Years ago I remember watching a Gary Vee video where he said ‘own your ego’.

What he meant was - own what it is you want. Don’t hide your dreams because others might diminish them. Be proud of the fact you want more, no matter what it is and own your goals.

One of my favourite quotes of all time is from Jen Sincero’s book ‘You Are a Badass’:

So for the love of all that is holy, why oh why do we hide our talents behind big fat bushels??

If you are reading this you are minimum 45+ (my recent survey told me so), and most likely 55+.

That means you are sitting on DECADES of experience, knowledge, problem solving, wisdom and everything in between.

Much of which others, who don’t have your specific skills and insights, would pay to know.

But somewhere along the way we convinced ourselves that not only don’t we know as much as we thought we did, but surely most of what we know must be common knowledge right? And even worse, now AI knows what we know so what value are we to anyone anymore.

I know this because I’ve spent the last couple of years doing exactly the same thing to myself.

With 20+ years experience in building businesses, multiple 6 figure course launches under my belt, three 7 figure businesses, (digital products over 5 years, e-commerce business within one year and one offline business I rarely raise because after the recession it drowned, so I count it as a failure event though it hit 7 figures in income 2 years running - “oh female brain, I beg thee to love thyself more!”).

And yet after Google sunk my blog with the helpful content update (which was generating 5 figs a month by then - another venture I deem a ‘failure’ 🙄), I quietly tiptoed onto Substack as if I were a complete beginner.

I didn’t ‘own my ego’. I didn’t come on to the platform with confidence and gusto and proudly announce how I could help others with my DECADES of knowledge. I slunk about writing quiet articles, flipping and flopping my topics, changing my bio a hundred times and changing my strategy every 5 minutes.

I convinced myself that because I didn’t have any ‘current’ million dollar money making ventures I wasn’t worthy of helping anyone.

That’s like a football coach saying that because he’s ‘currently’ not playing football he’s not qualified to coach it.

Seriously?? The stories we tell ourselves.

Is This You?

So I ask you my fellow adventurer.

What have you spent the last 10, 20, 30 years doing?

What have you got good at?

What do you know now that you didn’t know when you started?

What problems have you solved?

What patterns have you noticed?

What have other people asked you about, again and again, over the years?

You are without doubt sitting on a body of experience that you could turn into freedom funding income.

• A business.

• A publication.

• A consultancy.

• A product.

• A platform.

• A second income.

• A first income, even, depending on where you are in life.

The First $1,000 Maths

Now let’s make that number real, because “turn your knowledge into income” is one of those phrases that means everything and nothing.

Here is what $1,000 looks like in the real world:

• 10 people paying $97 for a 90-minute workshop on the thing you’ve done a thousand times

• 4 calls at $250 with someone five years behind you on the exact road you’ve already walked

• 37 copies of a $27 template, checklist or mini guide

• One small retainer client at $250 a month, kept happy for four months

Look at those numbers again. None of them need an audience of thousands. None of them need a funnel, a personal brand, or a single dance on TikTok.

The workshop needs 10 people. You likely already know 10 people who ask you about this stuff. They might even be in your phone right now.

So before we go through the steps do this exercise.

Open a note on your phone and list:

1. 10 things people have asked you about more than once. At work, at family dinners, in Facebook groups, over the fence. If two different people have asked, it goes on the list.

2. 5 problems that took you years to solve. The pension maze. The difficult team member. The sourdough. The teenager.

3. 5 things you do on autopilot that others seem to find hard. These are the sneaky ones, because familiar things feel ordinary to you even when they’re far from ordinary to anyone else.

Now circle the three that appear more than once across your lists.

Of those three, star the one you could talk about for an hour without notes.

That starred item is your first candidate. You’re picking a starting point, and starting points can change, so don’t agonise. My first starting point was Facebook fan page templates. I promise you it evolves.

If you'd rather do this on paper, all of these exercises are in “The First $1,000 Workbook”, waiting at the bottom of this post.

What comes next is turning it into income you can run from anywhere, and that’s the rest of this post: your core message, your who, your delivery model, and the step where most people give up (plus how not to).

5 Steps For Turning What You Know Into Freedom Funding Income

Once you’ve named the thing, here’s the work.

1. Recognise the value you bring

What do you know?

The beauty of the online world we now live in is that there’s an audience for everything.

If you’ve spent 20 years as an accountant, teacher, organising your home, baking for friends, raising teenagers, working in retail, managing teams, painting for joy, learning new languages, reading personal development books - you name it, you know stuff other people don’t and would love to.

Whether it’s been your profession or a hobby, that knowledge has real value in the marketplace.

Here are just a few examples of people who’ve turned lived experience into portable income:

Barbara Costello (Brunch with Babs) — a grandmother in her 70s who spent decades cooking, raising a family, and running a household. She started sharing practical home, cooking, and life tips on TikTok and built a business around the wisdom she’d accumulated over a lifetime.

Vanesa Amaro — a professional house cleaner who began sharing cleaning tips and hacks online. What started as everyday knowledge from her job grew into a social media audience of millions and a personal brand.

Margaret Manning (Sixty and Me) — after a career in corporate communications, Margaret launched Sixty and Me in her 60s, sharing conversations about life after 60. She turned her experience and perspective into a thriving media business.

Alicia Katz Pollock — an accountant and QuickBooks expert who transformed years of financial and bookkeeping knowledge into online courses, books, workshops, and educational content for small business owners.

Notice what none of these women had to do: invent a new skill, retrain, or start from scratch. They took what they already knew and packaged it for people who wanted to learn it.

That’s what most of us are actually sitting on. Not a gap in our knowledge, but a failure to recognise that the knowledge is already valuable.

Stop describing yourself as someone who’s starting out or figuring it out unless you genuinely are. Own the experience you actually have.

2. Find your core message

There’s a big trend right now toward being nicheless. Being able to write about whatever you fancy on any given day, no constraint.

I get the appeal. It’s attractive to think you can talk about anything you want and call it a business.

Tim Ferriss referred to it recently on a LinkedIn post - the difference between being a specialist and a generalist. (And then linked to an article written in 2007 I might add when the internet wasn’t as noisy)

The trouble is, in todays very noisy world, unless you’re so good from the getgo it’s hard to ignore you, you’re going to struggle to break through.

If you start a YouTube channel with no clear message, the algorithm doesn’t know where to put you. If you launch a Substack publication with no clear message, readers don’t know whether to subscribe because they can’t tell what they’re signing up for.

Without a core message to hold everything together, the algorithms and the humans both struggle to place you, and your work doesn’t compound.

But a core message isn’t the same as a narrow topic.

Read more

Hola my friends! From Cabo San Lucas, Mexico! 🌊

We’ve just finished an amazing couple of weeks in Vegas, and now we’re settled in Cabo for the next two weeks to celebrate my husband Rhett’s, 50th birthday. (Yes he’s my toyboy! 😂)

The hotel is gorgeous, the beach is right there, and the weather is doing exactly what you want Mexican weather to do in June.

Right now I’m writing this from a beachside table watching the waves crash, which feels like a slightly unfair way to start a Substack post. 😉

Welcome to the first edition of ‘Monthly Mini-Adventures’. This is a quick monthly roundup of my exciting adventures across the month, plus a downloadable list of small ‘mini-adventures’ to help you add a little more fun, freedom, and spontaneity to your month!

So first, a quick roundup:

Where In The World Was I This Month?

Weeks 1 and 2 - Encinitas, California

We started the month house-sitting in Encinitas, looking after a beautiful dog called Teddy.

Unfortunately I was pretty poorly for most of it (chest infection, gallbladder still settling), so I didn’t get out to explore nearly as much as I’d planned. But house-sitting remains one of my favourite ways to see places I’d never otherwise visit, and a bit of puppy love does the soul good.

If you’d like to see my full guide on how to house-sit your way around the world, it’s here on Gumroad. (Quick note: don’t buy it just yet! I have a really special offer coming from tomorrow for the whole of July, that gets you this guide PLUS everything else in my backpack.)

Weeks 3 and 4 - Las Vegas, Nevada

I love Vegas. I have no idea what that says about my personality. But the neon, the spectacle, the Sphere, the fountains, the over-the-top brilliance of the whole place.

I just love it.

You can read all about my Vegas adventures here.

My Favourite Moment This Month

Floating Gondolas

Check out this amazing floating gondola! 😮

What an amazing optical illusion right? The water is so still and clear that they truly look like they’re floating in mid air.

I stood there for ages just watching (and maybe have about 20 more photos on my phone 🙊).

The Star-Spangled Banner Fountains

On my last night in Vegas, as my family headed to bed, I wanted one last Bellagio fountain show. Little did I know the last display at midnight is to the Star-Spangled Banner!

What a thrill!

Thank you America, you were awesome, I can’t wait to come back later in the year. 🇺🇸 ❤️

What’s Coming Up Next Month?

Two more weeks here in Cabo, then in mid-July we head to Vancouver for a house-sit. I’ve never been to Canada before and I’m super excited. 🇨🇦

On the work front, July is shaping up to be a big month:

• This Big World had over 100 sales again in June (106 to be exact), and I’ve just hired an outreach coordinator to help with creator collaborations. We’ve already sent 18 packs out and some of those creators will be appearing on Substack with me for interviews. This feels like a bit of a turning point for the cards. 🥳

• A couple of Substack collaborations coming up that I’m excited about.

• A fantastic July Substack promo to celebrate my husband’s 50th birthday (see my post coming tomorrow).

• A long-overdue coaching call for my cohort members (sincere apologies for the delay - the various illnesses have not helped). Details coming very soon.

Ok that’s me, now, on to making your July a fantastic month!

31 Mini-Adventures for July

Welcome to the first edition of Monthly Mini-Adventures.

Here’s the thing. You don’t need to fly to Bali to feel alive. You don’t need to quit your job, sell your house, or fundamentally reinvent yourself. (Though if any of those are calling, by all means.)

Most of the time, you just need to do one small thing today that’s slightly out of your usual.

That's the whole idea behind this monthly calendar. 31 small adventures, one a day, designed to shake up your routine just a little.

Some are tiny acts of curiosity. Some are small rebellions against acting your age. Some are excuses to do something just because. And a few are small business nudges if you’re building something on the side.

You don’t have to do all 31. Pick the ones that excite you. Ignore the rest. Save them for August. Or do three in one day if you’re feeling spicy.

Whatever you do, let me know in the comments which ones you tried and which ones I should add to next month’s list.

July’s Mini-Adventures

1. Watch the sunrise. Be fully present with a coffee or tea and no phone.

2. Order something you’d never normally order from your usual coffee place.

3. Send a postcard to someone who isn’t expecting one. (Yes, in actual post.)

4. Independence Day, US folks. Whoever you are, eat something you’ve never eaten before today.

5. Walk somewhere new for 30 minutes. No podcast. No phone. Just you.

6. Cook something from a country you want to visit. Bonus points for ingredients you’ve never used.

7. Reach out to one creator you admire. No agenda. Just say you love their work.

8. Text someone you haven’t spoken to in a year. Tell them you were thinking about them.

9. Pick one thing on your to-do list that’s been there for more than a month. Do it. Or delete it.

10. Go to a bookshop. Buy one book that catches your eye, not one you “should” read.

11. Take the long way home from wherever you go today.

12. Find the highest point in your town or city. Go there. Look at the view.

13. Cook dinner outdoors tonight. Garden, balcony, park bench. Doesn’t matter where.

14. Spend an hour in a place you’ve never been before. Cafe, gallery, park, neighbourhood — anywhere new.

15. Write down 10 things on your bucket list. Pick one to start planning.

By the way, if you love these mini challenges, the This Big World challenge cards are basically this in physical form. Pick a card, do the thing. Brilliant for trips, road trips, or when you’re stuck for ideas at home.

Shop on Amazon

16. Eat dessert first today. Just because.

17. Listen to an album from your childhood from start to finish.

18. Have a conversation with a stranger today. The barista, the dog walker, the person in the queue. Real conversation, not pleasantries.

19. Spend an hour learning one new skill that would help your business. Just one hour.

20. Plan a day trip for next month. Just plan it. Booking it can wait.

21. Sing in the car at the top of your voice. Bonus points for windows down.

22. Pull out a This Big World card. Do whatever it says. (Or pretend you have a card. Open a map, point at a spot within an hour of you, drive there.)

23. Compliment a stranger today. Watch how it makes you feel.

24. Write down five things you’ve done this year that you’re proud of. Just for you.

25. Write down the one thing you’ve been putting off in your business. Do it tomorrow.

26. Try a new restaurant tonight. Or order takeaway from somewhere you’ve never tried.

27. Do something today that your 25-year-old self would think is amazing.

28. Pick one product, service, or post you’ve made that you’re proud of. Share it again.

29. Ask three readers what they’d love more of. Listen.

30. Plan one small bold thing for August. Tell someone you’re doing it so you can’t quietly bail.

31. Pitch yourself for one guest post, podcast, or collaboration today.

Download the PDF version to display somewhere prominent here 👇

Download the PDF Here

That’s July.

Let me know which ones you think you’ll try and if any of these prompts becomes a story, I want to hear it. Send me your photos, your wins, your tiny acts of small rebellion. I’ll feature my favourites in next month’s post!

And don't forget, you can grab 50 scratch-off mini-adventures over at This Big World. Brilliant for road trips, dinner parties, slow Sundays, or when life starts feeling a bit beige. They also make a brilliant gift for the travel lover in your life.

Shop on Amazon

About Jo

Hey there! I’m Jo Barnes, a 53-year-old British digital nomad who’s spent 16 years building online businesses across 45+ countries.

I write about funding your freedom, nomadic life after 50, and ageing disgracefully.

Occasionally I also write about Wi-Fi disasters and questionable food choices, but that’s less intentional.

• Browse The Backpack for guides, courses, templates, and tools to help you fund your freedom.

• Find me on Facebook or Instagram if you want to see what I’m up to between posts.

If this resonated, a like, comment, or share helps more people find this newsletter. And I genuinely appreciate it.

Share

Welcome to 6 Notes Sunday. A weekly roundup for chilled Sundays when all we want to do is skim headlines and drink coffee (or tea in my case).

Here are 5 of my favourite Substack Notes from the week, plus my own most popular one.

If any resonate, don’t forget to support the creator with a like, a restack or a comment!

Let’s get into it.

#1

My favourite quote from this note:

(NB: I love ’s insights. So much so, I’m a paid subscriber to her publication Petal + Hearth. She’s built Substack into her full time job, so when she speaks I listen.)

#2

Many years ago a friend of mine said ‘there are no unique messages anymore, just unique messengers’.

I’ve always remembered that. ❤️

#3

I’ve recently started keeping a daily note of all my ideas. For posts, notes, articles, social posts etc. It’s gold!

No more staring at a blank page, thinking what shall I write? I just check my notes doc.

I also love ’s advice about joining a writing community. Surrounding yourself with like minded people is so powerful! Whatever niche you’re in or skill you’re trying to improve, find a community. It’ll be your fastest leap to success!

#4

I love this pic because a - it’s gorgeous, and b - I’ll be in Banff at the beginning of August and can’t wait to see it! It’s been on my bucket list for a long time!

#5

This made me laugh out loud 🤣

So I started following him and found another…

So true! 😂

#6 - My Most Popular Note This Week

What did you think of today’s note choices? Let me know in the comments below!

This Weeks Posts Roundup

Also, in case you missed any of this weeks articles, here they are:

Only 2 posts as Vegas was so distracting I got completely out of my rhythm of daily writing.

We’ve now arrived in a much quieter Cabo in Mexico, so I’ll be back to the grind this week.

I hope you’ve enjoyed todays roundup.

Have a fab Sunday! 😎

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:

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 🎰

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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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 🎰

Welcome to 6 Notes Sunday. A weekly roundup for chilled Sundays when all we want to do is skim headlines and drink coffee (or tea in my case).

Here are 5 of my favourite Substack Notes from the week, plus my own most popular one.

If any resonate, don’t forget to support the creator with a like, a restack or a comment!

Let’s get into it.

#1

I Love Elizabeths action taking here! After fiddling with a website she’s taken the leap and created a fab landing page for her ‘Blind Date With a Book’ offer.

Check it out and order today for your book, stickers and other goodies. Congrats Elizabeth! I hope it goes super well. ❤️

#2

Well now isn’t this interesting… Just as I was testing out the shorter post format.

Sure enough, looking at my own data, the longer posts have had more reaction.

What’s been your experience, have your longer posts created better engagement metrics?

#3

I love Kelly’s slow travel insights. Every note & post makes me want to curl up in a big chair with a cuppa. ❤️

#4

Amen Sister!

#5

Don’t I know it…

(Hot tip - AI is great at rearranging your thoughts into something resembling clear thinking.)

#6 - My Most Popular Note This Week

😎

What did you think of today’s note choices? Let me know in the comments below!

This Weeks Posts Roundup

Also, in case you missed any of this weeks articles, here they are:

I hope you’ve enjoyed this weeks roundup.

Have a fab Sunday! 😎

I have to be honest, I don’t really get gambling.

I love going to a Casino (Macau has been my favourite to date), and pretending I know my way around a Blackjack table, but fundamentally - a) I don’t understand odds & probabilities (maths was never my strong point), b) why people spend a LOT of hard earned cash on what is essentially a game rigged against them.

I literally just chatted with a guy from Manchester sitting next to me watching the footie (US vs Australia) who said he’s £2k down!

(And yes, I am writing this post while sitting in a bar in Vegas watching a football match - gotta love digital nomadism! 😂)

But back to gambling - the most I ever take to a table is $100 and believe me that’s not me being sanctimonious, it’s because I have zero clue what I’m doing, I know I’m likely to lose, & I’m only there for a fun croupier & a group of folks who love a laugh.

(Quick aside, I once made $100 last about 4 hours on a short 3 day cruise in Australia, mainly because the table I was playing with were fab, they helped me - which in turn helped them - and we played together as a team. There’s a lesson in that! 😉)

My husband on the other hand takes blackjack very seriously and once had designs on starting his own online casino, but that’s another story I’ll probably never tell 😂

Sorry before I move off gambling (this was meant to be a short intro) here’s a cheat sheet I wrote myself the other night, which didn’t work at all!!! 😂 (God loves a tryer).

Jo, Where Are You Going With This Post?

Vegas of course!

Why would you come to this Disneyland for adults unless you want to gamble?

For a million other reasons! (And yes you introverts there’s plenty here for you too.)

The Sheer Daftness of the Strip

Ok extroverts first.

Vegas is the brightest, loudest, most energetic & colourful place I think I’ve ever been.

Just 5 minutes walking down the strip & you’re greeted by giant gorillas, girls in feathers (and not much else), rappers, break-dancers, magicians, fortune tellers, a Michael Jackson impersonator, and at least three Elvises (Elvi?), all in the space of about 200 metres.

The hotel foyers have mini zoos, canals, gondolas, roller coasters, art collections, museums, aquariums, statues, and one of my favourites - indiscriminate shows.

One minute you’re walking along minding your own business & the next a dazzling light & music show bathes the wall, the waterfall or the building in front of you for 20 minutes, as you stand mesmerised and delighted!

The entire place is designed to remove every trace of ordinary life and replace it with buzz, lights, noise, colour and anything that completely heightens the senses.

And for someone like me who is hugely energised by external stimulation, it’s perfect! (Only for a week or 2 though as there’s no beach!)

The Shows

There are also hundreds of shows in Vegas and I’m not exaggerating.

Cirque du Soleil alone has six or seven different productions running at any given time, plus magic, comedy, music residencies, dance, drag, tributes, immersive experiences, you name it.

Menopause the Musical is apparently one of the longest-running shows on the strip, which I threatened to take my husband to, but as we’re here for his birthday he narrowly escaped that one. 😂

The first night we arrived we headed to The Sphere to see No Doubt. And like everything in Vegas it was bigger, louder & more colourful than any other concert I’ve seen in my life.

The graphics were out of this world & this kind of technology is set to change the future whether it’s welcome or not.

Next week we’re off to see (?) - I can’t say as it’s a surprise for my husband and he might read this, but safe to say it will be spectacular & I look forward to sharing the experience afterwards. (NB: very relevant for us 80s kids!) 😁🕺

Gordon Ramsey Owns Vegas

I had not realised, before coming here, that Gordon Ramsay has completely annexed the entire city!

There are Gordon Ramsay restaurants in nearly every casino. Gordon Ramsay Burger. Gordon Ramsay Steak. Gordon Ramsay Pub. Gordon Ramsay Fish and Chips.

(Yet to be tried, but his Beef Wellington we had in Dubai was out of this world!)

But it’s hilarious. This fellow Brit’s cussing face beams down from every billboard and his name is on menus, towels, slot machines, possibly even the tap water.

I have no idea how one man got this much exposure in one city, but credit to him. He’s done the Vegas version of personal branding harder than any influencer alive!

For The Introverts

Ok go on then Jo. (I can feel your eyes drilling into me). Tell me how a loud, noisy, over stimulated environment like Vegas could ever suit an introvert.

Ok maybe the place itself can’t, but here are my top most beautiful & peaceful experiences:

1. The Bellagio Water Fountains

I can’t explain why these make me cry, but they do, every time. We’ve walked past them three times this week and stopped each time.

Water set to music shouldn’t be that affecting and yet there I stand, watery-eyed, while teenagers around me film it on their phones and Rhett patiently waits for me to finish having a moment.

Next week my daughter & I are taking a blanket & snacks to sit for a couple of hours & watch all the shows as it’s different music & water displays each time. And it’s beautiful. ❤️

2. Cirque de Soleil

Elegant, beautifully choreographed, athletic, dramatic & simply stunning.

These shows are unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and I challenge anyone not to leave unaffected.

3. Other Quiet Corners On The Strip

• The Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens — free to enter, seasonal floral displays the size of small forests, stunning and almost meditative.

• The gardens at Wynn and Encore — fresh floral installations, calm spaces tucked away from the casino floor.

• The Strip itself at sunrise — go for a walk between about 6 and 8am and you’ll have the whole place almost to yourself. The neon’s still on, the air’s cool, and you’ll see Vegas in a way nobody who arrives after lunch ever does. (One of my favourite ways to see everything!)

4. The Mountains

Remember though, the Strip is a just a tiny part of Vegas. (Which is ironic given how ‘big’ it is!)

The rest of Vegas sits in a wide desert valley surrounded on all sides by ancient, beautifully eroded mountains, millions of years old, and that will still be here long after the last casino has closed.

The view from our 15th floor apartment window faces them, and most mornings I’ll have a cuppa just sitting watching the light change across them.

All you need to do is pick a direction, drive 30 minutes, and you’re in desert and mountain country.

Here’s what’s potentially on our list for next week:

• Red Rock Canyon - about 30 minutes from the Strip. Towering red sandstone cliffs, a scenic loop drive, hiking trails for every level. You can be back in your hotel for dinner.

• Valley of Fire State Park - about an hour out. Bright red rock formations, ancient petroglyphs, landscapes that look like another planet. (This is the strongest contender for a day out)

• Hoover Dam and Lake Mead - about 45 minutes out. Enormous reservoir, walking trails, plus the engineering feat of the dam itself.

• Mount Charleston - about 45 minutes out. Forested mountain area with hiking and cooler temperatures than the valley. Apparently the locals go up there when the desert gets too much.

You can spend a week in Vegas, do half a day at each of these, and feel like you’ve had two completely different holidays.

The Best Part of This Trip

The best thing about this trip isn’t actually any of the above.

My daughter Cerys flew in from London last Saturday to spend four weeks with us. She’s 20, at music college in London, and the last time we lived under the same roof was nearly a year ago.

We’ve been watching the football together in the pool in the afternoons & we’ve got a little family bet going on. (Hence I’m cheering for USA as I write this!) 🇺🇸

We’re spending quality time, laughing until we’ve cried (we have that effect on each other), watched movies, sun baked, had deep discussions and taken the piss out of father (as Mums & daughters do).

Rhett’s 50th is in 2.5 weeks (yes he’s my toy boy - does a 4 year age gap make me a cougar? 😂)

So Vegas is the entree, and Cabo, Mexico is the main course (just 2 weeks here in Vegas).

But we’ll be having a few days out & fun adventures here for his birthday. It’s not everyday you turn the big 5-0 right!

So, Should You Come?

Well clearly it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a lot more than dancing girls & casinos.

You can come for the spectacle, for the food, for the shows, the fountains, the flamingos, the gondolas, or the mountains.

But I think it’s somewhere that should be experienced just once in your life.

For me, the thing I love most about Vegas isn’t the noise or the neon or the shows themselves. It’s the feeling of the place.

Vegas is a city of dreams. Every billboard is someone’s name in lights. Every show is someone’s career landing on the biggest stage they could have imagined.

A lad who won Americas Got Talent is doing a residency here. The Sphere is hosting bands who played pubs 30 years ago. New Kids on the Block still exist here (!)

It’s loud, it’s silly, it’s wildly excessive, and somewhere underneath all of it, it’s a city that makes you believe you can achieve all your dreams!

That is, if you don’t lose all your money at the Blackjack table!

Howdy from Vegas! 🥳

It’s so hot here you could fry an egg on the pavement! 🥵

Before I start a raft of posts about all the amazing things we’re seeing and doing here, I wanted to write the post I alluded to in last Wednesdays article, when I talked about my Make It Happen Monday YouTube series and how even though I was consistent, it never really took off.

(If you didn’t see the post and you missed me abseiling down Sheffield City Hall in a sexy hard-hat, go back, I’ll wait…)

So here’s what happened.

Every Monday, for just over 2 years, I recorded an episode of Make It Happen Monday. 109 videos, rain or shine (mainly shine as I was in Phuket), motivated or knackered, I turned up and published a video.

But my account nor the series ever took off. (I think the most views I ever got was a couple of thousand on a video about becoming comfy on camera.)

Which is awkward, because I, along with all the internet ‘gooroos’ pedal the notion that consistency is the secret.

Just keep showing up. The algorithm rewards consistency. Winners never quit.

Even one of the other videos I shared with you in the same post revealed that the No 1 secret to success was Consistent, Focused, Action!

So, If It’s Not Consistency, What Is It?

Consistency gets talked about so much because it’s the one thing fully in your control.

You can’t control whether people subscribe, or even engage, but you can control whether you hit publish every Monday. You can control whether to show up, how to show up and how often.

And to be fair, the advice isn’t wrong. Most people quit far too early, and no amount of brilliance survives giving up at episode four.

Consistency is the price of entry.

As Robert Louis Stevenson (allegedly) says:

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."

The trouble is, it’s only the entry fee.

If we’re not careful we hide behind consistency, which is exactly what I did.

Ticking the box every Monday felt like progress, so I stopped asking the harder questions.

• Was the show improving?

• Did anyone want the information?

• What were people searching for?

• Was episode 100 was any different from episode 10?

(It wasn’t, by the way. Same format, same delivery, same me, just 2 years older.)

The 3 Missing Ingredients

Looking back at my efforts, 3 crucial things were missing:

1. Iteration

Doing the same thing 109 times is only practice if you improve something each time. Otherwise it’s just repetition.

There’s an old line about the difference between ten years of experience and one year of experience repeated ten times, and Make It Happen Monday was the second one.

What I’d do differently:

• Pick one thing to improve every week. Not ten things. Just one. The opening hook, the thumbnail, the headline, the call to action, the way you start your videos. Get conscious about what you’re trying to make better, work on it for a week, and then pick the next thing.

• Track what’s working. Open rates, watch time, comments, shares. Whatever your platform gives you. You can’t improve what you’re not measuring. A simple weekly observation of this post worked because of X, this one bombed because of Y is enough to get started.

• Steal shamelessly from people doing it better than you. Find three creators in your space whose work you admire. Study them. What’s their opening line? Their structure? Their cadence? Take what works, make it yours, and move on.

2. Distribution

I made the show, then waited for the world to find it. The world, it turns out, was busy.

Build it and they will come works beautifully in films about baseball and almost nowhere else. Nobody knew the show existed, and consistency in an empty room is just you, talking to yourself on a schedule.

What I’d do differently:

• Spend as much time promoting each piece as you spent making it. If a post took two hours to write, spend two hours getting it in front of people. Post it on Notes, email a friend, share it in relevant communities, mention it on socials. The work doesn’t end at publish.

• Build relationships with other creators. Restack their work. Reply thoughtfully to their notes. Send the genuine I loved this email. Suggest collaborations. Most of the fastest-growing creators on any platform grew through partnerships, not solo brilliance.

• Repurpose every piece into at least three formats. A long post becomes a Note, a podcast clip, a video, a thread, an Instagram carousel. One piece of work, multiple surfaces. Distribution isn’t one thing, it’s a hundred small things.

3. Feedback

I never asked the few viewers I did have what they wanted more of. I made the show I fancied making and assumed that was enough.

What I’d do differently:

• Just ask. Send the email. Run the poll. Put the question in your next post. What’s been most useful? What would you love more of? What’s missing? Most readers love being asked, and the answers will surprise you.

• Watch what they actually engage with, not what they say they want. Comments, shares, time on page, replies. Behaviour beats opinion. The posts that get the most engagement are telling you something the polls won’t.

• Build a small inner circle and ask them properly. Ten engaged readers willing to give you honest feedback is worth more than a thousand passive subscribers. Find them. Talk to them. Let them shape what comes next.

Playing the Full Game

So here’s what I’m doing now.

I’m publishing regularly on Substack and notes are going out daily, so the consistency box is well and truly ticked.

But this time I’m studying open rates, testing headlines, watching which posts get comments and which get politely ignored, and adjusting as I go.

I’m also asking my readers what they want more of and building relationships with other creators on the platform.

Plus I’m starting to distribute my work across platforms. Notes, pins, videos, podcasts, social posts.

Think of it like this:

Consistency is the car, iteration is the steering, and distribution is the engine.

For two years with Make It Happen Monday I had my foot flat to the floor while parked.

So if you’ve been showing up faithfully with your newsletter, your podcast, your website, your videos, or your Etsy shop, and nothing’s flying, take heart.

You’re not failing or ‘no good’, you’ve just been playing half the game.

Keep showing up, absolutely. But:

• Improve one thing each week,

• Tell more people it exists,

• And ask your audience what they want.

That’s the bit that people don’t add to the motivational posters, because “consistency plus distribution plus feedback and iteration” doesn’t rhyme with anything.

Right, talking about playing the game, I’m off to watch the footie. Come on England! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

📍 Las Vegas, Nevada

This is a quote from Alex Hormozi that sent me straight into classic creator procrastination this morning.

Having been doomscrolling through LinkedIn yesterday I broke a cardinal rule and left the app open on my computer so that quote was the first thing I saw when I opened my laptop this morning. 🙄 (Note to self - close all apps before bed!)

So, fresh cup of tea in hand, I went straight to Claude.

“Right Claude’, I determinedly typed, “let’s just run through my strategy and plan for the rest of the year to make sure I’ve really got my priorities nailed.”

Claude pushed back:

“You don’t have a plan problem.” It said.

“You already have the plan. You named it, you stress-tested it, you locked it in May. So why are you here again asking for another version?”

It then listed my plan back to me, (the one that I’d already committed to during my last creator procrastination session.)

Then it said:

“When your brain gets overwhelmed, it reaches for replanning instead of executing. A fresh plan feels like progress and costs almost no energy, which is exactly why it’s so tempting. The hunt for the perfect plan is your avoidance. No plan will ever feel final and absolute enough, because finality isn’t a feature of the plan, it’s a decision you make and then defend.”

I was rumbled (and a little relieved).

Two hours of “planning” was about to disappear into a black hole, and the work I needed to do wouldn’t have got done.

Instead, here I am, writing this post.

Which got me thinking. I see a lot of posts about how to use AI as a writing assistant. Generate posts, outline articles, draft emails, etc. But the real magic isn’t asking AI to write for you. It’s using it to help you show up better.

Here are 5 ways I’m using AI to get more done, day-to-day:

1. Holding Me Accountable

This is the one that just earned its keep this morning. I’ve uploaded a doc to Claude with my goals, my rules, my one thing. Now when I open a session and start drifting (replanning what’s already planned, or chasing something shiny), it calls me out.

AI has become known as a yes-machine. And yes, push it hard enough and it will generally agree with everything you tell it. But if you give it explicit permission to tell you No, it will agree to that also!

Try this: open a text file or note, write down your three most important commitments and goals, plus a line that says “If I come back here asking to replan, re-strategise, or refocus anything you’ve already helped me lock in - push back. Don’t let me waste my energy.”

Save it as a .txt or .pdf. Upload it to Claude or ChatGPT. Let it do its job.

2. Voice-to-Page Without Sitting at a Desk

This post you’re reading right now? I typed very little of it.

I dictated the whole thing into an app called Letterly, which transcribes my voice into text. Then I paste the transcript into Claude and ask it to turn my dictation into a structured article.

And because the words are mine, spoken in my voice, the draft comes out sounding almost exactly like me. I then go in, strip out any AI-isms (the “it’s not this, it’s that” patterns, extra words it sneakily adds), and what’s left is a post that’s properly mine, written in a fraction of the time. (see what I did there 😉)

Super useful when I’m travelling and can’t always have the laptop perfectly balanced on my lap.

3. As a Thinking Partner

This one is probably the one that covers the most ground for me on a daily basis. (Being the over thinker I am)

Sometimes I have a few ideas about a post but I’m not sure which angle to come at it from. I’ll throw them into Claude and ask for a few possible angles, hooks, or opening lines.

I almost never use any of them as-is. But seeing them on the page breaks what I call ‘blank page syndrome’. Suddenly I can see which ones don’t work, which means I can see what the right angle actually is.

Also if I’ve got an opinion brewing but can’t quite articulate what it is, or I’m wrestling with a decision I’m not ready to name out loud yet, talking it through with Claude, getting it to ask clarifying questions, and helping me to process my thoughts, can clear my menopausal fog.

None of this is AI writing for me. It’s AI helping me to untangle the thoughts in my brain.

4. Compressing Research

You know how we say ‘what did we do before google maps?’ when we expertly navigate our way somewhere new. (Just me?)

Well, that’s what I now say about AI when it gives me the names, dates, and historical perspective when I’m writing a more complex travel post, or helps me work through a new tax rule, or even work out how a new platform feature works (although ChatGPT regularly gets new features wrong - Gemini is far superior for that task!)

Before AI, I’d lose two hours to Google or YouTube, have tabs open everywhere, and be reading half-relevant articles, or forum threads from 2019.

Now I ask Claude or ChatGPT (or Gemini) and 5 minutes later I have instructions, or a summary, or a table or whatever I need.

If you’re not using the photo feature yet then try this: next time the smart tv stops being so smart or the washing machine throws up an error message, just flick open ChatGPT, take a photo and say ‘tell me what to do’. Boom.

It’s like Google Maps for figuring stuff out.

5. Reading Your Stats Back to You

This one, done well is a bit of a goldmine. (But can also be a time suck so use wisely).

Most of us collect data but never really interpret it. Open rates, click-throughs, post views, sales numbers, subscriber growth. We glance, we feel briefly good or briefly anxious, and we move on.

AI is excellent at the interpret layer. Paste in your last month of post stats (or sales data, or engagement metrics) and ask it to find the patterns.

• Which posts or notes performed best?

• What do the top three have in common?

• Where’s the gap between people opening and people actually reading?

I did this with my Substack stats recently and Claude spotted that posts with personal anecdotes in the first 50 words consistently outperformed the ones that started with a broader observation. Hence most of my posts now start with a personal anecdote.

How Are You Using AI?

So they’re the main ways I’m using AI on a daily basis. I’m sure I use it in plenty of other ways too, but those are the ones that come to mind right now.

If you’re using AI in ways I haven’t mentioned, let me know in the comments. I’m always curious what’s working for other people.

Right. I’m off to do some more tasks Claude wouldn’t let me put off this morning, before heading for a pool afternoon with my daughter!

Have a great Monday.

📍 Vegas, baby! 🎰

Welcome to 6 Notes Sunday. A new weekly thing I'm doing for chilled Sundays when all we want to do is skim headlines and drink coffee (or tea in my case).

Here are 5 of my favourite Substack Notes from the week, plus my own most popular one.

If any resonate, don’t forget to support the creator with a like, a restack or a comment!

Let’s get into it.

#1

The Second Act Strategist

How To Write Substack Notes That Bring In Your People

I added 79 new Substack subscribers just this week. 🤯…

Read more

5 months ago · 511 likes · 111 comments · Tracy Friedlander

This is a brilliant article about how to write notes for Substack. And for me is extremely timely as I started a notes experiment 3 weeks ago:

It’s going ok, though a bit slower than I would like, so Tracey’s post is super useful, and I’m going to be trying her suggested strategies this coming week.

Thanks for the amazing info 🙏

#2

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, particularly after my recent health snafu. It sometimes feels like we’re wired to think of life in the future. When ‘x’ happens, I will do ‘y’.

“When I lose 30lbs I’ll exercise more.” “When I’m making $Xk a month, I’ll travel more.” When, when, when…

But life is happening right now. And as Annie Dillard so eloquently highlighted, how we spend our days is a reflection of what’s important to us right now.

Spend wisely!

#3

Having visited Tokyo on more than one occasion (and not a huge lover of Japanese food) I’m with Michael & Brent on this one! 😂

#4

Amen sister!

#5

I thought we’d end this weeks notes roundup with some good old British comedy!

#6 - My Most Popular Note This Week

What did you think of today’s note choices? Let me know in the comments below!

This Weeks Posts Roundup

Also, in case you missed any of this weeks articles, here they are:

Last Chance to Tell Me More About What You Like

Thanks to everyone who took part in my little survey, it’s great to know a little bit more about you and what you like. If you haven’t yet taken part there’s still time! Just click here and vote away:

$5k Courses & Tools for $59!

One last thing before I go...

If you’re building a side hustle, growing a Substack, creating digital products, writing a book, launching a course, or simply trying to create more freedom in your life, this is probably the best-value business bundle you’ll see all year.

My friends Dan and Rachel are just about to close the latest BC Stack, and it’s packed with 57 business-building courses, tools, templates, and resources from some of the smartest online entrepreneurs around.

The combined value is over $5,000.

The price? Just $59.

Now, you know me. I’m not a fan of buying courses for the sake of buying courses. Most people don’t need more information, they need more action.

But if there’s a specific skill you’re trying to learn right now, whether that’s email marketing, audience growth, content creation, digital products, AI, productivity, or online business, there’s a very good chance you’ll find a course in here worth many times the cost of entry.

But it closes just after midnight tonight (PST) and then disappears for another year.

If you’re serious about building more freedom, more income, and more options for your future, it’s worth taking a look.

Check Out BC Stack 2026 Here 👉

NB: The Stack is only live until early hours Monday morning PST

I hope you’ve enjoyed this weeks roundup.

Have a fab Sunday! 😎

“I was homeless sleeping in a graveyard”, the good looking, extremely well dressed and coiffured young man on the stage in the front of me exclaimed.

‘I was at the bottom of the rubbish heap, until one day my fairy Godfather opened his magic laptop, and with just a few light strokes of the magical keyboard turned me into the multi millionaire I am today’.

Ok I’m being a tad facetious, but this was pretty much the summary of the story I was listening to at a ‘social media summit’ in London before I truly knew what ‘internet marketing’ was.

It was all the rage back then, the whole ‘rags to riches’, and as someone new to this world I was hooked!

“Wowee this amazing magical world behind the screen of a keyboard can make me a millionaire with just the press of a few buttons?” I mused.

After the talk, I sought out the young man in the foyer. Excitedly I asked him:

‘How fast could I reach a million bucks?’.

He shot back ‘how much money have you got?’.

His name was Mark Anastasi.

He knew the game. I didn’t.

There’s Really Only One Way to Build a Business Online

There’s a lot of noise about how to make money on the internet.

• Build a Substack.

• Start a YouTube channel.

• Run Facebook ads.

• Sell a course.

• Launch a newsletter.

• Become an influencer.

• Open an Etsy shop.

• Affiliate marketing.

• Drop-shipping.

• Dog-walking.

(Alright, the last one’s offline - but it’s a legitimate biz opp!)

It can feel like there are a thousand ways to do this, and that you’re getting the wrong one wrong.

But after 16 years since that fateful foyer meeting, and multiple 6 fig launches, a 7-figure ecom business and at least a dozen things that haven’t worked, in my experience, the business model is irrelevant. They all work, you just need to pick the one that suits you.

But every single one has one thing in common.

No matter what model you choose you need people to sell to. Boom. That’s it.

The whole game of building any business (online or offline) is to build an audience of people who want to buy from you.

And you can do that one of two ways:

With money. Or without.

Most of us start without.

What Mark was saying is that the speed at which you build an audience and therefore sales, depends on how much money you can throw at it.

If you’ve got cash for ads, a team, sponsored placements, paid collaborations and a marketing budget, you can buy your way to an audience fast.

If you don’t, you’ll build it slowly - by being useful, showing up consistently, and earning trust one reader at a time.

Either route works. They just run at different speeds.

It took us 5 years to reach that magic million bucks (and even then, that was income, not profit). And I did it the slow way.

From $0 - $3 Million

Not long after that conference, my husband and I upped sticks and headed to Cyprus to chase our fortunes.

After many false starts, I finally landed on Facebook and worked tirelessly for months learning all about FB pages and teaching others how to use them to build a list. I made videos. I jumped on calls. I chatted in forums.

Along the way I launched memberships, sold coaching, created digital products, sold PDFs, ran cohorts and more.

Some products flew out the gate, others were a slower trickle, but it was 5 years of grind. Enjoyable grind. But grind all the same.

Somewhere around year 2 or 3, I started to get noticed by other creators in the space.

Affiliate offers came in. Joint ventures became possible. I was being invited to appear on podcasts, contribute guest posts & co host webinars.

People wanted to collaborate, promote each other’s work, & run launches together.

I was no longer just building for myself, I was being lifted by others who’d built their own audiences too. The work compounded & my email subscribers & audience numbers accelerated.

As cashflow grew, I also started running paid ads to grow faster. Facebook ads to promote webinars, sponsored posts to reach further. Money I’d earned was now buying me speed.

By year five, I had 55,000 people on my email list, several six-figure launches behind me, and was running a ‘watch over our shoulder’ coaching programme that sold close to a million dollars’ worth of access, teaching the audience I’d built how to do exactly what my husband and I were doing in our brand new Amazon business.

And the Amazon business we grew was the perfect example of what Mark was talking about in the foyer all those years ago.

We had money to invest in stock. We leveraged Amazon’s marketplace (their audience, their buyers, their distribution) and rebranded a product people were already buying. We built a team in the Philippines to help us grow.

Money begat money. We were generating $3 million+ by year 3.

Money Buys Speed, Brand Builds Trust

My question to Mark in the London foyer that day was ‘how fast can I reach a million bucks’.

His response was only half the answer though.

Money can certainly buy speed, but it’s our brand that builds the trust.

You could send 10,000 people to an advert on Facebook, but if they don’t trust the person or the brand behind it, you’ve just wasted thousands of dollars.

Which is why the most important move you can make to grow an online business is to build an audience who knows, likes & trusts you.

But it is the stage where most people stumble.

Why Most People Never Build the Audience (or the Business)

The short answer is, it’s bloody hard work, and takes time or money, and in many cases both.

The longer answer is:

1. They Quit Too Soon. Growth doesn’t happen fast enough. They publish posts into the void with no validation, the email list crawls, engagement is thin, and at some point hope, confidence and momentum all run out at once. So they walk away, usually right before the compounding kicks in. It took me 5 years to grow my email list to 55,000 subscribers. Most of the people who started when I did had quit by year 2.

2. They Build on Borrowed Land. Some spend years growing a Facebook page, a rapidly growing TikTok account, a YouTube channel or even a Google-ranked blog, without ever capturing a single email. They rack up likes, followers, comments and engagement. But then the algorithm shifts, the account gets banned, or the platform throttles reach, and the audience built over years disappears overnight. (All three of those have happened to me, by the way.)

3. They Try to Be Everywhere at Once. Substack and YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and a podcast and LinkedIn. All started at the same time. The work spreads thin across six channels at once, burnout follows within months, and most of it gets quietly abandoned before any single channel has had a chance to grow.

4. They Don’t Really Understand Why They’re Posting They post because it feels like the thing to do, and it’s what everyone else is doing. But ask why and the answer is fuzzy. Reach? Engagement? Vibes?

5. The Effort Stops Paying Off. A slower version of #1. The money doesn’t come fast enough. The work keeps mounting. The numbers move, but not in proportion to the effort going in. Eventually the maths stops adding up, and even people who genuinely care about what they’re building decide they can’t justify it anymore.

So what’s the answer?

I wish I was a magical fairy godmother who with a wave of my wand and a few keystrokes could show you how your laptop could make you millions with a couple of taps.

But the honest answer is far less glamorous.

Because there’s no shortcut or growth hack. There’s just consistent, well-built audience-building, done in the right order, over a long enough timeframe.

However, if you follow the steps and truly understand why and how to build that trusted audience, everything becomes clearer.

You stop copying tactics from people on a completely different journey from yours, (which by the way, is one of the biggest energy drains in the entire creator world.)

You stop chasing every new platform, every shiny tactic, every algorithm hack.

You just keep doing the slow, compounding work of becoming someone your audience genuinely wants to hear from, and eventually, buy from.

So if I were starting again today, which, in a sense, I am, here’s the playbook I’d run.

The order of operations. The assets that truly compound, the mistakes that cost most people years, and the small set of things that really matter.

It’s everything I wish someone had laid out plainly when I started.

The Audience Building Playbook

Read more

“There is no such thing as should.”

I was 16 minutes into an interview (back in 2014) and I’d asked the guest about my SEO strategy for my new blog.

• How many keywords should I have?

• How long should the post be?

• Should I be focused on SEO or just write from the heart?

and he said:

“Well, my catchphrase in all events is: there is no should.”

And he meant what he said. For 2 solid hours, every rule I brought him came back stamped with the same three words.

I asked about putting images and video in posts. “There is no should for any person on the planet. An encyclopedia is very different than People magazine.”

I asked about plugins, PDF’s, sales strategies, all things blogging & online business, and the answer never changed - “I start every sentence: there is no should, there is no should, there is no should.”

(I learned later that Tony Robbins also talks about ‘shoulding all over yourself’.)

The chap I was interviewing was the fabulous Dan Morris. He was in Nashville, I was in Thailand, and the interview was for my old YouTube show, Mind, Money and Marketing. (Younger Jo did love an alliterative title.)

And his advice has stayed with me for the last 12 years, as has his friendship!

And that’s why I’m writing today’s post.

Around the same time as that interview, Dan’s truck broke down. Instead of financing a new one, he and his then business partner (now wife ❤️) Rachel rang round everyone they knew, gathered dozens of courses into one big stack, and sold the lot for a silly low price.

They called it BC Stack. (His business at the time was Blogging Concentrated, hence the BC). The sales from the stack bought the new truck!

That was 12 years ago, and BC Stack is still going every year. Back in the early years I was their top affiliate, and this year, I’ve added one of my own courses, Start the Right Side Hustle After 50, to the 12th edition of the stack.

The deal: 57 courses from 57 creators, a claimed $5,051 of value, for $59.

Now let me be straight with you, because numbers like that always make my eyebrows twitch.

Fifty-seven courses is overwhelming. You will not do 57 courses. Nobody in recorded history has done 57 courses. If you’re buying this hoping it’ll fix your business overnight, please keep your $59.

The only sensible way to shop it is this.

Scan the list, note the ones that fit where you are right now, and if four or five make you think “I’d happily pay $59 for these alone”, it’s a great deal. A few that caught my eye:

• Dan and Rachel’s own masterclass on building a $4,000-a-month online business,

• writing your first book in 15 minutes a day,

• creating puzzle books to sell on Amazon,

• and building your first Claude AI skill.

Fewer than four? Skip it with my blessing. There is no should, including about this.

Full disclosure, that’s my affiliate link below, so if you buy through it I earn a small commission, which goes directly towards any further organ removals I require while traversing the globe. (Here’s hoping the gallbladder wasn’t an opening act 😂)

I’ve popped the full 2014 interview below too. The audio quality is vintage, but the advice holds up better than my hairstyle did.

Check Out BC Stack 2026 Here 👉

NB: The Stack is only live until early hours Monday morning PST

Palm Springs here we come.

Well later today anyway. The homeowner we’ve been sitting for returns this afternoon & Rhett’s offered to go pick her up from the airport (he’ll do anything for a 5* review! 😉)

Then it’s off to the desert, where BBC weather has reliably informed me it will be twice the temperature it is here!

From 20°(c) to 40!!! 🥵

I’m looking forward to sending pics & updates! 😎

But first, I wanted to brighten your day with some sage advice from my younger self!

I’ve decided I want to add YouTube to my mix of content.

Why the heck would I do that on top of everything else you may ask?

Well, it works super well with Substack (any lives I record automatically get posted on YouTube). It’s a search engine in its own right. Long form content has been proven to create more engagement with an audience than short form, and with the benefit of AI, every video can be easily chopped into clips, so you can gather more attention with short form also!

All I need to do is record one 20 minute video a week, and bearing in mind I’m belting out articles like there’s no tomorrow I have plenty of topics to cover!

(NB: we’re talking low production, low editing here. Apparently ‘raw’ is the new trend. Works for me!)

So this morning I gave myself a bloody good laugh, as I started going through some of my old videos, and I thought it would be fun to share some with you!

Let’s start with the No 1 secret to success…

Here’s what Internet Marketing Expert Jo Barnes has to say about the No 1 Secret to Success!

CFA - there you have it! 👍

Next up, in 2009 while manager of the Sheffield City Hall I held a seminar called Make It Happen 2009. Here’s me scaling down the side of the building as a promo for the event! 😂

P.S. The event went super well!

Ok this one made me spit out my tea. Del Boy from Only Fools & Horses would be proud.

The funniest part of this whole video is that at no point do I actually show the car! 😂

Last but not least, this was my very first episode of Make It Happen Monday which I ran religiously every Monday for about 2 years and it never took off.

Proof that consistency alone isn’t enough to make something fly….

And that’s given me my idea for an upcoming post! Why consistency alone isn’t enough to make something fly! Look out for it.

I’m not sure how I’m going to outdo myself. I mean these are a pretty tough act to follow, but I’ll be sure to let you know when my first video is live, so at the very least you can come and have a good laugh 😆

In the meantime I’m off to scale a building or sell a car or some other crazy prank for views. Mr Beast eat your heart out! 😂

Happy Tuesday my adventurous friends.

If you read my post yesterday you’ll know that my BHAG (big hairy assed goal) is:

So to that end, I want to know a bit more about you! My fabulous reader/listener… 😎

Thankfully Substack makes this incredibly easy with their ‘poll’ function. So here are a few quick questions that will tell me a bit more about who you are, the type of content you enjoy consuming, and how I can help you best moving forward.

Thanks in advance for answering and if I’ve missed anything vital that you’d love me to consider, please comment below or don’t hesitate to hit reply and send me an email. I love hearing from you! 😁

Let’s go!

#1

#2

Because I am a woman, my voice tends to skew towards women, however my advice and travel content is equally relevant to men (and will be more so, the more I bring my husband into the story!)

So I’d love to know the split of my readers between male & female!

#3

I only get 5 options to add, so I had to generalise this a bit, but let me know in the comments below what country you're from. 😎

#4

Ok so this is an important one, as I recently started publishing daily, which I know is a lot for anyone’s inbox.

The reason is that I’m trying to build a consistent writing practise, plus a higher cadence gives me some solid data about the types of posts that resonate.

But I am aware that not everyone wants daily Jo, so it would be great to know what works best for you, so I can consider my strategy moving forward.

Be honest, you won’t offend me! 😁

#5

I have 3 main pillars:

• Funding Freedom (how to build location independent income)

• Nomadic life on the road (includes personal musings & more general travel stories)

• Aging disgracefully (which includes mindset, life reflections, and the more inspiration type stuff I post)

Plus I’ve introduced weekend roundups. So Saturdays are to roundup the weeks posts, and Sundays are my new note roundups of the best notes I find on Substack through the week.

I’d love to know which post types you enjoy most or if you quite like the variety. If you like say 2 out of the 3, or there’s 1 you’re not keen on, please let me know in the comments below.

#6

Many of you are creators, business builders or thinking about it. If that’s you I’d love to know the kind of posts, interviews, lives and guides, that you’d find genuinely useful to where you are in your journey right now.

Here are the 5 options below in more detail to ensure clarity:

1. Substack Growth - says what it is on the tin (and includes notes, writing, podcastings, videos, lives and everything associated with Substack)

2. Audience Building - Social media & email marketing in particular

3. Writing - I’m not a “writer”. I can’t guide you on the ‘craft’ of writing. But I can talk about writing practise, finding your voice, publishing on KDP, and getting words out into the world consistently. Plus this is an area of my work I’m actively mastering, so if writing is your thing I’m happy to delve more into this as I learn. (NB: There is a crossover with Substack here, so if you clicked Substack, I’ll assume writing skills as part of that.)

4. Digital Asset Creation - Courses, guides, PDF’s, Gumroad - anything that involves creating and selling digital products.

5. Ecommerce - Selling on Etsy, Amazon, other marketplaces and print on demand (POD)

There is a bit of crossover in these and naturally there will be with the content, so just pick the one that’s most relevant to you now. Comment below if you want to add anything or clarify your current situation.

Ok I’ll leave it there for now. Six options is enough of your time and we can always do more polls and dig a bit deeper in the future if needs be.

Thank you so much for taking part. Knowing who’s in the room and what would truly help or inspire you makes every post easier to write. So this is super helpful for me.

If there’s something I haven’t asked that you’d like me to know, or anything you’d love more (or less) of, let me know in the comments below.

Thanks again! Have a fab day.

Jo 😊

📍 Encinitas, San Diego (last day!)

What’s your one thing?

I’ve asked this before, many times, so if you’ve been with me for a while you may have heard me ask you already. But that doesn’t matter. You need to hear it again. Especially if you’re older, a bit slower (yep comes to us all) and your brain can only focus on one thing at a time!

Anyway, at roughly 2.30am on Sunday morning while eating muffins with guava jam (don’t ask), I had a breakthrough!

I was awake wrestling with a challenge that’s been on my mind for weeks (even months).

How to grow The 50+ Nomad while also promoting and focusing on This Big World (the travel challenge cards), while also nomadding, exploring the world and living my best life!

I’ve been spreading myself too thin, which means everything has been moving slower (Substack growth, card sales growth etc) and I haven’t really been doing anything super well.

But while writing a post about the one thing every online business needs, (which comes out on Friday), I told the story of how I built my first business years ago, including the slow grind, the email list, the audience I built, and the effect having a trusted audience has on sales & products.

And at 2:30am on Sunday morning, mid muffin and slurp of tea, it hit me!

The answer to a question I should have asked myself months ago. The same simple question Gary Keller asks in his book The One Thing.

And the answer for me became blindingly obvious.

To stop focusing on ‘building two brands’ and instead focus on one overarching goal.

“To build the most engaged audience of freedom-seeking, adventure loving, life embracing, people over 50 that I possibly can.”

It’s the same strategy that took me from zero to seven figures between 2010 and 2016, and it'll work just as well today as it did then. (If not better, in todays noisy, AI driven world.)

That’s it. That’s my one thing.

Everything else - the books, the cards, the courses, the subscriptions, future products I haven’t even dreamed up yet - all of it flows from there.

Without an audience that knows me and trusts me, none of the rest works. With one, all of it does.

Which means every post I write, every note I share, every podcast, every live, every video, every social post, all have the same underlying job from now on.

So I ask you, what’s your one thing?

What’s the one thing you could do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary?

My guess is that for most of you building a location independent income, it’ll be a similar version of mine. Build the audience first, and the rest follows. But the specific shape of what that actually means is yours.

On Friday I’ll be publishing the longer post that triggered all this, and it’ll go into more details of how to go about building a trusted audience, including the order of operations, the things that compound, and the mistakes that cost people (including me) years, so look out for that one.

For now, though, I’m heading off for a random Monday BBQ on the beach, (because why not), and to dream up some more content for my one thing.

Have a great Monday.

📍 Encinitas, San Diego

Welcome to 6 Notes Sunday. A new weekly thing I'm doing for chilled Sundays when all we want to do is skim headlines and drink coffee (or tea in my case).

Here are 5 of my favourite Substack Notes from the week, plus my own most popular one.

If any resonate, don’t forget to support the creator with a like, a restack or a comment!

Let’s get into it.

#1

Justin is the King of small inputs. 6 years of daily posts, over $10million in total revenue. All the proof you need that consistency and stickability are the name of the game!

#2

100%! This is so important! Who we surround ourselves with is who we become.

#3

As a fellow house-sitter, I strongly resonate with this one. The dog we’re sitting right now eats kibble out of a snuggle mat. One I sat in London would only eat from a Kong, and only if it had peanut butter in it. Another was only allowed butternut products spread carefully across an interactive feeder.

Honestly, the dogs are fine (and don’t really care). It’s us I worry about. 😂

#4

Amen! Building an audience is about engagement, relationship building, and being human. It’s one of the reasons I love Substack right now ❤️

#5

Gratuitous gorgeous beach photo! ❤️

#6 - My Most Popular Note This Week

What did you think of today’s note choices? Let me know in the comments below!

Have a fab Sunday! 😎

It wasn’t until 60 years later that another Spanish explorer renamed it San Diego, and the name stuck.

It was also once part of Mexico before becoming part of the United States.

Yesterday I went on a 5 hour walking tour with a fabulous local chap called Charlie, who’s something of an amateur historian, and he absolutely wowed us with his knowledge, not just of San Diego and California, but of American and world history too.

He’d be amazing at Trivial Pursuit.

Of course, I retained about 1% of what he told us.

But I can tell you that the word “dame” comes from the French word for lady, a “cracker” was originally a cattle-driving cowboy who cracked a whip while herding livestock, and that much of modern downtown San Diego exists because one determined businessman called Alonzo Horton bought a load of dusty land near the waterfront when everyone thought he’d completely lost the plot.

I also discovered that Dr. Seuss spent many of his later years living in San Diego, and every year The Old Globe Theatre stages How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (My daughter’s favourite Christmas movie!)

One of my favourite parts of the tour was wandering through the Gaslamp Quarter. Today it’s full of restaurants, bars and beautifully restored Victorian buildings, but in the late 1800s it was a rough-and-ready district known for gambling halls, saloons and brothels. Sailors arriving from the nearby naval base often headed straight here looking for entertainment.

Unfortunately I haven’t taken full advantage of my time here due to being a bit under the weather, but the more time I spend here, the more I realise how much there is still to discover.

Between the history, the waterfront, the naval heritage, Balboa Park, Coronado and all the different neighbourhoods, I could happily spend several more weeks exploring.

I’ll just have to come back!

Anyway, enough of my San Diego history lesson. Here’s a roundup of this week’s posts in case you missed any.

Have a fab Saturday!

I’ll be back tomorrow with 6 Notes Sunday, a roundup of my fave notes from Substack this week.

Right now I’m off for a BBQ on the beach!

Jo 😎🥳

My fave part of being nomadic is the planning.

Yesterday my husband & I started to plan next week post house sit.

We’re leaving San Diego & heading to Palm Springs for a night (apparently there’s a tramway there we must do according to ChatGPT).

Then we’ll head off to Joshua Tree National Park (super excited) and do:

• Keys View

• Hidden Valley

• Cap Rock

• Skull Rock

• and stay for the sunset & some star gazing.

I’m getting stupidly excited about making some sandwiches and snacks and laying on a blanket and watching the stars!

Then we’ll stay in the town of Joshua Tree and go into the park again the following morning for sunrise to see:

• Barker Dam

• Jumbo Rocks

• Cholla Cactus Garden

No doubt my phone will fill up with photos of rock formations catching the light from every angle! (Plus of course I’ll take some challenge cards with me to do a few promo shots & videos - content ops everywhere!)

Then we’re currently juggling two options:

1. Boulder City - Lake Mead, Hoover Dam & The Valley of Fire (sounds ah-maz-ing!)

2. Vegas - No Doubt live at The Sphere! (Front runner for Rhett who’s had a crush on Gwen Stefani for forever!)

We’re actually staying in Vegas for 2 weeks for his 50th so of course it’s his choice and we can always do Hoover Dam et al another time during our stay, but just the act of chatting about it, searching booking (dot) com for where we’ll stay, and researching the places, brings out the absolute best in me.

I go from cold filled, coughing fits under a blanket, ‘don’t speak to me’ Jo. To rapid speech, we could go here, see this, do that (cough, cough), visit this place, animated Jo! It’s a sight to behold! 😂

Plus we ended up booking what looks like a very basic motel on the side of a road in Joshua Tree which looks like something out of The Terminator.

(Think Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) in the original movie hiding out from Arnie in an old motel, and ‘making’ John Connor who paradoxically is the one who sends Kyle back in time to save Sarah - yep it’s a mind bender! 😂)

Anyway, I said to Rhett - oh I’m so filming that motel when we arrive. That is great content! 😁 (Stay tuned!)

So that’s where we are. I’m hoping to be fighting fit by the time we leave here next week and ready for some nomadding across country, and I can’t wait to share the journey with you.

In the meantime, if you know the area and have any tips, do please let me know in the comments below! For now I’m heading back to my intravenous tea drip.

Chat soon, pics and motel vids to follow! 😎

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:

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.”

In this episode, I’m joined by , 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

• Erin’s Travel Safety Tips Page

• Free ESD App (Apple & Android) - Apple Store | Google Play

• Nomad Life with Erin

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.