and what were you worrying about that turned out not to matter at all? I’d bet you can barely recognise that person. Twenty years is enormous: whole marriages happen inside it, along with whole careers, whole houses bought and sold and bought again, whole children raised from newborn to adult and released into Paris with their friends. In our case, whole countries are explored and lived in. You’ve likely done far more with the last 20 years than you give yourself credit for. Now turn it round. If things go reasonably well, you get to do all of that again: another 20 years of a life you can barely predict from where you’re sitting today. The only real question is whether the version of you at the end of them, looking back at today, thinks you made decent use of the time. You’ll Never Be Ready I didn’t feel ready when Rhett and I moved the family to Cyprus in 2010, with a four-year-old, no plan, and a recession chewing through our income. We went anyway. I didn’t feel ready when we started our first online business. I had no idea what I was doing. Neither did Rhett, although he had plenty of opinions about it, which at the time we both mistook for expertise. We figured it out. I didn’t feel ready when we finally took to the road in February and became full-time nomads at 53 and 49. Five months and three countries later, I’m writing this from Vancouver, Rhett’s now 50, and we’re still working out what this life is. I didn’t feel ready when I started this Substack, I don’t feel ready to publish my book, I won’t feel ready to start making YouTube videos, or to launch the next stage of This Big World, or to tackle most of what’s sitting on my one day list. But I will do them all anyway. Because here’s what I now know at my age: you don’t get more ready. The moment doesn’t arrive, the window doesn’t widen, the savings don’t build fast enough, and the plan never clarifies itself into a shape you can act on. Waiting doesn’t make you readier. It just makes you older. Your Age Is Fuel. Use It. When you’re 20 you can afford to be gung-ho, because you’ve got 60 years to clean up after yourself. At 45, 55, 65, you don’t have that luxury. But what you do have instead is better! Because you have knowledge, pattern recognition, mistakes already made and paid for, resilience already built, and a well-worn “I’ve survived worse than this” muscle that only comes with time. You know things now that the 20-year-old version of you couldn’t have imagined. What matters and what doesn’t. What you’re capable of. Who to trust. What deserves your fear and what you can walk straight past. That’s your unfair advantage, and every day you don’t use it is a day it sits in the garage under a dust sheet. So Let’s Do Something With This Reading this and nodding along is the easy part. But don’t just sigh, close the tab and go back to your ‘one day’ list. Let’s take massive action! Below is an exercise I recommend you sit down and do in full: The 20-Year Audit. And if 20 years feels like the wrong horizon from where you’re sitting, make it 10, or 5, or 30. The number matters far less than the honesty. 3 sections, 13 questions, about an hour of honest reflection. Get out a notebook and a decent pen, find a quiet corner, and turn your phone off. It's too easy to muse on what life could look like. ‘One day’ stays a daydream right up until you write down what it is, when it starts, and what's been stopping you. This is that exercise. NB: If you’d rather work on paper, I’ve turned the whole thing into a printable PDF: you’ll find the download at the bottom of this post. The 20-Year Audit A framework for taking your next two decades seriously. Answer honestly: this isn’t for anyone but you, and the questions are deliberately uncomfortable to make you dig deep so you feel emotionally attached to your future plans. Part 1: Look Back — Where Have You Been? 1. Where were you 20 years ago? Be specific: what city, what home, what job, what relationships? Reconstruct that year in as much texture as you can manage. Vague answers produce vague insights. 2. What did you spend most of your days doing? Work, family, hobbies, worries, routines. The shape of your average Tuesday, 20 years back. 3. What did that version of you think you’d have achieved by now? Career, family, financial, personal. What was on the mental list? 4. What have you done with those 20 years in reality? Count everything, including the things you think are irrelevant: the family you raised, the relationships you kept alive, the losses you survived, the person you became. 5. What did you almost do 20 years ago (or along the way) that you didn’t? The move you nearly made. The business you nearly started. The relationship you nearly left or nearly began. The version of your life you almost picked instead of the one you got. 6. What would 20-years-ago you say about you now? Proud? Confused? Relieved? Disappointed? Sit with the honest answer, whatever it turns out to be. Part 2: Look At Now — Where Are You Standing? 7. What are you currently telling yourself you’ll do ‘one day’? Write all of it down. The book, the business, the move, the pivot, the learning, the thing you don’t say out loud. Every single one goes on the page. 8. What would need to be true for you to start any of them this year? Be specific. Money? Time? Permission? A push? Someone to do it with? Name the real truth, and dig deeper if it sounds vague. 9. What are you afraid of, really? Being seen wanting more. Failing publicly. Succeeding and having to sustain it. Being judged. Being wrong. Name the one you don’t say out loud to anyone. No one has to ever see this but you. 10. What is it costing you to keep waiting? In money, yes. But also in energy, in confidence, in relationships, in the version of yourself you’re becoming while you postpone. What does another year of one day honestly cost? Part 3: Look Forward — Which Version Gets Written? 11. What does life look like in 20 years if you don’t go for it? This is a hard one, so don’t rush it. The book stays unwritten, the business unstarted, the move never made. Same routines, same one day list, twenty years older. Who did you spend those years watching do the things you wanted to do? And what did the people watching you, (your children, your grandchildren, your friends), learn from you about what’s possible after 50 (60,70)? Sit with that version for a while. How does it feel? 12. And what does life look like in 20 years if you do go for it? Same 20 years, other path. What have you built? Who have you become? What stories do you have that you don’t have now? What do the people who love you say about you, and what did you show them was possible at 50, 60, 70? What’s the legacy: the money, the work, the example, the proof that it wasn’t too late? Write this one in as much detail as the last one (if not more. You need both pictures side by side.) Now sit with that version for a while. How does it feel? 13. Which of those two versions are you going to write into being? One of them is coming either way; the 20 years pass at the same speed whether you use them or not. If your answer is the second version, the follow-up is simple: what one thing are you going to do in the next 30 days to start it? Download the free PDF here - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R_Ety5iTB5RvTIr6WRZrd7RktHPI217J/view?usp=sharing [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R_Ety5iTB5RvTIr6WRZrd7RktHPI217J/view?usp=sharing] What To Do Next Answer all 13 in one sitting if you can, and don’t worry about being tidy or profound. Honest beats both. When you’re done, do three things: * Circle the one thing on your ‘one day’ list you'd regret most if you never did it. That's your big goal for the next 20 years. Your BHAG. (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) * Underline the answer that explains why you haven't started it yet. It's probably sitting in question 9 or 10. That's your obstacle, and it has far less power now you’ve named it. * Write down one small action you can take this week towards your BHAG. Not the whole plan. Just one action this week - obstacle be damned. Then put the notebook somewhere you can keep reading and reviewing. In six months, do the whole thing again and see how the answers have shifted, what you’ve started, and what you’ve stopped telling yourself. Wherever you're standing right now, the last twenty years put you there. The good news is that the next twenty are yours to point in any direction you like. Get full access to The 50+ Nomad at club.the50plusnomad.com/subscribe [https://club.the50plusnomad.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

4 Things Gordon Ramsay Taught Me In Vegas

Gordon Ramsay is everywhere here in Vegas. And I mean everywhere! * Gordon Ramsay Burger. * Gordon Ramsay Fish & Chips. * Gordon Ramsay Steak. * Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill. Love him or hate him the guy is a personal branding genius. Personally I have no strong feelings either way about him. I quite enjoy the odd episode of Hells Kitchen, he’s obviously very good at what he does, and as a fellow Brit, the ‘F’ word isn’t nearly as dramatic to us as it might be overseas. What I’m more interested in is how a Scottish chef ended up with his face on half the billboards in Vegas, restaurants on three continents, dozens of bestselling books, and a personal brand that without doubt out-earns the cooking itself? And even more importantly what can we learn from it for our little brands in our little corner of the internet? Here’s my thoughts: 1. What Do You Plan To Do With Your One Wild And Precious Life? I love this Mary Oliver quote. Particularly now as I hurtle into my mid 50s. Here’s why: Ramsay opened his first restaurant in 1998. That’s nearly 30 years ago. Everything he’s built — the TV shows, the empire, the licensing deals, the global brand — has been the work of three decades. I’m 53. If I’m lucky, I’ve got another 30 years ahead of me. Possibly more. Now, I don’t want a Ramsay empire and if I know my audience I doubt you do too. But what could you do in the next 10, 20, 30 years? * Build a highly engaged newsletter audience of tens of thousands of subscribers paying you to write about what you love? * Write the books you've always wanted to write, and see them on bookshelves around the world? * Build a portfolio of income streams that lets you choose your hours, your work, and your location for the rest of your life? Most people massively overestimate what they can build in a year and drastically underestimate the power of time. Instead of thinking in months, think in years. * What would you love to pour your heart and soul into for the next decade or two? * What would light you up while filling the coffers at the same time? * What mark would you truly love to leave on the world? As we get older, our business choices are no longer just about money, but about fulfilment and spending our days doing things that bring us joy. (NB: I don’t know about you, but as I’m aging I’m getting almost bolshy about what I now refuse to do! 😂) 2. He Built Restaurants. What Will You Build? Ramsay’s foundation was restaurants. That was the asset that everything else got built on top of. Thankfully, that’s not the game we’re in. And technology these days means we don’t have to take those kinds of financial risks, which is why it’s much easier now to create an income doing something you love. So what will you build? A newsletter, a book, a coaching practice, a product range, a course, a community, an app, an Etsy shop, a podcast. The online world is your oyster, but you need to pick your lane(s) and start building assets. In other words the things that actually make you money. You may not need 90 of them (which is what Ramsay’s group now operates), it depends on the business model you choose. But you do need tangible products or services that can compound over time. 3. He Did TV. What’s Your Distribution Engine? The restaurants alone wouldn’t have made Ramsay the household name he is today. That’s what television did. Hell’s Kitchen. Kitchen Nightmares. MasterChef. The shows were the engine that drove people to everything else. For most of us the engine looks more like an email newsletter, a YouTube channel, a podcast, a social presence, or a Substack you publish on consistently. But whatever distribution channel you choose, be prepared to show up for years, not months. We don’t have a huge media machine investing millions in advertising for the odd reel we publish. It’s just us and a very noisy internet. So as with your asset building, pick your lane(s) and start creating and publishing content that attracts your ideal audience to you. I’m well aware this is the most challenging part of the gig. Most of us just want to write, or cook, or coach, or build, not constantly tell people the work exists. But distribution is the bit that separates great work nobody’s heard of, from great work that funds your freedom. 4. Make A Decision, Start, And Let Time Do The Work. This is probably the most important takeaway. Most of us run our businesses on absurdly short timelines. * We start a Substack and expect results in six months. * We launch a product and panic when it isn’t taking off in month 1. * We compare our month two to someone else’s year ten and quietly conclude we must be doing it wrong. We’re not. We’re just impatient. Ramsay didn’t build his empire in two years. He built it in 30. The same is true of almost anyone you admire. The audiences, the income, the freedom, the reputation, all of it compounded over decades while they kept showing up. I’m well aware as we get older that time becomes the one thing we realise we may have less of in front than we do behind, but don’t underestimate what you bring to the table. You have decades of experience, knowledge, self awareness, organisational skills, perspective and talent! Trust in your ability to make it work. Decide what you truly want to do and achieve in the next decade, (not year), start building and creating and listening and engaging and let time work its magic. It Can Be As Big Or As Small As You Want At some point Ramsay stopped being a chef and became a brand. Cookbooks, product lines, licensing deals, TV shows, partnerships & restaurants on three continents with his name on them. We don’t have to go this big (thank god, because it sounds exhausting). But here’s the equation: Topic + Assets + Distribution + Time = the freedom income you’ve been after. Get all four ingredients in place and at some point the work you’ve already done starts earning without you having to actively make it happen. The stage where what you built keeps paying you while you’re at the beach, on a flight, or fast asleep. That looks different at our scale than at Ramsay’s. * Maybe it’s a book that keeps selling years after you wrote it. * A course people buy without you having to teach it each time. * A community that runs itself once it’s established. * A product line that ships orders while you’re travelling. * Affiliate partnerships that pay you commission while you’re out for dinner. The size and scale of it is up to you, but this is the part the ‘gooroo’s’ sell under the guise of ‘passive income’, which everyone chases too early, and wonders why ‘making money in their sleep’ is the buzzword, but they’re working their socks off. You don’t need to be Gordon Ramsay. You almost certainly don’t want to be. But you can learn from his path. Decide what you want to build, pick your distribution engine, start now, and give yourself the next 10 - 30 years to let it grow. That’s the magic formula! 😉 📍 Las Vegas, Nevada 🎰 Get full access to The 50+ Nomad at club.the50plusnomad.com/subscribe [https://club.the50plusnomad.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

What My 20-Year-Old Daughter Taught Me About Audience Building In a Vegas Rooftop Pool

Yesterday afternoon, very decadently, Cerys (my daughter) and I were lying by the rooftop pool here in Vegas, sun on our faces, drinks in our hands, with the sounds of the strip in the distance. Cerys is (almost) 20 and studying music at college in London, so when she starts talking about how the music business works these days, I listen. (How the tides have turned - for the last 2 decades I’ve told her how the world works, now she’s the worldly one!) She was telling me about how successful artists build loyal audiences these days. “They stay in their lane,” she said. “They build a strong, distinctive sound. They give their audience exactly what they came for, again and again, until that audience knows them, trusts them, and feels devoted. And then, once they’ve earned the loyalty, they start to experiment. They branch out, evolve their sound, try different things, and by that point the audience will follow them anywhere.” She’d just unknowingly summed up the single most important principle of audience-building, regardless of what you’re building. The Gwen Stefani Example On the night we arrived in Vegas, Rhett and I went to see No Doubt at the Sphere. It was the second-to-last night of their 18-show residency. They’d originally only had 12 nights booked but sold out, so had to add an extra 6 nights to meet demand. (Confession: I’m not actually a huge No Doubt fan. I’m more of a Gwen fan. But, you’ll see, that’s actually part of the point.) Because 18 sold-out nights at the Sphere in 2026, for a band marking the 30th anniversary of their most popular album ‘Tragic Kingdom’ - well, that doesn’t happen by accident. If you’re unsure who I’m talking about, No Doubt built their audience in the 90s as a distinctive ska-punk band. Loud, fun, full of energy, with a very strong identity and what became a loyal fanbase. Then in the mid-2000s, Gwen stepped out and made pop music. Hollaback Girl. Harajuku. The Voice. The fashion line. She wasn’t just the lead singer of a 90s ska-punk band anymore. She became a global cultural icon. But she didn’t make that leap from nowhere. She made it from a platform of 15 years of building an audience inside a band that people loved. The loyalty and trust was already there. Her new direction paid off because she’d earned the right to try it. You See It Everywhere In Music Once you start looking for it, the pattern shows up across the industry. The Beatles spent four years as the loveable mop-tops before they attempted Sgt. Pepper’s. The experimental work paid off because the audience already trusted them as the band who made “She Loves You”. Radiohead built their reputation as a guitar-rock band with The Bends and OK Computer. By the time Kid A arrived in 2000 with no guitars and electronic textures, some fans were horrified, but the core stayed. Radiohead became more, not less, important, because they’d earned the right to experiment. Bruce Springsteen built his audience as a rock-and-roll storyteller with the E Street Band - big productions, anthemic live shows. Then in 1982 he released Nebraska, a stripped-back acoustic album recorded alone in his bedroom. No production, just him and a guitar. The audience came with him because by now they loved Bruce. Look at the order in every one of these examples: * Lane first. * Loyalty second. * Experimentation third. Why This Is Important For Us Cerys was talking about musicians. But what she’d actually described is the architecture of every successful audience-driven business, brand, publication, or product line ever built. It comes down to a core message, a core identity and a core promise. The thing your audience knows you for. What they show up expecting, and what’s true of you across every post, every episode, every product, every conversation and every note. Without that core, the audience can never quite form, because there’s nothing for them to truly attach to. They might enjoy a piece here and a video there, but they never become yours. They never quite know what you stand for, so they can never become devoted. Imagine if No Doubt had made one song in their ska-punk sound, another in the grunge style of the early 90s, and another in the burgeoning pop of the late 90s, just because they couldn’t pick a lane and wanted to try a bit of everything. They’d never have built an audience. The musicians who build lifelong audiences understand this instinctively. So do the writers, the founders, the YouTubers, the coaches, and the brands that endure. They pick the one thing they stand for, they hold it for years, and they become the person their audience trusts on that one thing. The experimentation, the diversification, the cross-platform expansion, the new products, the off-piste topics, the side projects, all come later. After the loyalty. What To Do About It So before you throw your hands up in the air with frustration and say but I want to talk about travel and business (note to self), you can, as long as you know your defining message. Example: This post is about audience building. Because my core topic, core message, core identity is ‘how to fund freedom and live your best life after 50’. Defining message - “How to fund freedom.” I started this post with the story of Cerys & I in the pool here in Vegas, and on Friday I wrote a post all about Vegas and guess what, Friday coming I’ll be sending out a post all about our nomadic life after 137 days on the road. That’s because travel is the lifestyle. Funding freedom is the message. So, if you’re building anything that depends on an audience, here’s what the principle looks like in practice. * Name your core message. One sentence. What do you stand for? What do you want your audience to associate you with? Get it onto paper before you write another post. * Make it visible. In your tagline, your about page, your first paragraph of every post. The reader should know within 10 seconds what they’ve landed on. * Hold the lane. Every post, every Note, every video should connect back to the core message. Not the same topic every time, but the same underlying theme. Different angles on the same one thing. * Let topics vary, but never the core. You can write about travel one day and family the next and business the day after. As long as each one is serving the lane, the variety strengthens you, not weakens you. * Don’t experiment until the loyalty is built. New formats, new genres, new directions are all fine. But save the big swings for after you’ve built the trust. Until then, the lane is what holds everything together. * When you veer off, come back fast. Everyone veers. Even the best of them. The lane isn’t a prison, it’s a centre of gravity. As long as you keep returning to it, the audience stays with you. Believe me, this is a lesson I’m re-learning all the time, but get the order right, and one day you might find yourself selling out 18 nights at the Sphere 30 years after your biggest album. Or, less ambitiously, you find yourself with a real audience of people who’ll follow whatever you do next, because they trust who you are. The order is the same either way. Right. Pool’s calling for more deep discussions! Have a great Monday. 📍 Las Vegas, Nevada 🎰 Get full access to The 50+ Nomad at club.the50plusnomad.com/subscribe [https://club.the50plusnomad.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

What Did You Want To Be Before You Grew Up?

I’m poorly. 🤒 Seriously you couldn’t make this stuff up. Almost 6 weeks ago now, I found myself at 2am in a dodgy back street hospital in Cartagena with severe stomach pain, that a week later turned out to be a blocked gallstone and swift gallbladder removal in a hospital in Costa Rica. And here I am now, in a lovely city just north of San Diego having picked up a chest infection of sorts and feeling very sorry for myself. (Clearly my body is at a bit of a low ebb). So today I’m doing the thing I almost never do in the daytime. Lying on the sofa with my laptop, blanket on, intravenous drip of tea, Teddy snuggled up on my lap, and Disney movies playing in the background. (They cheer me up!) Which is how I found myself watching “Hook” this morning. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, (I highly recommend you do), Hook is the 1991 Steven Spielberg film where a grown-up Peter Pan, played by the brilliant Robin Williams, has forgotten he was ever Peter Pan. He’s a corporate lawyer now, stressed and distant, too busy for his kids, and deep in the whole sad modern catalogue of being a responsible grown-up. Then Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman, in possibly the most enjoyable wig & fake eyebrows in cinema history) kidnaps his children, and Peter is dragged back to Neverland to remember who he actually is. The cast is extraordinary. Robin Williams, Maggie Smith, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins (even Phil Collins makes an appearance!). Made even more poignant as three of them are no longer with us. 😢 But watching it this morning in my slightly sensitive state, I found myself thinking about the meaning behind this particular adaptation and wondering: “What did we dream about as children, before our imaginations got quashed by real life?” Stop Day Dreaming! I still remember to this day my teacher’s snapping me back to reality in the classroom with the words ‘Joanne! Stop daydreaming!’ My grandmother used to tell me to stop being such a dreamer. Even my Mum told me I walked about life with my ‘head in the clouds.’ I once told an old boyfriend that if I ever had children I’d raise them in a hot country, near the beach, travelling the world, and his reaction was to laugh and tell me to come back to reality. (We all know how that dream turned out! 😉) * “Stop dreaming.” * “Get your head out of the clouds.” * “Get back to reality.” * “You’ve got responsibilities.” * “There’s life, there’s work, there’s the gas bill, there’s the boss, there’s the mortgage.” The endless sensible chorus. You hear it enough times and eventually you realise you’re listening to your own voice . Using Your Imagination I’m an emotional soul at the best of times so it was no surprise to find myself shedding tears this morning to two very poignant scenes in the movie. The first is when the Lost Boys are trying to work out whether this exhausted middle-aged man could really be their Peter. They’re sceptical. They’ve got a new leader, a young upstart, and he doesn’t believe Peter is Peter at all. The other Lost Boys aren’t sure either. Then the smallest, cutest one gets Peter to kneel & takes Peter’s face in his hands. He pushes the lines around on his face. The frown, the tiredness, the years of forgetting. He keeps pushing until he reveals Peter’s smile. And he says, very softly with a huge smile: “Oh, there you are, Peter.” (Seriously, tear ducts in full motion 😢) The second is when the Lost Boys sit down to a banquet of imaginary food, miming great forkfuls of nothing into their mouths, while Peter sits there completely confused. An argument starts & escalates between him & the upstart leader. Peter, mid-rant, picks up a spoonful of nothing and flicks it across the table. Except it isn’t nothing anymore. It’s brightly coloured pretend-food, a great splat of the stuff, and the Lost Boys stop and stare. “Peter, you’re doing it,” one of them whispers. “Doing what?” he snaps. “Using your imagination.” And the table fills, course after course, every dish the Lost Boys could possibly want, all conjured by a man who’d forgotten he could. A Writer, An Accountant or a Redcoat! When I was a child, my mum was convinced I was going to be a writer. And not without reason. I was always writing! I wrote diaries, journals, stories, plays. I roped my friends into performing the plays in the back garden, fully cast and choreographed, with an audience of bemused parents on plastic chairs. Every family holiday, I kept daily logs of where we went and what we did. Some of the journals are still in a box in my sisters loft in the UK. I had a dream of becoming a film director. I specifically revered Steven Spielberg, which is ironic given the film I’m currently watching. I wanted to make people lose themselves utterly in a story the way he could. My dad was an entrepreneur, and the one who lit the entrepreneurial fire in me. But by the time I’d sputtered (barely) through my ‘A’ Levels, he wanted me to get a real job. In an ideal life he wanted me to be an accountant. The fact I was crap at maths had no bearing on his desires. So I did what any sane daughter would and went off to work as a singer in a caravan park, followed by becoming a redcoat at Bognor Butlins. (If you’re not from the UK just watch an old episode of ‘Hi De Hi’ on YT & you’ll get the general idea 😂 ) Finally when I was about 21, I started my management career at a company that ran concert venues and theatres throughout the UK. I worked hard, and moved up the ladder quickly, ironically spending most of my days buried under a set of management accounts. Life filled up with responsibility, profit margins, employees, payroll, accounts. The writing was long gone. For years, I didn’t write a thing. I might have written advertising copy and the occasional internal memo. But the journals, the stories, the plays, the film-director ambition, all of it went into a drawer somewhere and I forgot the drawer existed. Until I didn’t. Until I started travelling & creating content & chasing my dreams and goals. The writing has taken a while to catch up as somewhere along the way I lost my voice, but it’s back now and my dreams are still very much alive. Maybe in a different form but they’re most definitely there. How About You? * Who or what did you want to be when you were a kid? * What did you dream about? * Where did your imagination go when no one was watching? Do you ever tap into it now, or did you put it in a drawer somewhere too? The good news is, we no longer need anyone else’s permission to pull the dream back out. The teacher who told us to stop daydreaming retired thirty years ago. The grandmother who called us a dreamer was just reflecting her own disappointments. The boyfriend who told us to be sensible isn’t in our life anymore for a reason. We’re in charge of our life now (even if sometimes we forget that!). If there’s a goal, a dream, an ambition still rattling around in there, (even quietly, half-forgotten, slightly embarrassed at being noticed) it’s ours to take seriously. Time Won’t Wait In the movie, as Peter remembers himself as Pan, he remembers visiting Wendy, (played by the wonderful Maggie Smith), who gets older and older every time Peter comes back to see her, until she’s small and silver-haired and almost done. That’s not a metaphor. That’s life. Time won’t wait for any of us. The life we’re living now is literally the only one we get. If we’re not truly living now, then when? What would it take? What needs to happen? As the story ends, Peter has to go home. The children are waiting. The corporate life is still there. He doesn’t get to stay in Neverland and never grow up, that isn’t the deal. But he goes home changed. He remembers what he was before life filled up with responsibility, and he carries that knowledge back into his current reality. And through my tears as the film finished, the late Robin Williams, as grown up Peter, stands looking out to the sky with his family, snow falling & the windows wide open and says: “To live would be an awfully big adventure.” Get full access to The 50+ Nomad at club.the50plusnomad.com/subscribe [https://club.the50plusnomad.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Travel Smart: Staying Safe on the Road with Erin from Nomad Life

Travel safety is one of those topics many of us don’t think deeply about until something happens, or until we start travelling more extensively and realise the world isn’t always as straightforward as our home environment. In this episode, I’m joined by Erin, Nomad Life [https://substack.com/profile/244850552-erin-nomad-life], a long-term nomad and newly certified Empowerment Self-Defence (ESD) coach, to talk about practical travel safety, situational awareness, intuition, confidence, and how to travel the world without living in fear. Erin has spent 15 years travelling through more than 60 countries, often solo and far off the beaten path, and shares the tools and mindset shifts that have helped her stay safe while continuing to explore the world boldly and confidently. We also dive into real-life travel experiences, from attempted thefts in Costa Rica to uncomfortable situations on public transport, and discuss simple habits that can make a huge difference when travelling internationally. Most interestingly from this discussion you’ll hear how being prepared and aware, rather than make you more paranoid, actually makes you more confident and able to explore the world with freedom and peace of mind. What You’ll Learn in This Episode * What Empowerment Self-Defence (ESD) actually is, and why it’s about far more than fighting. * Why situational awareness is one of the most powerful travel safety skills you can develop. * How intuition and body awareness can help you avoid dangerous situations before they escalate. * Practical techniques for using your voice, body language, and boundaries to de-escalate threats. * The importance of confidence and preparation when travelling solo or as a couple. * Simple travel safety tools Erin carries everywhere she goes. * Why freezing in dangerous situations happens, and how practice helps reduce it. * How to stay aware without becoming fearful or hypervigilant. * Real stories from years of global travel and the lessons learned from them. Key Takeaway One of the biggest takeaways for me from this conversation was just how many situations can potentially be avoided or de-escalated simply through better situational awareness. Paying attention to your surroundings, trusting your instincts, and reacting early can often stop incidents escalating long before they become dangerous. Time-stamped Guide * 00:00 Welcome + introducing Erin from Nomad Life * 01:30 What Empowerment Self-Defence (ESD) actually is * 03:00 Erin’s solo travels through 60+ countries and why she first trained in ESD * 06:00 Free travel safety resources, training, and Erin’s ESD app * 07:45 Why travellers can be more vulnerable abroad than they realise * 10:45 Jo’s Costa Rica theft experience + emergency response challenges overseas * 14:45 The core principles of ESD and why awareness matters * 17:30 Intuition, boundaries, body language, and learning to react instead of freeze * 22:30 Simple travel safety tools and habits Erin uses around the world * 26:00 Staying aware without slipping into fear or hypervigilance * 30:30 Real-world travel safety experiences and avoiding dangerous situations * 33:30 Are some countries actually more dangerous than others? * 36:00 Jo’s London dog theft incident + trusting your instincts * 39:00 Final thoughts on confidence, preparation, and travelling safely Resources Mentioned in This Episode * Erin’s Travel Safety Resources Page [https://www.yournomadlife.com/p/personal-safety-resources] * Erin’s Travel Safety Tips Page [https://www.yournomadlife.com/t/travel-safety] * Free ESD App (Apple & Android) - Apple Store [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mypwr/id6443930484] | Google Play [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mypwr&pcampaignid=web_share&pli=1] * Nomad Life with Erin [https://www.yournomadlife.com/] Join the Conversation Have you ever had a travel experience that made you more aware of personal safety? Or do you have any travel safety habits or tools you swear by when exploring the world? Share your thoughts, experiences, or best tips in the comments, we’d love to hear them. Get full access to The 50+ Nomad at club.the50plusnomad.com/subscribe [https://club.the50plusnomad.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]