I’ve written thousands of articles, created courses, newsletters, guides and probably several books’ worth of random thoughts scattered across Google Docs, Notes and various folders on my laptop, but becoming a proper published author has somehow remained permanently on my “I’m definitely doing that” list.

So when I recently reconnected with my old friend Sharon E. Buck, I knew I had to get her on for a chat.

Sharon and I have known each other for around 15 years, going right back to our early days building businesses online, and while I’ve been bouncing around the world building various businesses, Sharon has quietly built herself an impressive career as an independent author.

She’s now written 26 books under her own name, ghostwritten another 10 or 12, built an engaged readership and learned an enormous amount about what it takes to turn writing books into a business.

So I basically hijacked her for an hour and asked her everything I wanted to know. 😂

We talked about:

• how she comes up with ideas and turns them into books

• why changing a book cover led to 38,000 downloads in 32 days

• writing shorter books and why they’re working so well for her

• editing, formatting and preparing a book for Amazon KDP

• Kindle Unlimited versus publishing “wide”

• building an email list that sells books

• getting reviews and using advance readers

• Facebook and Amazon advertising

• how AI is changing writing and publishing

• Sharon’s daily writing practice and how she publishes four or five books a year

• what she’d do differently if she were starting again today

We even squeezed in a little chat about travel and house sitting before realising we’d been talking for over an hour and still hadn’t covered half the questions on my list.

If you’ve ever thought, “I’d love to write a book one day,” grab a coffee and join us.

And yes, Sharon, I’m taking you up on that round two. 😁

A couple of months ago, I started yapping on TikTok.

Yapping? I hear you cry. What the hell is that?

Yeah, I didn’t know either.

I’d seen a girl on Instagram who’d made millions of bucks online selling a yapping challenge, so of course I had to go and investigate what on earth everyone was yapping about.

Turns out it’s incredibly simple.

You pull out your phone and talk.

That’s it.

No beautifully scripted reel. No clever hook followed by seven life-changing tips. No spending three hours editing a 42-second video and choosing the perfect trending audio.

You just turn the camera on and yap about whatever you want to yap about, then upload it to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or wherever else you fancy.

I wasn’t interested in joining a challenge. I just wanted to try it out for myself. My husband has been telling me for years that I’m a natural yapper (I’m choosing to take that as a compliment 🙃), so I figured I’d found my medium. 😂

There was just one slight problem.

I didn’t want to see my face on camera

I’ve made plenty of videos over the years and I’ve always been pretty confident on camera.

Then I got older and my ego kicked in. 😕

Suddenly I became horribly aware of my jowls, my wrinkles, the angle of the camera, what I looked like when I talked and all the other stupid things we can find to criticise about ourselves when presented with our own face on a screen.

So I started a brand-new TikTok account where nobody knew me. (Revolutionary right?)

But there was actually something very freeing about that.

No existing audience or friends wondering what the heck I was doing, and absolutely no expectations.

Nobody I knew was watching! I could just stick the camera in front of my face and talk.

So on 19th August, while wandering around Central Park in New York, I uploaded my first yap.

Since then I’ve uploaded 19 videos and somehow 350+ people have decided they’d like to see more of them.

The first one to get significant views and comments was one I recorded in Philadelphia about discovering I’d accidentally arrived in the birthplace of America.

Then I filmed myself floating around in the James River in Richmond talking about what a brilliant place we’d discovered. People started arguing about whether anyone should float about in the James River at all, which I’ve found hilarious and that’s now had several thousand views.

Then this weekend I yapped about going to an American Football match and the 2 videos I uploaded have had a combined 58,000 views! 😱

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not talking Ellen-is-calling viral here. But for a brand-new account with a middle-aged woman wandering around America talking into her phone?

I’ll take it. 😂

More importantly, it’s so much fun! And this little experiment has reminded me of a few things I think are worth sharing.

Nobody cares about your face as much as you do

This has probably been the biggest one for me.

I was worried about looking like an ageing old hag on camera, but do you know how many people have commented on my age or in fact on anything to do with how I look at all?

Yep - ZERO!

Nobody has called the authorities. TikTok hasn’t sent me an urgent notification asking me to locate some Botox before uploading another video.

I’ve just got used to seeing myself again.

And with every video I’ve become less conscious of what I look like and more interested in what I’m talking about.

As I’ve said over and over in my notes and articles, confidence never shows up before you do something. It grows after you’ve done it enough times that the thing you were frightened of stops feeling important, and you start feeling competent.

Not everything has to provide a seven-step transformation

This has been an absolute revelation.

Seriously.

I’ve spent years creating content and always feel that I need to provide top drawer value.

• Teach something.

• Explain something.

• Give somebody a framework, a strategy, a list of steps or something useful they can take away and implement.

My yaps don’t do any of that.

They’re literally me standing somewhere saying, “Look where I am. Isn’t this bloody brilliant?”

No 7-step framework to be seen.

And not only do people watch, they comment.

People from Philadelphia started telling me things about their city, and thanking me for visiting. People from Richmond commented on the (apparently dookie 💩) James River 😂. People in Williamsburg have been giving me tips on places to visit. Conversations started happening, not only with me, but between people in the comments.

Turns out people are interested in other people’s lives.

Who knew? 😂

And I’m just getting my head around “value” not always meaning teaching somebody something.

Sometimes it’s just entertaining them. Making them smile. Showing them somewhere they’ve never been. Sharing an experience. Starting a conversation. Or simply being a human being they enjoy spending a couple of minutes with.

I’m still processing that one.

Give yourself permission to experiment

This is probably the biggest lesson.

I talk a lot about experiments because they’ve saved me from making some spectacularly bad long-term decisions over the years.

We have this strange tendency to think that when we start something, we’re making a declaration of who we are and what we’re committing to for this life and the next.

• I’m going to become a YouTuber - (as opposed to starting a YouTube channel)

• I’m becoming a writer - (as opposed to publishing a book)

• I’m starting a business - (as opposed to creating a product and selling it)

• I’m going to post on TikTok every day for the rest of my god given natural life!

It immediately feels enormous.

Why do we do that to ourselves?

Instead why not just try something for 30, 60, or 90 days?

Give yourself enough time to get through the initial awkward stage and discover whether you enjoy the reality of doing it, rather than the idea of doing it.

I recently read about another creator experimenting with yapping and discovering she didn’t enjoy it.

Brilliant. That’s exactly what makes an experiment successful. Knowing what you do and don’t enjoy.

I’m discovering the opposite. I really enjoy it.

I’m also learning more about TikTok simply by being on TikTok, which is incredibly useful because it’s a platform I want to understand for my ecom brand This Big World.

And because I haven’t turned it into another enormous commitment, there’s no pressure attached to it.

When I have something I fancy yapping about, I yap.

The only thing to fear is fear itself

Most of the things I’ve worried about doing in my life have been considerably scarier in my head than they were once I started doing them.

Video was becoming one of those things.

I could quite easily have spent another year saying I wanted to get back on camera while waiting until I lost weight, looked better, felt more confident, had the right setup or suddenly woke up one morning looking 32 again.

Instead I opened a new TikTok account, started talking, and the fear (and self consciousness) disappeared much quicker than I expected.

So if there’s something you’ve been thinking about trying, you don’t need another plan.

You don’t even need to decide whether you want to do it long term.

Just give yourself 30 days.

Start the account. Write the article. Make the video. Try the hobby. Build the tiny business. Book the class.

See what happens.

You might discover you hate it, that you’re terrible at it (and have no desire to improve), or that it’s just not for you.

Or, as I’m finding with wandering around the world talking bollocks into my phone, you might discover you love it and it’s ridiculously good fun.

If you’d like to see my latest yaps, come and find me on TikTok. I’m currently in Williamsburg, Virginia, surrounded by colonial history, haunted pubs and enough material to keep me talking for quite some time.

As if I needed the help. 😂

Your turn

What’s something you’ve been curious about trying but haven’t quite had the nerve to do yet?

Maybe you’ve been thinking about starting a YouTube channel, writing a book, travelling solo, launching a product, joining a class, learning something completely new or doing something you’ve wanted to do for years.

Don’t make it a massive commitment.

What’s the smallest experiment you could run?

Could you give it 30 days? Upload one video? Write 500 words? Book one class? Spend an afternoon researching it? Take one tiny step that moves it out of your head and into the real world?

You don’t need to know whether you’re going to love it. That’s the whole point of the experiment.

Give it a go and find out.

And if you’ve got something in mind, share it in the comments. I’d love to know what you’re going to try.

More importantly, go and start, today if you can.

The world is waiting! 🌎

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I hope you’re having a fantastic weekend wherever you are in the world.

Right now I’m writing this from Colonial Williamsburg, which is a very pretty, and fascinatingly historical city.

We had our first wander around yesterday, exploring all the old colonial buildings, and have immediately decided that two things absolutely must happen while we’re here.

• First, a proper walking tour so we can get the historical lowdown on the place.

• Second, a haunted pub crawl. Obviously! 😂

Apparently we also need to complete the Historic Triangle and visit Jamestown and Yorktown, and we’re hoping we might catch a reenactment while we’re here.

Then yesterday a local barman, who is apparently a descendent of the Chickahominy Indian Tribe invited us to a powwow in Charles City.

I’m not 100% sure what it is even after his explanation but there’ll be a parade, singers, dancers and all sorts of interesting things happening so I look forward to sharing that experience with you!

If you’re from this part of Virginia, or you’ve travelled around here, please tell me in the comments what we absolutely shouldn’t miss. We’ve got two weeks left in the US and I intend to squeeze every last drop out of them.

Travelling Through America’s Past

We arrived here after leaving our house sit in Richmond a couple of days ago, which was a very sad affair.

I enjoy house sitting, and it’s super kind on the wallet, but saying goodbye to the animals is always the saddest part, and the two cuties we looked after this time, Roscoe and Jada, were particularly gorgeous company during our time in Richmond.

Williamsburg is now our final stop on what has been an absolutely epic trip down the East Coast. I love how much American history we've inadvertently travelled through.

We started in New York, where I wandered the streets, paid $18 for a hot dog (😳), had a drink with a stranger in Times Square, attempted to reenact Working Girl on the Staten Island ferry (epic fail), started yapping in Central Park (more on that in a future post), and became friends with a local.

I wrote about my NYC adventures here:

Then we headed to Philadelphia, where I ran up the Rocky steps (of course), met up with a good friend of mine from Phuket (her family live just outside Philly), discovered that this was the birthplace of the United States, and stood inside Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

From there we went to Washington DC (which was awesome), and immersed ourselves in the stories of the Founding Fathers, then Richmond and its Civil War history, and now we’re slap bang in the American Revolution.

And this is why I love travel!

There is no better way to learn about the world than standing in the places where its history happened.

You can read about something, you can watch documentaries, but there’s something very different about walking the streets, standing inside the buildings, looking at the monuments and reading the words of the people who were there before you.

You walk away knowing things you probably would never have sat down at home and decided to study.

Travel just broadens your world and your understanding of it in every sense of the word.

And I have absolutely loved our travels through the US. Beautiful country. Beautiful people. ❤️

Meanwhile, behind the pretty travel photos…

I’ve had a heck of a week.

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll know I’m currently attempting to build This Big World into a $10,000-a-month-profit e-commerce business while travelling the world.

I knew it would be challenging.

I may have underestimated quite how challenging. 😂

With Q4 approaching (the busiest season for ecom brands), I’m experimenting with AI video ads, learning TikTok advertising, fighting with Meta, working on new creatives and generally trying to learn seventeen things simultaneously.

In the meantime Amazon are proving to be the awful platform I always knew it to be.

They’re currently holding onto my profits, they’ve locked me out of my main Seller Central account because of technical problems their end, and I’ve spent a crazy amount of time this week dealing with support.

The good news is that my brand-new This Big World Shopify store is now live!

And long term, this is where I really want to build the business.

Shopify is harder because Amazon already has millions of people wandering around with their credit cards out. On my own store, I have to find those people myself.

But the difference is, with Shopify, I own the customer relationship.

And if you’re building any kind of income online, this is vital.

• You don’t own your Instagram followers.

• You don’t own your TikTok followers.

• You don’t own your Facebook audience.

• And on Amazon, I don’t even get access to the email addresses of the people buying my products.

These platforms have been designed to sit between you and your audience. (It’s how and why they make so much money!)

That’s one of the things I love about Substack. Every time we publish something and somebody subscribes, we’re also building an email list. If Substack disappeared tomorrow, we could export that list and still communicate with the people who’ve chosen to hear from us.

That’s a business asset.

So use the big platforms. I certainly intend to keep using Amazon, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and everything else that helps me reach people.

But wherever possible, give those people a reason to join you somewhere you control.

I’ve been banging this drum for years, and wrote an entire article about it a while ago:

If you’re trying to build an online income of any description, have a read. It’ll be the single most important thing you’ll do when building a business online.

Which brings me to something else I’ve been thinking about this week…

Do you keep pushing your dreams aside because something else always feels more important?

If you do, I empathise.

I’ve wanted to become a prolific nonfiction author for years. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not planning to churn out a novel every six weeks while competing for the Pulitzer Prize, but I’d love to publish at least one, maybe two useful books a year.

Except there’s always something else. An ad needs creating, a website needs fixing, Amazon has locked me out again, there’s somewhere I want to visit, something needs researching.

And the book gets pushed down the list.

This week I realised I can keep saying becoming an author is one of my biggest goals, or I can start behaving as though it is.

So I’ve committed to writing just 500–1,000 words every morning. ‘Freedompreneur’ is almost finished and my goal is to publish it by the end of October.

I’m replacing my first hour of the day scrolling, reading irrelevant crap and generally disappearing down my phone, with working on one of my biggest dreams.

How about you? Where could you find an extra hour in your day to work on that thing you keep saying you really want to achieve?

Because if it’s genuinely one of your dreams, at some point it has to make it onto your calendar.

Although apparently we’d better get a bloody move on…

Because this week AI took a particularly cheery turn and apparently it might kill us all by the end of the decade. 🙄

Honestly the fear mongering that goes on in this world of ours is beyond me. It always makes me think of the Mark Manson quote:

Is AI going to transform humanity?

Probably.

Is it going to take millions of jobs, cure horrible diseases, create entirely new industries, make us vastly more productive, become superintelligent, end humanity, or somehow manage all of the above before I’ve eaten my bowl of Frosties?

I have no bloody idea.

And frankly, neither does anyone else.

So I’m going to keep learning about it and using it, because I think ignoring one of the biggest technological shifts of our lifetime would be daft.

But I’m also going to keep writing my books.

I’m going to keep building my business, travelling the world, touching grass, swimming in oceans, eating food I can’t pronounce, wandering around cities I’ve never visited, meeting interesting people and embarrassing my daughter on the internet.

None of us have ever known what the future holds.

And while the robots are deciding whether to destroy the world, I intend to see as much of it as possible. 😂

I’ll report back next week, assuming I survive the haunted pub crawl.

Have a fabulous weekend!

Jo x

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Yesterday was my 54th birthday! 🥳

54. 😳 Not entirely sure how that happened. I remember thinking my Mum & Dad were old when they were in their 40s and here I am hurtling towards a free bus pass.

I digress, but recently I was walking through a neighbourhood somewhere, and I saw an assisted living development for people 55 & older!

55!

It might be harder to get up than it is to get down these days, but mentally I still feel like I did in my 20s (with maybe a little more wisdom and emotional intelligence. Maybe…. 😉)

But at the same time I was celebrating starting another year on this planet, I sadly found out that an old friend, who I haven’t spoken to for some 20 years, had passed away from cancer just a couple of weeks ago.

It’s one of the sad realities of getting older, that more people around us start to make their heavenly beds. Parents, family, friends.

And each time, mixed with the sorrow of losing a loved one, it’s a reminder of just how fragile life really is.

We can let that terrify us, or we can use it as a kick up the backside to stop waiting, stop putting things off, and live our best life while we’re here.

In honour of those no longer with us, I’m choosing the latter.

So rather than the usual birthday article of “x things I’ve learned in x years on the planet”, here instead are 20 rules I want to live by for the next 30 or so years, however many I’m lucky to get.

20 Rules for the Next 30 Years

1. Stop treating your health as tomorrow’s problem

This is an absolute note to self because I am a horror for not doing the exercise I know I need to do. It’s on my mind pretty much every day, but I still manage to find every reason under the sun not to do it.

I know that I work better with personal trainers, classes and people keeping me accountable, so I need to find the way that works for me rather than continually trying to force myself into routines I never stick to.

We may not have much control over how many years we have left on this planet, but by God we can do everything we can to stay strong, energetic and mobile for as many of them as possible. I want to travel, hike, climb things, explore cities, lug a backpack, and keep having adventures. All of that requires me to look after the body carrying me around.

Whatever your version of that looks like, find it. Our future independence depends on it.

2. Invest in your relationships

I’m starting something I’m calling Friend Friday.

My friends are scattered all over the world and, particularly when I’m travelling, weeks and months can disappear in the blink of an eye. So I’m making a list of all my close friends, and every Friday I’m going to work my way through it, sending a voice note, video message or just checking in with a couple of them. The following Friday I’ll do the next few, and eventually I’ll circle back round.

Relationships don’t maintain themselves. Friendships need attention, love, and effort, and too often, they get pushed to the back of the priority pile, and we wonder why we’re suddenly alone.

It’s too easy to put the responsibility on others, but we’re all busy and absorbed in our own lives.

Instead of waiting, be the friend you want to have.

3. Build things that make you feel alive

Businesses, books, projects, gardens, communities, adventures. Whatever makes you excited to get out of bed and start creating something.

One of my biggest goals in life is to become a prolific published author, and yet somehow my books are always the first thing to get pushed aside when a money-making project comes along.

So this year I’ve decided to commit to just 500 words every morning for my books.

I started writing every day last year, mostly journalling and random thoughts, but now I’m going to channel that habit into a goal I’ve had for years.

Nothing becomes a priority in our life until we make it so. At some point we have to stop saying we want to do the thing and start doing the thing.

4. Stop saving your best stuff for later

Wear the dress. Open the expensive bottle of wine. Book the trip. Use the good china. Start the project.

We have this funny habit of saving our favourite things for some future occasion worthy of them, as though ordinary Wednesday afternoon Jo isn’t quite deserving enough.

Life is happening right now.

Use the good stuff.

5. Spend money on experiences you’ll remember

I’m not very good at it, but I do believe in saving, investing and building financial security, particularly as we get older. But money is also there to help us live.

I’m far more interested in buying memories than accumulating things.

As demonstrated by my entire worldly goods which consist of precisely:

• 1 x 9.5kg backpack

• 1 x box of memories in my sisters loft

• 1 x bag of winter clothes under my daughters bed in London

When I cleared out my Mum’s house she wanted me to get rid of it ALL. Everything she had, including pictures, mementos, ornaments, stuff they’d collected over years. None of it was important.

All she wanted was time with me & my sister. Time, conversations, love, moments.

We will forget most of the stuff we buy over the years.

But for sure I’ll remember flying past Everest, seeing pink dolphins in the Amazon, running up the Rocky Steps, watching the sun rise from a rooftop in Cartegena, and all the thousands of little moments in between.

Be sensible with your money, absolutely. But let as much of it as you can buy you a great life.

6. Leave things that no longer work for you

Some things just don’t fit anymore.

A dream you had at 25 might not be the dream you want at 55. A project you once loved might exhaust you now. A relationship, place, career or lifestyle might simply have run its course.

Staying because of history, guilt or fear isn’t going to magically make something right for you again.

And yes, changing direction will sometimes mean making a really difficult decision.

But times getting shorter. We can’t spend the years we have left honouring decisions made by an entirely different version of ourselves.

7. Live now

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.” - Grand Master Oogway - Kung Fu Panda

I love that line!

Cheesy? Perhaps. True? Absolutely.

Whenever I’m analysing my past or worrying about my future, I’m rarely as happy as I am when I’m just appreciating where I am right now.

And it doesn’t have to be some huge, Instagrammable moment. It can be a hot cup of tea, the sun coming through the window, a tree blowing in the breeze, a laugh with someone you love or simply recognising that in this particular moment, everything is okay.

Stop reading for just a moment. Look up. Take in your surroundings and find something to appreciate.

Because this is life. This minute. Right now.

Live it.

8. Stay curious

Ask questions. Explore. Investigate. Read. Listen. Learn things you know absolutely nothing about.

One of the things I love most about travelling is constantly being reminded how little I know. There’s always another culture, another history, another idea, another way of living that I haven’t encountered yet.

I want to keep that curiosity for as long as I possibly can. It keeps my brain sharp, my synapses firing and my mind broadening.

Keep learning. Keep asking questions. Keep your brain working.

9. Travel

I’m clearly biased on this one. 😂

But I seriously believe travel keeps us young. It gives us new things to think about, new people to meet, new foods to try, new places to navigate and many times new grocery shelves to stare at in complete confusion.

You don’t need to sell everything and become a nomad. Go away for weekends. Visit somewhere you’ve never been. Take the train to another city. Book an adventurous trip. Get out of the environment you see every day and remind yourself how enormous this world is.

There is so much of it to see. ❤️

10. Create more than you consume

While I like to think I’m a bit of a futurist, there’s no denying the technological world we live in today has brought an awful lot of cons along with it’s pros.

Within 20 minutes of waking up we can have compared our beginning with others middle and ends, developed existential dread about the future of AI, read three terrifying news stories and watched a video of something awful happening on the other side of the world.

All before we’ve had a cup of tea.

If we’re not extremely careful about what we allow into our minds, we can start the day carrying others lives, opinions, successes, disasters and fears around with us.

The answer is to create first.

Write your book. Tend your garden. Make jewellery. Bake a cake. Paint something. Record the video. Work on your project.

Do something that comes from you and your joy first, so that when you start to absorb the outer world, your cup is already full.

11. Make fewer plans and finish more things

This one is aimed squarely at me.

I bloody love a good plan. Give me a notebook, a coffee and a fresh 90-day strategy and I’m in heaven.

Planning as procrastination is one of my finest skills.

But we don’t need to know how everything is going to turn out before we start. In fact we can’t know! (Unless you have a crystal ball and a skill people would pay millions for.)

Unfortunately the only way forward is a touch of strategy, a rough plan and a massive dose of action.

Less planning, more doing!

12. Be willing to be rubbish

“By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one” - Julia Cameron

One of my fave quotes.

Something I‘ve noticed that comes with age, is this expectation (from ourselves), that surely by now we should have it all figured out.

What’s it? And what honestly should we have figured out by now?

The world is changing at a rate faster than I can boil a kettle. We will be beginners until we die. Embrace it.

Try things you’re rubbish at. Take classes. Learn something completely new. Go somewhere unfamiliar. Use technology you don’t understand. Attempt the thing you secretly think you might be too old for.

Regularly moving out of our comfort zones is one of the best dopamine boosters there is. And dopamine keeps your brain well oiled!

13. Do things purely because you enjoy them

This is surprisingly difficult for me.

I have a terrible habit of trying something new and immediately wondering whether it could become a business, a product, a content strategy or some other grand project.

A few weeks ago I decided, sod it, I’m just going to start yapping on TikTok.

No strategy or grand plan. Just me, wandering (or floating) around wherever I happen to be, point my phone at myself and yapping about what I’m seeing.

It’s so much fun!

I’ve already got 200 followers, people are commenting and chatting with me, and if it becomes something bigger one day, lovely. But that isn’t why I’m doing it.

We don’t have to monetise every hobby, turn every interest into a project or make everything productive.

Sometimes you’re allowed to do something just because!

14. Take the photo and get in it

I have thousands of photographs of places I’ve been and far fewer photographs with me in them, particularly during the years when I didn’t like how I looked.

Sod that for a game of soldiers.

Ten years from now I won’t be inspecting my thighs. I’ll be grateful I can see myself standing there.

Take the photo.

15. You’re allowed to change your destination

You’re allowed to have enormous goals and then discover you don’t want them anymore.

You’re allowed to chase something at 25 and realise at 55 that it simply doesn’t fit the person you’ve become.

That doesn’t make the years you spent pursuing it wasted. It was part of your life, it taught you things and it brought you here.

We change. Life changes.

Sometimes success is having the courage to choose a different destination.

16. Build enough financial freedom to keep choosing your own life

Money for me has never been about stuff. It’s always been about choice.

The choice to leave, stay, travel, help someone, start something, take time off, say yes or simply say no.

While I’d love to fly business class everywhere and buy a penthouse in central London, financial freedom doesn’t have to mean becoming fabulously wealthy.

As long as you have enough breathing room so that more of your decisions can be based on how you want to live rather than what your financial circumstances dictate.

That freedom is worth building at any age.

17. Make your life full of stories

I want to reach the end of my life with an enormous collection of stories.

Places I went. Things I tried. Mistakes I made. People I met. Adventures that went spectacularly wrong and somehow became the stories I told the most. (I have quite a few of those already).

Give yourself challenges. Try things outside your comfort zone. Go somewhere new. Say yes occasionally when your sensible brain is giving you twelve reasons to say No.

You don’t need to become reckless.

Just give yourself something worth remembering.

18. Tell people you love them

Say it. Send the message. Make the call. Give the hug.

If you find yourself thinking, “I won’t bother them,” bother them.

Tell your kids, your partner, your parents, and your friends.

We’re very good at saying wonderful things about people after they’ve gone. I’d rather say them while they’re here to hear them.

19. Find your people

This year has been an incredible year of travelling, I’ve loved it and definitely found my jam. But I’ve realised we’ve travelled without much purpose beyond simply travelling.

And I’m discovering that people matter enormously to me.

So next year I want to travel more intentionally. I want to find events, meet-ups, networking groups, retreats, trips, classes, maybe even the odd yoga boot camp if my knees agree to cooperate.

I want more conversations, more shared experiences and more opportunities to meet interesting people.

We live in an increasingly disconnected world, and I think one of the greatest things we can do for ourselves is deliberately create connection.

Join the group. Go to the event. Ask for help. Start the conversation.

Life is better with people in it.

20. Don’t let fear rule your life

Fear isn’t going anywhere.

You can feel fear about travelling somewhere new, ending a relationship, starting a business, writing a book, changing career, putting yourself online or making almost any decision that matters.

And fear does have a purpose. It stops us wandering blindly into danger and occasionally reminds us not to do anything completely idiotic.

But it shouldn’t be the driver in our life.

Twenty years from now I don’t want to look back and realise fear made all my biggest decisions for me.

Feel it, listen to it, acknowledge it, then (if it’s physically safe to do so) do the thing you want to do anyway.

As the legendary Dolly Parton said:

That was it. One article, one paywall. A decision that should have taken me around 3 seconds.

Several hours later, I’d mentally created a new publication, reconsidered my entire paid subscription model, reorganised my digital-product vault, planned a future workshop, questioned whether I should build a new brand, wondered how it might connect to my future books, and briefly contemplated my whole life’s choices.

All while reading an article by a popular male creator telling me that success is simple.

Marvellous.

By the end of all this mental self-worth juggling, I hadn’t just lost sight of my original decision. I’d started questioning whether there was any point writing at all.

This is something I’ve noticed in myself over the last few years, and the more I speak to other women of a certain age, the more I see it everywhere.

We have ambition. Buckets of it.

We want to write books, start businesses, travel, make more money, get healthier, create meaningful work, become visible again and do something with all the experience we’ve gathered over the last five decades.

But instead of just choosing and making the next move, we second guess ourselves and try to design the entire future.

Then we become so overwhelmed by the complexity of everything we might do that we struggle to do the one thing sitting directly in front of us.

Ambition Isn’t Always Loud

When we picture an ambitious person, we often imagine someone striding confidently towards a clearly defined goal, making decisive moves and telling anyone who will listen where they’re heading.

I think a lot of women experience ambition differently.

We tangle it up with responsibility, self-doubt, other people’s expectations and the desire to make the right decision for everyone involved.

We don’t simply think, “I want to write a book,” and then go write the thing.

We think about the subject, the audience, the title, the publishing model, whether it fits our existing brand, how we’ll promote it, what people will think, whether we’re qualified, whether it could become a series, whether we should build a course around it and whether anyone will still be reading books by the time we finally finish the bloody thing.

The original desire becomes buried beneath forty-seven unanswered questions.

From the outside, this looks like a lack of confidence, discipline or commitment.

And maybe it is all of those things, but more often than not, it’s actually just the fear of getting it wrong.

Strategy = Clarity (Ummm…)

If we research enough, plan far enough ahead and account for every possible outcome, perhaps we can avoid wasting time, losing money or looking foolish.

This becomes particularly seductive after 50 because we’re increasingly aware that time matters.

We don’t want to spend three years building the wrong business, or write a book nobody buys, or launch something, change our minds six months later and hear someone say, “I knew that wouldn’t work.”

We want our next move to count, so we place it under so much pressure that moving becomes almost impossible.

I recognise this in myself.

I currently have 3,000 boxes of Travel Challenge Cards to sell. That is the job directly in front of me.

At the same time, I can see possibilities everywhere. Books I want to write, ecommerce brands I could create, a bigger movement for women over 50, journals, card decks and a purpose-led business that could support communities around the world.

I’m excited by all of it, but excitement quickly turns into complexity when I start trying to make every future possibility fit into one perfect master plan.

Then I’m standing at the bottom of an imaginary staircase, worrying about the design of the fiftieth step while repeatedly tripping over the first one.

The Audacity of Keeping It Simple

There’s audacity in deciding that your idea is good enough, your experience valuable enough and your message worth repeating without constantly questioning whether you should be doing something else.

And dare I say it, men seem better at this than women.

I realise that’s a sweeping generalisation, and there are obviously plenty of overthinking men and wonderfully decisive women.

But I’ve noticed that many successful male creators are willing to simplify their work almost ruthlessly.

They choose one subject, repeat the same core ideas, make bold statements, sell something and keep going.

Meanwhile, we’re still wondering whether our message is inclusive enough, nuanced enough, useful enough, original enough and perfectly aligned with everything we may want to create between now and 2032.

We care deeply about getting things right. We consider context, consequences and other people. Those are strengths, but they’re also a subtle form of procrastination when every small decision is forced to carry the weight of our entire future.

IMHO, men are also often more comfortable assuming their ideas deserve attention.

Women tend to gather more qualifications, do more research and wait until they can defend every sentence in a court of law before confidently sharing an opinion online.

Then a man with half the experience publishes his version, calls it “The Only Strategy You’ll Ever Need” and sells a million copies.

I’m exaggerating, but only slightly.

Complexity Is a Great Hiding Place

There’s another reason we do this.

Planning makes us feel productive without us having to face the possibility of rejection.

• As long as I’m working on the strategy for my book, nobody can refuse to buy it.

• As long as I’m refining the concept for a new product, it cannot fail.

• As long as I’m deciding whether my article should be free or paid, I don’t have to publish it and discover how many people really care.

Complexity protects the dream from reality.

But reality is the only thing that can give us the information we need!

No amount of thinking will tell us whether our concepts resonate. Whether our ideas could become products, books or businesses.

We have to start, create, share and notice what happens.

Action = Clarity

We all know this one by now right?

You do something, no matter how small. You receive information and you adjust your course based on what works and what doesn’t.

We do it so naturally in life, and yet when it comes to growing a business or an online presence we expect ourselves to be instant strategic experts.

And if we’re not, surely we’re behind the eight ball.

This is simply not the case.

• We don’t have to know whether an idea will become a book before writing the first essay.

• We don’t have to decide whether a business will become a global brand before selling the first product.

• We don’t have to understand exactly who we’re becoming before taking one step away from a life that no longer fits.

• And we don’t need to make every idea work.

Some will go nowhere. Some will lead somewhere you never expected. A few may become far bigger than imagined, but we’ll never discover which ones if we insist on seeing the whole staircase before lifting our foot.

Throw Out the Crystal Ball

Women over 50 don’t need a lecture about thinking bigger.

Many of us are already thinking so big that we’ve created seventeen possible futures and a colour-coded spreadsheet for each one.

Perhaps the braver move is to make things smaller.

Choose the idea that matters today, and give it enough time to show you what it could become.

Let it be imperfect, incomplete and unrelated to the empire you may or may not build five years from now.

My current job is to sell my Travel Challenge Cards, keep writing and allow the strongest ideas to earn their way into my future.

I don’t need to build every version of that future today.

Neither do you.

Your ambition doesn’t need another strategy, another spreadsheet or another six hours disappearing down a research rabbit hole.

It needs you to stop staring into an imaginary crystal ball and just and take the first step.

Ready to Stop Overthinking and Get Started?

I wrote this article because I’m spectacularly good at telling myself to stop overthinking, and considerably less good at actually doing it. 😂

So I created something to help.

For paid subscribers, I’ve turned the idea behind this article into The BOLD Action System & 90 Day Journal.

A simple four-step framework for choosing one idea, giving it a proper 90-day shot and stopping yourself from reopening the decision every time another shiny possibility wanders past.

B — Back one idea
Choose something worth exploring without needing to know whether it’s the right thing.

O — Only ninety days
Give it enough time to find out what happens without turning it into a lifetime commitment.

L — Lock it in
Park the other possibilities and stop making the same decision over and over again.

D — Do the thing
Take action, get real information back and adjust from there.

It comes with a printable BOLD Commitment Sheet & 90 Day Tracking Journal, so you can choose your idea, set your 90-day window, decide what you’ll do first, track your progress, and safely park all your other brilliant ideas until review day.

Download The BOLD Action System + Commitment Sheet

Read more

Some of them must have been 20 years old.

If you’re anywhere around my age, you’ll remember this scenario perfectly well. You took your photos on your old camera, dropped the film off at Boots, waited however many days it took, then went back to collect an envelope full of prints, half of which were usually rubbish.

You might sit around with the family and flick through them once, perhaps order a couple of duplicates for Auntie Margaret, then they’d get shoved into a drawer or a box somewhere and quite possibly never looked at again.

That was about the extent of photo sharing ‘back in our day!’

We didn’t document our breakfast, tell 4,000 people we were having a difficult day or take everyone on holiday with us in real time.

We came from a very different world.

Children should be seen and not heard. Your diary came with a tiny lock and key (remember them), because the entire point was that nobody else was supposed to bloody read it.

If you wanted to speak to your best friend, you rang her house, had to get through her mum first and then spent the call listening for the little click that meant someone had picked up the other phone.

And in our house, one of my mum’s favourite sayings was:

“Never hang your dirty washing out in public.”

Which makes building a personal brand in 2026 quite interesting.

When did we all start sharing so much?

Over the last decade or so, vulnerability has become a huge part of how we communicate online.

Brené Brown undoubtedly had a lot to do with bringing the conversation around vulnerability and shame into the mainstream, and I think much of that has been incredibly valuable. There’s something enormously powerful about realising that we don’t have to pretend everything is perfect all the time.

But, as tends to happen with these things, the pendulum swung quite a long way.

Somewhere along the line, being authentic online started to feel as though it meant telling people everything.

Your fears. Your relationships. Your childhood. Your trauma. Your insecurities. Your family problems. The thoughts you had at 3.17am when you couldn’t sleep.

And if that’s how you like to write or create, brilliant. There are people who are extraordinarily good at it, and clearly there are millions of readers who love that level of openness and connection.

I’m just not sure I’m one of the people who wants to create that way.

I love telling stories. I love sharing my life, my travels, the silly things I do, the businesses I’m building, the things I’m struggling with and the stuff I’m learning as I go.

But there’s a point where my brain goes...

Nope. That’s TMI.

And I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot recently because I’m trying to become a better writer and creator, and inevitably that means letting people get to know me.

As we know people connect with people.

I get that much.

But how much of yourself do you actually have to hand over?

My Uncomfortable Post

A couple of weeks ago, on the anniversary of my mum’s death, I wrote a short post about her.

It wasn’t wildly revealing. Most of us reach an age where we’ve lost people we love, and there was nothing particularly unusual about what I shared.

But I still felt uncomfortable posting it.

Partly because it was personal and partly because I wondered what on earth it had to do with The 50+ Nomad.

Why was I telling strangers on the internet about my mum?

If I’m completely truthful, I think part of the reason I posted it was because I’ve spent so much time consuming other people’s content that I’d started to think perhaps this was what I was supposed to do.

Be more vulnerable. Let people in. Show more of the person behind the brand.

And there is some truth in that.

(Plus she did pass on some great truths that I shared in the note - with a touch of humour - more on that below!)

But I also realised that I don’t want to start mining my private life for content simply because personal content performs well.

There has to be another way.

And I think there is.

6 Ways to Be Personal Without Making Everything Public

I’ve been thinking about the different ways I’m comfortable letting people get to know me without feeling as though I’ve handed them the key to my diary, and how I can bring more of myself into my writing while still keeping the things I want to keep private.

These are the six approaches that feel right for me.

1. Put a funny spin on it

Humour is probably my favourite way of being open about something without making it feel too heavy.

Demonstrated perfectly by the note about my Mum.

Losing my mum was obviously not funny, and I would never try to make it so, but even in a post that personal, I found myself adding a little humour.

I shared three things she used to say to me, including this last one, with the little joke about my husband that made the post feel much more like me.

“❤️ And my favourite (not my husband’s)… “It’s only money.” 😂”

And yes she really did used to say to me ‘it’s only money Jo’.

Quick digression - many years ago we went to Rome together and one afternoon we decided to order a bottle of wine with our meal. We didn’t look at he price and nearly fell over when 75 euros was added to the bill! But my lovely Mum, god rest her soul, just smiled and said ‘never mind, it’s only money’. 🥰

Of course, some things are simply too painful, too raw or too serious to find anything remotely funny about, and if you choose to share those things, humour may have no place in them.

But when it does feel natural, I think humour can be a lovely way of letting people into something personal without feeling as though you’ve suddenly stripped yourself emotionally naked in front of the internet.

2. Share the scar, not the wound

I heard Amy Porterfield say this years ago and it’s always stuck with me.

You don’t have to share something while you’re slap bang in the middle of it.

Sometimes we need to live through something first, figure out what we think about it, talk it through with people we love (if relevant), and only then decide whether there’s something useful in it for somebody else.

My burnout after our biggest ever year in business in 2016 is a good example.

I talk about it quite openly now, but I couldn’t for a long time because I hadn’t made sense of it myself.

We’d had our most financially successful year ever and yet I was completely burnt out and deeply unhappy with the business I’d built. It took me a long time to understand what had happened and why.

But now I can (and do) talk about it because the experience contains a useful lesson.

(In summary - If you build purely for money while spending your days doing something you don’t enjoy, there’s a fairly good chance that at some point the money won’t be enough, and you’ll burn out. )

I couldn’t have articulated that while I was going through it.

Ten years later, I can.

3. Be open about the smaller stuff

I’m quite happy telling you that my menopausal brain occasionally seems to have left the building.

I’ll talk about feeling overwhelmed, procrastinating, getting something spectacularly wrong, being nervous before doing something new, wondering what the hell I’m doing with my business or discovering that I am considerably less fit than the mountain I’ve decided to climb requires.

Those things are personal, but not gut wrenchingly so.

They’re still real.

And often they’re the things people relate to most because we’ve all got our own similar version of them.

4. Let people know what you think

You can reveal an enormous amount about yourself without revealing your deepest secrets.

• What makes you laugh?

• What annoys you?

• What do you believe about getting older, travelling, money, ambition, freedom, starting again or how we should spend the relatively short amount of time we get on this planet?

Your opinions and the way you view the world tell me who you are.

You don’t need to share your deepest secrets simply because you feel like that’s what you’re ‘supposed’ to do.

5. Point the camera outwards sometimes

One of the things I love most about travelling is other people.

The random woman I met in a wine bar in Times Square and talked to for over an hour. The people I meet on buses and tours and hikes. The cultures, conversations, food, places and little moments that make travelling endlessly fascinating to me.

There’s a whole world out there to write about.

Your content doesn’t always have to involve staring deeply into your own navel.

6. Decide what belongs to you

I still wrestle with this a little.

• There are things I’ll happily tell thousands of strangers and things I barely discuss with friends.

• There are stories involving other people that aren’t mine to tell.

• There are things I might write about one day but wouldn’t dream of sharing now.

• And there are parts of my life that will probably never become content at all.

I’m increasingly okay with that.

I don’t think building an audience means continually pushing yourself to reveal more and more. I think it means letting enough of yourself into your work that people start to recognise you in it.

Your humour, opinions, values, and quirks. The fact that you love Marmite, rollercoasters and Linkin Park, have strong opinions about which way a bed should face, and think cold baked beans, cheese & mayo sandwiches are a perfectly acceptable food choice. (Yep I said it!)

Over time, people get to know you through all of those little pieces.

You can be open without being an open book.

And for those of us raised on locked diaries, shared house phones and mothers warning us about dirty washing, that feels considerably more doable.

I’d love to know where your line is.

Are you comfortable sharing the deeply personal stuff online, or does your inner Gen Xer immediately reach for the tiny lock and key?

“Oh my god! SLOW DOWN!”

We were shouting/laughing/(kinda crying)… and hanging on for dear life as our cycle rickshaw hurtled through the narrow streets of Kathmandu.

Our driver was pedalling like a man possessed, weaving between motorbikes, market stalls, pedestrians and the occasional startled cow (yes, cow), missing every one of them by what felt like millimetres.

My sister and I were clinging to the sides, (and occasionally to each other), as we careered through the old city, certain we were about to take someone out.

The crazy thing was that the old guy who’d convinced us to take a ride had seemed like the gentlest soul….

To be honest, that rickshaw ride summed up Kathmandu. Colourful, chaotic, surprising & completely magical.

A City That Makes No Sense

My sister and I arrived not knowing what to expect. First off I’d been told the plane landing was terrifying. 😳

As we approached the city over the mountains, I waited for the pilot to perform whatever death-defying manoeuvre I’d been promised, but we landed without incident. In fact I remember feeling immediately awe struck as the mountains parted and the city appeared beneath us.

It was a thing of beauty!

It was only later that I discovered my doomsayer had confused Kathmandu with Lukla, the tiny airport near Everest Base Camp that frequently appears on lists of the most dangerous airports in the world.

Reassuring if not a little late. 🙄

As we weaved our way through sporadic traffic to our hotel, our awe was undiminished by monkeys outside the airport, cows in the middle of the road, and the chaos that was Kathmandu.

Within a few blocks, we were in love. ❤️

I can’t put my finger on exactly why. Something about the atmosphere, the people, the colours, the crazy streets, the golden monasteries that appeared out of nowhere, and the bundles of electrical wires that looked like the entire place would blackout at any second. (And I thought Thailand was electrically unsafe! 😳)

But I think much of it was because everywhere we went we were greeted by a smile and the word - ‘Namaste’. 🙏

The same word I associate with laying flat on my back after I’ve tried to stretch my body out of all proportion and then sit there awkwardly cross legged, (yet sanctimonious that I’m ’on the mat’) thanking the lithe young yoga teacher for the pain they just put me through! 😂

It’s a word of peace, of calm, of breath. And by any reasonable measure, Kathmandu should have felt frantic, but somehow it didn’t.

The traffic honked, the cows wandered, the wires threatened public safety and our gentle rickshaw driver revealed the soul of Aryton Senna, but through all of it came that same calm greeting.

Namaste. 🙏

Kathmandu made no sense whatsoever, which is probably why we loved it. 🥰

The Monkeys Were In Charge

We discovered the local hierarchy while climbing the 365 steps to Swayambhunath, better known as the Monkey Temple.

The name isn’t a cute piece of tourism marketing. There were monkeys everywhere! In the trees, on the walls, across the temples, and flying between branches and flags above your head!

At first, we thought they were adorable.

Then there were too many!

Suddenly, the camera straps were tightened, the bags were clutched to our bodies, and the heads were down.

Above us, the Buddha eyes looked serenely across Kathmandu while the monkeys ran riot across all the temples and stupas. It seemed another very Kathmandu combination: spiritual calm, extraordinary beauty and the slight possibility of being mugged by wildlife.

Away from the monkeys, we spent hours wandering without much idea where we were going, which is absolutely my favourite way to experience a city.

We found tiny stupas squeezed between buildings, market squares packed with people, the Garden of Dreams, (a beautiful walled oasis within the city), kids singing near temples, even a concert of sorts in a little bar as we walked home one evening.

Every time we thought we’d seen the city, something else popped up and took us by surprise.

Climbing Everest (Not)

One of the big highlights was of course seeing Everest!

No I didn’t go trekking to Base Camp or attempt any such nonsense. There’s a plane! 😎

Why climb when you can fly? 🤷🏻‍♀️

We booked Buddha Air, which takes you on a small plane, along the Himalayan range to see Everest & all its brothers and sisters.

Our first attempt was unfortunately cancelled because there was too much cloud, and with only a couple of days there, we were understandably nervous when we returned the next morning, but Lady Luck (and the sun) shined upon us and it was glorious!

Peaks stretched across the horizon, including of course, Everest.

The cabin crew were amazing, pointing out each mountain and telling us its name, and we each got a quick visit to the cockpit to look out the front of the plane! Fan-bloody-tastic!

Why I’m Writing This Post & Thinking About Nepal Today

We were only in Kathmandu for three days, but some places don’t need long to find their way into your heart.

The warmth of the people, the food, the colour, the chaos, the calm, the Namastes, the madcap rickshaw ride, and the mountains that took our breath away.

Which is why my heart is so heavy right now.

As I write this, Nepal is reeling from a catastrophic disaster. Flash floods triggered by a glacial collapse in the Himalayas have swept through the valleys along the Nepal–Tibet border, destroying homes, bridges and whole communities.

Hundreds of people have died, thousands remain missing and tens of thousands have been affected. Rescue teams are still trying to reach communities cut off by the destruction, and the true scale of the disaster is still unfolding.

If, like me, Nepal holds a place in your heart, or even if you’ve never been but simply want to help, the Nepal Red Cross is on the ground coordinating rescue and relief. Even a small donation goes a long way in a country like this.

Support The Nepal Red Cross

To the people of Nepal, to the shopkeepers and the singers, the rickshaw riders and the monks, the women selling tomatoes & flowers, and the forever beautiful Namaste’s, thank you for welcoming us so warmly and for giving my sister and I memories that still make us laugh all these years later.

Today, we see you, we’re thinking of you, and we’re sending our love.

Namaste. 🙏

He works at Buchette Del Vino, a little wine bar in Times Square that became my favourite spot in NYC to take a load off, have a cold Peroni and watch the crazy shenanigans unfolding around me.

I’d only popped in a couple of times but he was always there with a smile on his face and some good old New York hospitality.

So on Wednesday we said goodbye to our lovely house sit and the gorgeous animal family we were looking after, and headed into the city for a 3-night stay.

I had tickets for Top of the Rock that evening, so Rhett and I had a wander, sat in Central Park soaking up the sun, grabbed a quick bite and then I headed off to have my tourist moment.

Afterwards we wandered back through Times Square to get the full night time experience (ah-maz-ing), & as we passed Buchette Del Vino (I wanted to show Rhett my new local haunt), I called out to Jorge to say Hi.

He instantly recognised me & invited us in for a beer on him! 🥰

Literally two free Peronis for hubby and me so we could sit, watch the madness of Times Square and soak it all in.

How lovely is that?? I arrived in NYC a complete stranger a couple of weeks ago, and here I was being welcomed back like an old friend at a little bar in Times Square no less! 😎

It’s moments like that that get etched into your memory. Those little moments of human connection & kindness.

There’s an old saying that money makes the world go round, but I don’t think it does.

I think we do.

People meeting people, casual conversations, friendships made, even if only for the blink of an eye. Unexpected moments that make you smile and remember, long after you’ve forgotten what building you saw on what day.

I think that’s what makes the world go round.

Talking about moments…

I’m writing this from Central Park on Saturday morning just before we leave for Philly & I’ve just watched not one but TWO couples get engaged right in front of me!

Oh my gosh!

They were crying, I was crying, the woman on the bench next to me was crying & there’s a lovely old guy playing romantic songs on his erhu (Chinese Violin) as this is all unfolding. It’s like a fairy tale! ❤️

So yes I have walked umpteen thousand steps, visited the New York Public Library, eaten an $18 street cart hot dog (I kid you not), taken a stupid amount of photos of all the landmarks, visited Lady Liberty in the pouring rain, shed a tear at the 9/11 memorial, tried to reenact Working Girl on the Staten Island ferry (😂), and watched the Yankees take on the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.

I have done as much of New York as I could fit in and loved every minute of it!

But as I sit here on my last morning, it’s not the buildings or the landmarks I’m thinking about.

It’s my chance meeting with a lady called Kristin over a beer, my new friend Jorge, my wonderful day out with a fellow Substacker, the Welsh family I met in an Irish pub on Broadway, all the amazing New Yorkers I’ve had random conversations with, and the lady sitting next to me on a bench in Central Park this morning, both of us crying as two beautiful engagements unfolded in front of us.

Those are the moments that will truly stay with me as I leave this amazing city. ❤️

Thank you New York, you’ve far exceeded my expectations and I will be back. 🗽

So my friends, September is almost upon us! 😳

It’s my birthday month and growing up I always remember the feeling of Christmas coming hurtling on to the horizon as soon as my birthday celebrations were done.

It was also the start of a new school year (UK Curriculum), and the end of summer, and with shorter days and darker evenings suddenly the rest of the year seemed to gather pace.

For us this year it’s our last month of travel before returning to the UK to see friends and family in October, and for my ecom biz Q4 is looming!

So even though it feels like the end of 2026 is creeping up rather fast, we still have 4 solid months to make magic happen!

We could choose to blink and find ourselves putting up Christmas decorations wondering where the year went, or we can decide to make these next few months count.

I vote for door No 2! 🥳

A Bolder September

Last week, I wrote about living a Bigger, Bolder, Braver life in our 50s and beyond. You can read it here:

I’m not talking about selling everything you own, jumping out of an aeroplane or moving to a yurt in Mongolia. (Unless you fancy any of those things, obviously.)

I mean getting out of autopilot.

Doing more of the things that make you feel alive, curious, excited, courageous and occasionally just a tiny bit uncomfortable.

Saying yes when you’d normally talk yourself out of something. Going somewhere alone. Asking for what you want. Trying something you might be terrible at. Making the decision you’ve been putting off. Spending $20 purely for fun. Doing something your age has talked you out of.

Small things, that when done regularly have a funny habit of changing the way we see ourselves.

Because every time we do something a little different, we remind ourselves that our lives aren’t fixed. We can change our minds. Try something new. Go somewhere different. Meet someone. Start something. Stop something. Be beginners again.

And we don’t need to wait until January 1st to do it.

In fact we can get started right now!

Introducing…

The Bolder Life List: 30 small challenges to shake off autopilot and make September a month to remember.

There’s one small challenge for every day, and none of them require you to turn your life upside down.

Some are fun, some will make you think, and a few might give you a little flutter in your stomach that usually means oh God, I don’t know if I want to do that.

Those are probably the ones worth doing. 😂

You don’t have to do them perfectly, you don’t even have to do them in order. Swap days around, adapt them to your life and make them your own.

The only goal is to finish September having done a few things you probably wouldn’t have done otherwise.

We still have 4 solid months of the year left. Plenty of time for a few more stories.

So let’s create some.

Your September Bolder Life List

1. Do the thing you don’t feel ready to do.

2. Stop saying “I don’t mind”.

3. Book something to look forward to.

4. Do something alone.

5. Ask for something.

6. Break one of your own rules.

7. Remember: No is a complete sentence.

8. Be a beginner at something.

9. Spend $20 purely on fun.

10. Make the call or send the email you’ve been avoiding.

11. Go somewhere you feel underqualified to be.

12. Tell someone what you appreciate about them.

13. Do one thing your age has talked you out of.

14. Go somewhere without researching it to death first.

15. Make one decision in under five minutes.

16. Tell somebody about your big idea.

17. Take yourself on a date.

18. Say yes to an invitation.

19. Make yourself visible.

20. Ask someone an interesting question.

21. Give yourself an hour back.

22. Do something physically playful.

23. Send the email.

24. Change your mind about something.

25. Say the nice thing out loud.

26. Choose the more interesting option.

27. Remove one “should” from your life.

28. Make one tiny move towards a big dream.

29. Do something nobody expects from you.

30. Choose your October dare.

Download Your Bolder Life List (For Paid Subscribers)

I’ve turned the Bolder Life List into a September ‘month at a glance’ you can download, print out, stick on the fridge, keep on your desk or save to your phone.

I’ve also created an accompanying guide with more details about each of the 30 challenges, plus ideas and tips to help you actually do them, particularly on days when “make yourself visible” sounds like something you’d rather postpone until 2047. 😂

Pick your challenges, tick them off as you go, and see what happens when you deliberately make one small bolder choice every day for a month! 🥳

Want the downloads? 🔥

The September Bolder Life List downloads are available to paid subscribers.

If you’d like to join us, paid subscribers get:

• Full access to The Backpack — every guide, course, template and tool I’ve created to help you fund your freedom, travel smarter and live your best years yet.

• New guides, resources and practical tools added throughout the year, including downloads like The Bolder Life List.

• Unrestricted access to everything I publish for paid members.

If The 50+ Nomad helps you think bigger, try something new or get a little closer to the life you want to be living, becoming a paid subscriber is also a lovely way to support my work and help me keep creating more of it.

Upgrade to paid to download your September Bolder Life List & Guide below. 🔥

Start a 7 Day Free Trial

Read more

I was feeling in a particularly buoyant mood writing this article and had a bit of fun with it. For the full (and best) experience listen to me reading the article, particularly my very bad impression of ‘voiceover man’ at the end. I hope you enjoy reading/listening to it as much as I enjoyed creating it! 😂

At 3pm yesterday afternoon, I was sitting at the kitchen table of the house we’re sitting here in New York completely overwhelmed.

I was trying to work out whether I should put the price of my Travel Challenge Cards up on Amazon, while simultaneously messaging a solicitor about serving a Section 8 notice on a tenant in England (a legal doc to kick a wayward tenant out), trying to cancel a Claude Teams account I’d accidentally made far too complicated, and messaging Michelle, my VA, about Facebook ad creatives she couldn’t actually start making yet because I hadn’t given her everything she needed.

Welcome to building businesses & running a life while travelling the world.

It’s all beaches & cocktails (not). 🙄

(Although sometimes it is 🤫 😂)

By 4pm I’d given up on most of my original to-do list as I’d got totally caught up watching YouTube videos about Facebook ad creatives.

I’d started out thinking I needed oodles of video editing knowledge, but 2 hours later I realised I just needed to add a prompt or two into Claude, and Apple eat your heart out.

(Yes it’s of course it’s that simple, this is YouTube! 🙄)

I wanted to make some immediately.

I suddenly envisaged myself the Steven Spielberg of CapCut.

But in all honesty, somewhere in the middle of all this, my brain slowed a little & I found myself wondering what might happen if I actually gave my ecom business a proper shot.

The Business I’ve Been Neglecting

I started This Big World because I’ve wanted my own Kikki K style travel ecom brand for years.

I’m obsessed with stationary, journals, travel accessories, bags, kitschy products & anything that makes us smile.

What I apparently don’t love quite as much is sitting down and doing the daily hard graft required for people to actually visit my product pages and buy my stuff!

This Big World currently has one main product, my Scratch-Off Travel Challenge Cards, which are selling on Amazon.

I’m selling around 100 packs a month (this month looks like we’ll hit a new record at 150! 🥳)

I have real buyers, reviews, PPC campaigns running, approx 3000 packs in stock, and a Shopify store that has been “almost ready” for a ridiculously long time, plus I have an outreach guy & a VA.

In other words, I have a bonafide ecommerce business, which is making sales, but costing me money.

Why? Because I’ve been treating it like a hobby I intend to get serious about next Thursday.

There’s always something else!

Ooh look at that mountain (sorry got distracted for a moment - see?) 😉

• I write this Substack.

• I have books I want to write.

• I have books I’ve almost finished.

• I travel full-time.

• I have rental properties in the UK,

• I have a daughter who suddenly called yesterday for the first time in 2 weeks so I stopped everything to talk to her for 90 minutes.

• I have admin and family and all the normal stuff of life.

And unfortunately I have the entrepreneurial attention span of a Labrador in a field full of squirrels.

There’s always another idea, opportunity, business model, or YouTube video I absolutely must watch because apparently my future depends on understanding TikTok for KDP by lunchtime! 🤯

And then I wonder why This Big World isn’t growing faster.

So What If I Stopped Giving it the Leftovers?

Over the last 6 months I’ve 100% sold myself the story that I can do everything.

I can build a fully fledged e-commerce business, while writing excellently thought out Substack articles, while posting daily notes, while writing books, while posting on FB, while travelling the world, hopping from place to place and dealing with problem tenants in the UK.

Of course I can do it all. I am superwoman after all (aren’t we all!)

But we all know deep down that there are simply not enough hours in the day. (If you’re kidding yourself alongside me, you’ll be internally nodding right now.) And as much as we want to do it all something has got to give.

So look I’m not about to pivot, change my whole game plan, stop posting on Substack or completely overhaul my brand (as I have been wont to do! 🙄).

But I am curious about what would happen if I gave This Big World the best of my working time for the next six months?

Not every waking hour. I didn’t become a full-time nomad so I could travel to New York and spend the entire time hunched over Facebook Ads Manager.

But proper, singular, focused time.

The hours that currently disappear into seventeen different projects, rabbit holes and things I convince myself are urgent.

As my Dad used to say God rest his soul - ‘focus on one thing until successful, Jo.’

Could I turn this little pack of Travel Challenge Cards into a $10,000-a-month ecommerce business? (And I mean profit!)

And by doing so, actually end up growing all my other projects faster (counter intuitive I know, but bear with me).

I honestly don’t know.

But I have decided I want to find out!

So no great declarations, but I did just want to forewarn that my content moving forward might be a little less - here’s how to do X & a little more - oh FFS this happened. 😂

But It Still Needs to Fit My Lifestyle

This is the part I’m most interested in.

The old adage is true, you get out what you put in, but I’m forever preaching lifestyle first and then build a business (or businesses) that fit around you, not the other way around.

Because what’s the point of building a freedom business if you’re never free?

I’m in New York right now. I want to wander around Manhattan, eat things I shouldn’t, meet random people in bars, take far too many photos and truly experience the place I’ve travelled all this way to see.

But I also have 3,000 packs of Travel Challenge Cards sitting in Amazon warehouses waiting to be sold, and a vision of what this little ecom brand could become.

And therein lies the tension.

Can I build something substantial without putting my life on hold to do it?

Can I travel, explore, have adventures, spend time with the people I love and still build a serious business?

Can I? CAN I??

Well without turning this into an online version of Clarkson’s Farm (although that’s not a bad idea - Barnes’s Big World anyone? 🤔)

Let me introduce the cast…

S1 E1 - The Protagonists

Me - overenthusiastic, cup-half-full, massive-action Barnes, somewhere in America wildly overestimating what I can accomplish before lunchtime.

Michelle - long-suffering VA who’s worked with us for years and is always patiently waiting for me to send her the things she needs to do her actual job.

Rhett - the ever-patient husband, watching yet another YouTube-induced business obsession unfold.

Outreach Guy - newly employed, so not a named character just yet. Currently sending packs of cards (at $9 a shipping shot) to YouTube influencers with 57 followers and zero engagement. Training is a priority! 😳

Claude/AI - the slightly unreliable new employee. Brilliant one minute, confidently talking absolute bollocks the next, but increasingly being given far more responsibility than is probably wise. 😎

Amazon - my nemesis. Necessary, powerful, brilliant for launching products, but a horrible platform to build an entire business strategy around.

Shopify - my great hope. Where I get to build This Big World exactly as I see it in my head, assuming I ever actually finish the store, and can get people to see it! You can see the fledgling This Big World store here - This Big World - although please don’t judge the curtains just yet, I’m still decorating. 🤭

3,000 packs of Travel Challenge Cards - waiting to excite and delight, while currently sitting in warehouses across America.

And This Big World - my little travel brand, potentially destined for a spot in airport shops across the land, that I’ve finally decided deserves a proper shot.

The Goal

The immediate goal is $10,000 a month profit.

Preferably without giving up the travelling, adventures and crazy moments I’m building it all for.

So for the next 6–12 months, This Big World is going to get the best of my business brain rather than whatever scraps happen to be left at the end of the day.

Will that be enough to turn it into a $10k-a-month ecommerce business while travelling the world?

I have absolutely no idea.

But I’m going to give it a bloody good go.

I’ll let you know how I’m getting on. 😁

Jo x 😊

Coming Up on Barnes’s Big World… 😂

Jo Barnes has 3,000 packs of Travel Challenge Cards sitting in warehouses across America, a slightly ambitious plan to sell them out over the Christmas period, and an even more ambitious plan to turn This Big World into a $10,000-a-month profit ecommerce brand.

But first, she needs to finish the Shopify store she’s been “finishing” for months, keep a watchful eye on the PPC agency spending her money, teach Outreach Guy that influencers need an actual audience, and somehow master enough AI to start churning out videos and Facebook ads that people might actually click on.

All while sightseeing her way through New York and Washington DC, finishing a book she refuses to take to another continent (yeah forgot to mention that little gem), and attempting not to get distracted by another brilliant business idea before lunchtime.

Can she finally focus long enough to make This Big World work?

Or will it all go spectacularly tits up?

What could possibly go wrong? 😂

Tune in next time…

I’m massively fixated on time right now and I wasn’t sure why until it hit me recently during a deep psychological dive with my online life, business, fitness, health, and general agony aunt coach, Bob (otherwise known as ChatGPT).

Up until a few short months ago I was a full time Mum. My daily thoughts consisted of 10% my needs and 90% my daughters (Ok I’m probably exaggerating but you know what I mean Mum’s!).

Plus we generally lived in one place with our routines, friends, commitments and all the normal stuff that fills a life.

But this morning my only thought was about packing my bag, washing my hair, and getting out the door to our next destination.

That and this article I wanted to write, the creatives I need to do for my ecom brand and the fact my trousers felt a bit snug after a few weeks in Canada eating poutine! 🤭

All of a sudden I have time. And I don’t mean hours in the day. It feels like I have less of those now there’s always a bus, train or plane to catch.

I mean time for me. Time to think about what I want.

But also time in the form of years yet to live - to build businesses, write books, travel to amazing places, meet fascinating people, get stronger, try new things, change my mind, start again, and have absolutely no idea what I’m doing on a fairly regular basis.

I’m completely ‘free to do what I want, any old time’ 🎶

And at 53 I’ve suddenly become incredibly excited about what’s ahead.

Because even though I now need glasses to watch the TV and read a book, knee braces when hiking, & a cup of tea before anyone can get a word out of me in the morning, I have absolutely no intention of slowing down.

In fact I kinda feel like I’m just getting started.

And it made me wonder how many of us reach this age and don’t realise what an opportunity we still have in front of us.

Because even though the world increasingly starts treating us as though our most interesting years are behind us, what if we don’t see it that way?

What if, instead of slowly shrinking our lives to fit an outdated idea of what getting older should look like, we decide to expand?

We’ve got decades of experience behind us, less people to please, a much better idea of who we are, and for many of us, more freedom to decide what we want the next chapter of our life to look like.

We could still have 20, 30 or 40 years ahead of us for crying out loud.

That’s a lot of life.

So this isn’t the time to wind down at all.

In fact it’s our time to go bigger with what we believe is possible, bolder about going after it, and braver about trusting ourselves enough to see just how much we’re still capable of.

Let me get a hell yeah! 💪😎

BIGGER

Recently I came across the incredible story of Grandma Moses.

Anna Mary Robertson Moses had spent most of her life working on farms and raising a family. She only began painting seriously in her late seventies when arthritis made embroidery too painful (plus she wanted to give a gift to her postman!)

In 1938, when Grandma Moses was 78, New York art collector Louis Caldor saw her paintings displayed in the window of a drugstore in Hoosick Falls, New York. He bought the paintings and then visited her and bought more.

According to the Smithsonian Mag, some dealers worried about her age, and the wider art world sidelined her for being elderly, female and self-taught.

But Grandma Moses painted for another 23 years.

She became one of America’s most recognised folk artists, appeared on the cover of Time magazine and lived to 101.

What a sensational story, and a great example of what can be achieved at any age!

I’m not saying we should all rush out and become internationally renowned artists in our seventies. Frankly, I’ve got enough on my to-do list (plus I can’t paint).

But it’s proof that we don’t have to start shrinking our lives as we get older, which I think so many of us do almost without noticing.

We don’t consciously say, ‘oh I’m getting older so I’m going to start shrinking my life.’

We just start to stop entertaining certain ideas because we think we’ve missed our chance.

Starting the business. Writing the book. Moving abroad. Learning something new. Travelling somewhere that scares us a little. Changing careers. Falling in love again. Starting over.

‘Bit late for that now.’

Is it?

I’m a spring chicken at 53. If I’m lucky (and eat more salads), I could easily have another 30 years ahead of me.

That’s my whole adult life all over again!

Think back 20 or 30 years and consider everything that’s happened since.

• VHS became Netflix. (Blockbuster anyone?)

• Mixtapes became Spotify playlists.

• Encyclopaedias became Google.

• Maps now talk to us in our cars.

• Phone boxes turned into FaceTime.

• Letters became WhatsApp.

• Travel agents became Booking (dot) com and Airbnb.

• Huge brick sized mobiles (which were revolutionary by the way) became tiny computers in our pockets.

• And these days my therapist is a robot! 😂

30 years isn’t the tail end of something.

It’s enough time to create an entirely new chapter.

And remember big is relative.

For you it might mean travelling the world, starting a business from your kitchen table, writing your first novel, learning Spanish, moving closer to the sea, or simply having enough control over your time to spend Wednesday afternoon reading a book if you damn well please.

What matters is that you choose the size of your life rather than accepting whatever gets handed to you.

BOLDER

You know one of the biggest lies we tell ourselves?

“I’ll do it when…”

• When I feel more confident.

• When I know what I’m doing.

• When I’ve lost some weight.

• When I have more money.

• When the kids are sorted.

• When work calms down.

• When I feel ready.

• When life is less complicated.

There will always be another “when”.

I didn’t feel ready when we moved our family to Cyprus in 2008 with a four-year-old daughter and a recession chewing through our income.

I didn’t feel ready when we started our first online business with very little clue what we were doing.

I didn’t feel ready when we decided to become full-time nomads.

I don’t feel ready to publish this article (it’s not perfect!!! 😳)

I’m doing it anyway.

At some point, you have to accept that feeling ready isn’t a prerequisite.

You can be nervous and do it, have doubts and still do it, have absolutely no idea whether it’ll work and still give it a bloody good go.

That’s what living bolder means to me.

It’s taking action despite your fears.

And the funny thing is, every time you do something that scares you a little and discover you can handle it, your confidence grows.

Then the next thing becomes easier.

You don’t have to blow up your entire life and buy a one-way ticket to Bali to be bold. You just need to do something about the things you keep telling yourself you want.

BRAVER

I always assumed I’d become more confident as I got older.

With age comes wisdom, confidence and self-assurance, right?

You accumulate decades of life experience, survive all sorts of things you thought would finish you off, learn a few lessons, stop caring what other people think, and eventually stride into your fifties with the confidence of someone who has seen and done stuff.

Surely we should all be swaggering around by 50 thinking, “I’ve got this.”

Except it doesn’t seem to work like that.

In fact, for a lot of us, confidence seems to take an absolute battering.

Our bodies are changing, our hormones are all over the place (ladies, you know what I’m talking about), and some of us are dealing with brain fog, low energy, poor sleep and anxiety.

Children who needed us constantly suddenly don’t need us in the same way. Careers we were once ambitious about might not feel as important anymore.

And meanwhile, we’re living in a culture that’s completely obsessed with youth, beauty, money & power.

It’s easy to start questioning yourself.

• Have I still got it?

• Am I still relevant?

• Is it too late?

• Who do I think I am doing this at my age?

I’ve heard various versions of those thoughts from so many women I’ve chatted to recently, and I’ve had plenty of them myself.

Which is why I think being braver after 50 is about learning to trust ourselves again.

We don’t need to suddenly start jumping out of airplanes (which so many of my friends have done for their 50th - me I was bombing down waterslides on my 50th, but that’s another story!)

But we do need to start giving ourselves a little more credit.

You’ve been through some stuff my friend!

Grief, relationship breakdowns, redundancy, financial problems, health scares, family dramas, disappointments, failures, mistakes and all the other curveballs that come with living for 5 or 6 decades.

But you’re still here fighting the good fight!

And you’re definitely far more capable than you’ve been giving yourself credit for.

So when you feel the uncertainty, or the fear, or hear that little voice telling you you’re too old, too late, too inexperienced, too whatever, take the step anyway.

Then take another one.

Because courage is a muscle, and some of us have spent decades using ours on everybody else.

Now we get to use some of it on ourselves.

This is our time.

I’d far rather don the wooden overcoat having made some questionable decisions, tried things that didn’t work, changed my mind repeatedly and occasionally made a complete idiot of myself, than realise I’d spent my last few decades sitting on the sidelines because I was scared.

Your Best Years Might Still Be Ahead

Bigger, bolder and braver aren’t three separate ideas. They feed each other.

You allow yourself to imagine something bigger, then you take a bold step towards it before you feel completely ready, and somewhere along the way you build the courage to keep going.

And perhaps that’s one of the greatest opportunities of getting older.

We’ve spent years being who everybody needed us to be.

Now nobody’s watching.

After decades of worrying about what we look like, what people think, whether we’re doing life properly, whether everybody else is happy and whether we’re meeting whatever ridiculous standards we’ve set for ourselves, we can embrace the obscurity, the world is kindly giving us.

Society might not be terribly interested in people our age anymore.

Fine.

We can get on with doing our own thing.

We can want big things out loud. We can take the steps before we’re completely ready. We can back ourselves after a lifetime of backing everybody else.

And we can stop treating our fifties, sixties and beyond as a long, slow journey towards the beige armchair. (She says writing this article from literally a beige armchair! 😂)

I don’t know about you, but I want to travel further, build businesses, write books, meet fascinating people, have adventures, get stronger, learn new things, make mistakes, change my mind and embarrass my daughter occasionally. 😂

And if I’m lucky enough to still be here at 83, I hope I’m making plans for 93.

“They” might think we’re winding down.

Let them.

Because while they’re not looking, we can build the boldest chapter of our entire lives.

Your next few decades are coming either way.

You may as well make them your best years yet.

Jo 🥰

Howdy my adventurous friends!

I take approximately 4,732 photos every week and then do absolutely nothing with most of them, so this week I thought I’d put them to good use and show you what my week as a nomad looks like. 😂

No deep thoughts on ageing, courage or the meaning of the universe this week, just a little peek into life on the road.

And this week we left Canada, flew into New York, moved into our latest house sit, acquired a dog, a cat and a swimming pool, and I headed into Manhattan for the afternoon where I ate a hot dog, found a book-less library, and made a new friend in Times Square.

Pretty standard week really. 😂

Goodbye Canada, Hello New York

I have a bit of a thing about taking photos out of plane windows, which is why I always choose the window seat and have been known to kick up quite a fuss if a member of my own family thinks they’re getting it instead.

Sorry, but there are some things I’m simply not prepared to compromise on. 😂

Also (little travel tip), I nearly always ask at check-in if they happen to have any extra legroom seats available. My success rate is about 90% so far - for no extra cost!

And the lovely Renata at the WestJet check-in desk in Calgary did not let me down for this trip! (I love how they ask if you’re happy to fling the cabin door open in the event of an emergency, like my top priority while plummeting toward the earth at 500 mph is going to be politely executing step 4 of the laminated safety card! 😳)

Something I was not aware of, but was definitely a bonus, is that when flying from Canada to the US, you clear US immigration in Canada before you get on the plane.

And given this was trip No 2 to the US, plus we’re here for 8 weeks I was a bit nervous for the potential grilling, so even though it took 90 solid minutes in the queue 🙄, it was a relief to get waved through by an easy going guy, and made for a very relaxing flight! 😊

The Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made Of!

We’re staying in a place called White Plains for a couple of weeks so after a quick one night stopover in Jamaica (great name for a neighbourhood), we picked up the car and headed in that direction.

And what a thrill to see the skyline of NYC open up in front of me on route!

So of course, I cranked up Alicia Keys Empire State of Mind & sang my little heart out (to my husbands delight 🤭).

Sometimes you just have to embrace the cliché. 😂

Our Current Home

Here are the lovely little reprobates we’re looking after for the next couple of weeks, while their family head off on hols, and this rather lovely swimming pool is ours to use. All for the grand accommodation price of absolutely nothing.

The joys of house sitting. 😁 Plus they have a housekeeper, so I won’t even need to do any cleaning! (It’s a hard life, but I’ll try my best to embrace it! 😊)

And this is probably my fave thing about nomad life. One week we’re travelling from room to room, even staying in a hostel bed with somebody’s smelly shoes underneath it. The next we’re in a beautiful house with a pool just outside New York City.

It’s nothing if not filled with variety! 😎

Stop Spreading the News

So I popped into the city yesterday on my own for the afternoon, jumped on the train and arrived at Grand Central, which I know is just a train station but GOOD GRIEF.

I’ve seen Grand Central in hundreds of films over the years, so to stand within it myself was a bit of a thrill.

Then I just went wandering.

This is probably my favourite way to explore a city when I’ve got nowhere particularly urgent to be. I had a few places I wanted to see, but mostly I just walked, looked up a lot, took far too many photos and drank in my surroundings.

• New York Public Library - that doesn’t actually have any books (not for public use anyway)

• Bryant Park - people playing chess, bowls, curling, reading books, playing music (it was lovely)

• Hot Dog Cart - after decades of watching people stand on New York pavements in movies, eating hot dogs out of little foil wrappers, my time had finally come!

And after all that anticipation, I can happily report that it tasted…

like a hot dog. 😂

Then I Hit Times Square

Ok, I know Times Square is touristy, crowded, noisy, super commercial and probably somewhere every true New Yorker avoids like the plague, but I bloody love it.

There is SO much going on that I didn’t know where to look. The lights, the people, the noise, the street shows. I wandered up the red steps at Father Duffy Square and just sat for half an hour or so taking in the atmosphere around me.

And then, among all those screens, who should appear…

Gordon bloody Ramsay.

I thought I’d left him in Vegas!

Well, apparently not. 😂

Then this happened…

Eventually I decided I’d walked about enough and stopped for a drink at Buchette Del Vino, right in the middle of Times Square, where you order your drink and they serve it through a little window Italian style (apparently?)

As I sat enjoying a cold Peroni, a lady joined me and we got chatting.

Kristin is originally from Ohio, served in the military, has just turned 50 and we ended up chatting and laughing for about an hour.

And it was probably my favourite part of the whole afternoon.

I’ll never see her again, but that’s not the point.

The point is that for one random hour I got to share a little piece of New York with a complete stranger, hear about a life completely different to mine, and just connect with another human. ❤️

Anyway, that was my week.

Canada to New York, two new furry roommates, a swimming pool, one fairly average hot dog, Gordon Ramsay stalking me across America and a lovely conversation with a stranger in Times Square.

And I’ve got another week in New York yet.

God knows what will be on next week’s camera roll. 😂

Have a fab weekend!

Jo xx ☺️

I’m 53, and I was sharing a dorm with about a dozen women half my age, all of them apparently able to sleep through anything and wake up looking fresh as a daisy.

While I, eye bags and all, peeled an HRT patch off my hip in a shared bathroom, having already taken my levothyroxine just so my thyroid could function!

Ah the joys of ageing. 🫤

I’m not going to lie, there are times I find myself wishing I’d done all this when I was younger. All this backpacking, dorm-sleeping, mountain-chasing, road-tripping-through-the-wild business.

Maybe it was something I should have done at 23, not 53. Like somehow I missed the memo that I was supposed to do all this back then, and now am doing it slightly out of time, estrogen patches and all.

But of course that’s crap. Here’s why.

Believe What’s Useful Not What’s True

Here’s what’s true.

I’m 53, with arthritic knees and an exercise history I’m not particularly proud of. My husband Rhett is newly 50 (going on 90) with a shoulder injury that’s somehow taken over his entire body, and knocked him for six these last few weeks. (We sound like a complete recipe for successful backpacking, right? 😂)

That might be true, but it isn’t very useful.

Because here’s what’s also true. I have never felt more alive, more energised, or frankly more young than I do when I’m travelling. I wrote a whole piece about that a couple of weeks back, about how travel might be the best anti-ageing strategy on earth, and I meant every word of it.

Out here, moving through the world, I feel 20 years younger than my knees would have me believe.

So I get to choose which of those truths I build my life around. The arthritis and the dodgy shoulder, or the aliveness, the energy, and the pull of the next mountain.

I know which one I’m picking.

And that feeling of ‘I wish I’d done it younger’ is one of the most useless feelings there is, because it points backwards at a version of your life that’s no longer available! It’s gone, past, done. Move on.

And I’m not just talking about backpacking or travelling. All of us over 50 know the pang.

• The business you wish you’d started.

• The book you wish you’d written.

• The dream you wish you’d chased.

“I wish I’d started younger.”

Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you didn’t. Neither did I, and no amount of wishing is going to change it.

Climbing Mountains at 53

Interestingly I was recently reading the story of a lady by the name of Junko Tabei.

In 1975, she became the first woman to reach the summit of Everest. She was 35, a mother of two, from a poor farming family, and had spent her life being told women should be raising children, not climbing mountains. 🙄

Days before reaching the summit an avalanche buried her (and her team) unconscious high on the mountain. Her sherpas dug her out. She could barely walk, rested for two days, then carried on and reached the top (on her own).

Then, at the ripe old age of 53 (my age), she became the first woman to complete the Seven Summits, the highest peak on every continent! 😳

She had a personal goal to climb the highest mountain in every country, and guess what, she reached the top in more than 70 of them. She wrote seven books in her late fifties and sixties, went back to university at 60, and was still leading expeditions months before she died at 77, climbing with cancer, refusing to stop.

Her motto was simple. “Do not give up. Keep on your quest.”

I mean, wowee. What an attitude.

What I love most about her story is that she just didn’t stop. Age never defined who she was and what she could accomplish. Every goal she achieved became the foundation for the next goal.

And I think we sometimes forget that (at least I do).

I start to feel like a beginner all over again, particularly when navigating new territory, like a new platform, a new hobby, or a whole new chapter.

But we need to remind ourselves we’re not starting from nothing. We’ve got decades of experience behind us, and the foundations of everything we need.

Even when the specific thing we’re looking at feels brand new (like a new summit to climb), we need to draw on what we already know.

Whatever you’ve spent your life doing, whether it was raising a family, running a home, building a career or mastering a craft, none of it has been wasted time. It’s all the foundation your next chapter gets built on.

And right now is younger than we’ll ever be again. Today we are the youngest we’ll ever be for the rest of our lives. So if not now, when?

The Lakes & Canyons of The Rockies

Yesterday we visited Moraine Lake. It’s absolutely stunning, here see for yourself.

As we were walking up to the rockpiles for a better view, we passed two ladies who’d stumbled and fallen (and were being actively aided by friends/family), one on the way up the other on the way down. Both easily in their 70s or 80s.

I had two thoughts at exactly the same time. First - “they’re bloody troopers. Brilliant that they’re up here, still going, not letting unsteady feet stop them from doing what they want”.

Second - “I want to be strong enough, at that age, that I’m not unsteady. That my legs can still carry me confidently up and down uneven steps and pathways.”

There’s no guarantees in life of course, but seeing those women out there doing it despite their frailties, made me think about how much of what we achieve is down to our minds not just our bodies.

These thoughts stayed with me as we walked around Emerald Lake, with views that looked like a painting.

As we hiked up to Lake Louise, because we couldn’t get parking or a shuttle (note to self, be more organised in your planning!).

And as I walked up through Marble Canyon listening to kids moan to their parents - “I don’t want to see another waterfall!” 😂

But it really hit me.

We can ‘think’ about what we want until the cows come home.

But it’s the ‘doing’ that makes things possible.

• Every time I hike, it makes me want to hike more.

• Every walk makes me want to get stronger so I can do the next one better.

• Movement creates the appetite for more movement.

And it isn’t just about hiking, backpacking, travelling or mountains. It’s about life itself.

• Last week I did a Substack Live, loved it, and can’t wait to do more.

• My book is almost finished, and I’m already thinking about the next one.

• Every time I write an article that resonates, I want to write the next one.

Doing begets more doing. Doing creates the hunger to do the next thing, again, further, higher, longer.

It’s a virtuous cycle.

So whatever you’ve been telling yourself you’re too old for, the business, the book, the trip, the course, the move, the change, you’re not too old. You might feel too late sometimes, but that’s just a feeling, not a fact.

Unfortunately, whatever hasn’t been done, can’t be done younger. None of us can go back. But you can decide to do it today, with everything you’ve accumulated behind you as fuel, not baggage.

Over to You

What have you been telling yourself you’re too old for?

What’s the thing you keep filing under “I wish I’d started younger.” Or that you assume the window’s closed on. A version of your life you’ve decided isn’t available anymore.

What if it still is?

What if today, the youngest you’ll ever be again, is exactly the right time to start?

Tell me in the comments. Sometimes saying it out loud is the first step towards doing it.

Right, I’m off. There’s a mountain out there with my name on it. (Well, a gentle, knee-friendly, arthritis-approved trail with my name on it. But you get the idea.) 😉

Jo 🥰

A Few for Fun

Because the last week hasn’t all been profound mountain reflection!

Canada - you’ve been amazing! 🇨🇦 Until next time! 🥰

I’m ‘writing’ this article from the passenger seat of our car.

We’re winding our way through the Rockies in British Columbia, and I put ‘writing’ in inverted comments because as a full time nomad, where time is of the essence, I mainly talk my articles into a cool app called Letterly.

Letterly then transcribes my garbled thoughts into Claude, which takes the thoughts and structures them into something resembling an article.

Once I land wherever we’re going, I can read through my post, edit where appropriate and Bob’s Your Uncle - here’s the result.

But this week I did something even more ambitious. I built a digital product while on the move.

I took a version of this article you’re reading now, (in other words my first draft which was way too long and way too tactical), and turned it into a saleable step by step guide which is now live and on sale on Gumroad.

All from a moving car!

Because that’s the beauty of the world we live in now. You don’t need a business, a website, a warehouse, or even a desk and a chair to start funding your freedom.

What you need is a few small assets, built once and put out into the world, and a growing audience of people you can genuinely help and add value to.

That’s exactly what I’m doing from this car seat. And by the end of this post, I’d like you to see that you could be doing it too.

I Struck Gold!

I still remember the first digital product I ever sold. (I went hunting for it on Dropbox the other day and unfortunately couldn’t find it, though I turned up plenty of others.)

It was a $7 PDF, explaining, with screenshots, how to create a landing page on Aweber - a process I’d watched somebody else do in a video. I wrote up what I’d learned, put a price on it, and made $28.

You’d have thought that I’d struck gold!

Don’t get me wrong, $28 wasn’t going to get me very far, but the realisation that people would pay me money over the internet for something I’d created myself was like rubbing Aladdin’s magic lamp!

I was beside myself!

Later the same year, I made a video course called ‘2000 Fans in 28 Days’ (I was teaching Facebook Fan Pages at the time), which went on to earn around $30,000.

A few months later I launched the Social Networking Academy and did $117k in 7 days (see my origin story below) and the rest as they say is history.

But the key takeaway here is that all of it started with a $7 guide about a landing page hack.

It’s Never Been Easier Than Right Now

When I started out in 2010, creating a digital product, hosting it and telling the world about it was infinitely harder than it is today.

There was no google docs, no YouTube embed, no Claude or ChatGPT, no Canva, no Substack.

I built my audience through forums, literally hand coded landing pages, and have absolutely no memory of how I delivered the PDF (but somehow I did!)

These days we have no such excuse. We can record a video on our phone and upload it in minutes, design a planner in Canva, publish a journal on Amazon, even sell physical products without touching a box thanks to print-on-demand.

Yes that means there’s more noise and competition, but it also means it’s easier than ever to try.

Just to give something a go to see if it’ll fly.

Which is exactly why I love digital products as brilliant little micro hustles. They’re light, flexible, easy to test, and once they’re made, they can keep working for you while you travel, rest, or drive through the Rockies in a car.

Why This Is Made For Us Oldies

Digital products tick every box for a freedom-seeker over 50.

They’re low effort, low cost and low risk, so if one flops you’ve lost a weekend, not your savings. They fit around your lifestyle (case in point I just made this one between Cache Creek, Kamloops & Chase!)

And once they’re made, (provided you tell people about them) they sell again and again, which is about as close to earning while you sleep as it gets.

But the main reason we should all be making digital products is that it’s a fantastic way to package what you already know.

You are a genius my friend, even if you don’t think so yourself.

Why?

Because you’ve spent decades solving problems, building systems, and gathering knowledge that other people would happily pay to shortcut.

• Perhaps you've spent years caring for dogs, and you know exactly how to settle a nervous rescue through its first fortnight at home.

• Maybe you've run the books for small businesses and could walk a panicking sole trader through their first tax return in an afternoon.

• You might have clawed your way out of serious debt and still remember every step that worked.

• Perhaps you've coaxed a glorious cutting garden out of a north-facing plot everyone said was hopeless.

• Maybe you've travelled solo in your fifties and sixties and know how to do it safely, cheaply, and gloriously.

If you’re not sure what to sell, remember, your ordinary is somebody else’s breakthrough.

How To Make A Digital Product

So how do you make one? Here’s how I’m doing it in the car right now, as we drive.

1. Pick a problem you’ve already solved for yourself - Budgeting, meal planning, downsizing, trip-planning, whatever you’ve cracked in your own life. Mine, for this product, is a single question: how do you build a digital product in a weekend? The solution is the guide I’m building right now.

2. Choose a light format - A printable, a mini guide, a checklist, a short recorded workshop. Nothing heavy.

3. Make it small and useful - One problem, one solution beats War and Peace every time.

4. Put it somewhere simple to sell - Gumroad, Payhip, Etsy, Amazon, or straight to your own readers.

5. Tell people it exists - Yes, I know, that’s the bit we all hate. But you have to get it out there and start promoting it, or what’s the point of creating it.

What’s Really Stopping You

Last week I asked my community the biggest obstacles that get in the way of reaching their goals.

The answers came thick and fast: uncertainty, distraction, rabbit holes, procrastination. Some said they didn’t know where to start.

And underneath it all sits the same thing: Fear.

That the idea’s wrong. That no one will buy. That you’ll put it out and hear nothing but crickets, and that the silence will prove you’re a failure, or that you don’t know as much as you think you do.

But that silence is rarely proof of any of that. In fact silence probably means you just haven’t built a big enough audience yet, people don’t quite trust you yet, or you’re not solving the right problem.

And that last one is the best of all. Because if a product only takes a weekend to make, why not get it live and find out?

Nothing on earth will teach you faster what problem needs solving than watching what people actually buy.

So make it, and put it out there. Even in the worst case, where not a single person buys, you’ve lost nothing.

• You’ll have proved you can make and finish a real product.

• You’ll have an asset you can give away as a free lead magnet to grow your email list.

• You’ll have something to welcome new subscribers with, or tuck into your paid tier as a perk.

• You’ll have learned a skill you can use again and again, a little faster each time.

• And you’ll have something real to show for the weekend, instead of another idea ageing in a notebook.

And the blunt truth is that your first product might not fly. Or your second. Plenty of mine haven’t.

The people who sell things aren’t the ones who got it perfect first time. They’re the ones who kept making stuff, learning & improving as they went, until something resonated.

So the only real way to lose is to make nothing at all.

Get it out. Let the world tell you what it thinks. The downside is one weekend. The upside is everything you learn, everything it can grow into, and the proof that you’re someone who makes things and puts them into the world.

Your First $28 Could Be One PDF Away

So here it is, broken down. My step-by-step guide to creating your own simple product this coming weekend.

I’ve just built mine from the car, somewhere between Hope, Cache Creek & Chase, dodging the wildfire smoke on the way out of Vancouver, and recording into my phone as the road wound on.

I've just uploaded it to Gumroad, and it's live right now.

Here’s what’s inside:

• How to find the one idea your audience will likely pay for, and how to check before you build a thing

• The exact AI prompts I use to draft it fast, in your own voice

• How to design and package it so it looks like someone was paid to make it (even if that someone is you, on a free Canva plan)

• Where to sell it, what each platform costs, and how to set it up in an afternoon

• How to write a sales page that does the selling for you

• And how to promote it for two months without feeling like a used-car salesman

If you want it, you can grab it right now for a measly $7. That low price is completely deliberate, and it's exactly what I teach inside: start small, gather your first reviews, then put the price up. You're watching the method work in real time. In a couple of weeks it goes to $17.

Get 'The Weekend Product' Here

Or, if you’re a paid subscriber, it’s already waiting for you in the Backpack, free, along with everything else I make.

And if you’re not a paid subscriber yet, come and join us today. You get everything in the Backpack, including this guide and every other PDF in there, because I’m doubling down on micro hustles, my friends. I’ll be adding a whole run of them for paid subscribers, all living in the Backpack. So come and grab it.

Start a 7 Day Free Trial

Either way, please don’t let this be another idea you nod along to and leave on the shelf. Open Canva, sketch something out, make the small thing, put a price on it, and let the world teach you the rest.

Mine was just $7, and I still think about that afternoon, sixteen years on.

Your first one is waiting.

Adventure never retires.

Jo 😊

Fellow Substacker and I only met a few weeks go on the platform. A few notes were shared, some similar viewpoints exchanged, and next thing you know we’re arranging to catch up for coffee as we both pass by Victoria, on Vancouver Island! 🇨🇦

While there, we decided to jump on an impromptu live, and chatted about why Substack feels different to other social platforms, meeting online friends in real life, and Meredith’s brave plan to restore a 74-foot yacht before recreating its original voyage from California to Hawaii.

Have a listen, see just how easy it is to start your own Substack Live, and if Meredith’s boat project sounds as exciting to you as it does to me, make sure you give her a follow and join her on the adventure.

Chris & her husband Steve have been on the road full time for 5 and a half years, so as a full time ‘newbie’, I was keen to hear about her lifestyle, how they manage their relationship and all her tips and tricks!

If you’ve ever wondered what life as a full-time nomad after 50, is really like, this conversation is for you.

We chat about everything from house sitting and hiking to budgeting, relationships on the road, building community, and why travel might just be one of the best ways to stay young.

As a published author, YouTuber and creator behind Eat Walk Learn, we also chat about her books, building a community on the road, growing a travel brand, and how creating content fits into her nomadic lifestyle.

Also…

🎁 Stay until the end to find out how you can win our Ultimate Adventure Bundle!

(Scroll to the bottom of these show notes to discover how to enter and answer the competition question for your chance to win.)

What You’ll Learn

• Why house sitting can save thousands of dollars every year

• The biggest mistakes new house sitters make

• Slow travel vs fast travel (and why there’s no right answer)

• Why walking is one of the best ways to experience a destination

• How long-term travel changes your mindset

• Budgeting realistically for a nomadic lifestyle

• How Chris and Steve travel full-time without a permanent home

• Building friendships and community while travelling

• Keeping a relationship strong while living together 24/7

• Why writing books and sharing your journey can become part of the adventure

Time Stamps

00:00 Welcome + introducing Chris Englert

03:00 House sitting: the reality, the benefits and the challenges

10:45 How Chris became a full-time nomad

17:00 Why walking changes the way you experience a destination

27:00 Slow travel vs fast travel

33:30 Budgeting for life on the road

36:00 Chris’s books and writing journey

44:00 Building community as a nomad

52:00 Travelling full-time as a couple

56:45 Chris’s Substack, YouTube and resources

58:30 Ultimate Adventure Bundle giveaway

Resources Mentioned

Chris Englert

• Eat Walk Learn

• Two Carry-Ons and a Plan

• The Nomad Life

• Wanderlust Wisdom

• Kindling (serial novel on Substack)

• YouTube Channel

• Facebook Group

Jo Barnes

• The 50+ Nomad

• This Big Travel Challenge Cards

🎁 WIN THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE BUNDLE

One lucky winner will receive:

📚 Chris Englert’s complete Nomad book collection

• Two Carry-Ons and a Plan

• Nomad Life

• Wanderlust Wisdom

PLUS

🌍 Jo Barnes’ This Big Travel Challenge scratch-off travel cards.

Everything you need for your next adventure.

To Enter

Listen to the interview, particularly towards the end where we talk about how to enter, and then answer this question in the comments below:

Aside from money, what’s the biggest thing stopping you from creating your own freedom or nomadic lifestyle?

Bonus points if you also include your biggest takeaway from the interview with Chris!

We’ll read every entry and choose one winner at random.

Competition closes: 8 August

The winner will be selected by Chris and Jo and contacted shortly afterwards.

(Prize can only be shipped to a US mailing address.)

Answer below for a chance of winning this amazing bundle!

I didn’t suffer from empty nest syndrome when my daughter went off to college.

Mainly because we didn’t really have a nest. We’d left our house in Phuket, Thailand back in 2024 after she’d graduated, did a stint in Brisbane, and then stayed in London over the 25/26 Christmas period while she got settled.

When we left in February to pursue our nomadic dreams, Cerys (my daughter) was fully ensconced in her life as a college student, and I was biting my nails wrapped up in my apprehension of backpacking through South America.

I didn’t have time to miss her.

Until…

Then, she holidayed with us for 4 weeks in Vegas & Cabo & flew home 3 weeks ago as we made our way to Canada.

A new country, a new city to explore, I should have been beside myself with excitement.

But I wasn’t. I was sad.

I wasn’t sure what was wrong with me through the first week. I just kept waking up feeling a bit low and teary.

I thought maybe it was because we’d left the sun, sea, sand & margaritas behind in Cabo (probably a bit of that 😉), but then I realised, I was finally suffering from empty nest syndrome. With no nest!

Over the month she’d stayed with us I’d had a glimpse of our little family unit back together again, until suddenly it wasn’t.

She went her way, we went ours, and it’s hit me that she probably won’t ever live with us again.

It’s a blessing and a curse of course. I no longer have to do her washing, pay for her ridiculously expensive Vanilla Iced Lattes, or go hunting for my brush or shampoo because she’s nabbed them. 🙄

But I also miss us singing at the tops of our lungs in the car, weekly cinema visits to see whatever’s on (we’d literally go & see anything), & girly duvet days.

A Dog to Keep Me Company

But I had the lovely Bailey to keep me company while here, who licked the tears off my face a couple of times, along with eating my bottle of antihistamines, a chunk of cheese I left on the side, half of Rhett’s bolognaise, & most of my sausage roll this morning when my back was turned. 😂

Nothing like a food crazed dog to lighten the mood!

As I write this we’re leaving the city of Vancouver on a ferry headed to Victoria.

Despite feeling a touch sad, we’ve had a great time exploring the area.

Rhett and I did a gorgeous walk around Stanley Park, with beautiful views across the water. We even spotted a few seals.

We had a great day out at Granville Island, and came away from the market with some maple syrup sausages, and a pot of vegemite! (Purchase of the trip 😂)

We also caught the little boat around to Kitsilano Beach and ate fish and chips overlooking the ocean.

Then yesterday we took a few cold ones over to the Shipyards & enjoyed an afternoon of sunshine & live music, with perfect views of Canada Place & downtown Vancouver.

Plus we had a whole week of sunshine and at one point it hit 28°. (Though the breeze is still a bit chilly so the hoodie is always to hand!)

Then yesterday I did my first ever solo Substack live, talking about getting over the fear of jumping on camera or hitting publish on your writing, (and to demonstrate I procrastinated for 3 hours before I hit ‘Go Live’) but it was great fun.

Check it out here:

More to come!

So that’s been Vancouver!

By the time you read this my good friend Ed who I’ve never met in person will have toured us around Victoria for the day and I can’t wait to meet him.

Ed is a park runner and posted a motivational message while running for 1214 days consecutively, on his Instagram channel before having to break his streak due to an eye operation.

He’s the living proof of consistently showing up, which is what my solo live was about yesterday - but that’s not why I’m buying him dinner.

Back in 2021/2022 when my Mum was super poorly, we discovered she had COPD. (60 years of smoking will do that to you.)

Ed was on the end of the phone whenever I needed him. He knew what to expect, what to ask the doctors, and how to interpret what they said. And mum was so much more comfortable at the end because of his advice.

That’s something I’ll be forever grateful for. So to finally meet him in person & give him a huge hug has been a long time coming! ❤️

Why Connection Is the Name of My Game Now

And that’s what I love about the connected world we live in today.

You can build a friendship that starts with a comment or a message and ends with you flying across a continent to give someone a hug you’ve owed them for years.

You can stay in touch with family as if they’re in the same room, and never really mourn the nest you don’t have. Cerys and I might not be under the same roof anymore, but we’re only ever a video chat away, and our talks are just as daft as they’ve ever been.

And you can jump on a live video call, talk with like-minded people, answer questions, and get to know a whole new set of future friends. And I’ll be doing plenty more of them, because every single one means I get to meet a few more of you.

If there’s one thing these past few weeks have highlighted to me, it’s this. You can leave home, lose the nest altogether, and travel to the far side of the planet, and still end up more connected to the people who matter than you’ve ever been.

That’s the gift of this crazy online nomadic life, and I wouldn’t swap it for anything.

More from the island next week.

Jo (on the very windy ferry on route to Victoria) 😊

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Offer ends tomorrow morning!

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After telling others to just ‘start showing up’, I finally took my own advice yesterday and did my first-ever solo live.

I didn’t send an email, warn anyone, or promo it before I started. I put my lippy on at 9am all ready to go, then spent the next three hours doing every other job on my laptop to avoid it, and eventually just pressed “live” and started before I could talk myself out of it! (Which I did the day before 🤭)

This one’s about why we freeze before we feel “ready”, and why “ready” is just a story we tell ourselves that stops us starting.

In this live:

• Why the thing holding you back isn’t fear of failing, it’s a craving for certainty that never actually turns up

• The absolutely mad stats on how much content floods the internet every single minute! And why they’re the most freeing thing you’ll hear all week (spoiler: nobody’s watching your early stuff)

• Simon Squibb’s first Instagram videos vs. the ones he makes now. I scrolled all the way back to the beginning because I’m a bit of a nerd, but it was worth it!

• “Get it done, then get it right”. The line from my old mentor Jason Fladlien I keep coming back to

• Why you can’t know what your audience actually wants until you show up and let them tell you

Takeaway quote:

Over to you:

What’s the one thing you’ve been sitting on waiting until you feel ready?

The half-written post, the note, the video.

Tell me in the comments. Then go and publish the imperfect version this week. I did mine. Your turn. 👇

I started my first online business in 2010.

Some friends of ours were living in Cyprus making a living from their lovely apartment through something called ‘internet marketing’.

Being the ‘nosy’ action takers we were, we quickly booked a holiday, picked their brains, devoured Tim Ferris’s 4 Hour Workweek book (on their recommendation) & volunteered to house sit for them when they went galavanting off around Europe!

(We don’t do things by halves! 😂)

16 years on, I’ve built and exited multiple businesses, scaled an Amazon brand to seven figures (and trying to do the same again now), lived in multiple countries, raised a daughter in Phuket, Thailand, and watched the online business world transform from a few of us figuring it out in spare bedrooms (or balconies in Cyprus), to the industry it is today.

Along the way, I’ve made every mistake going and then some.

So I thought I’d share some of the biggest lessons I wish I’d known before I started, in the hope some of them save you a few of the years I lost learning them the hard way.

Unfortunately reading the list doesn’t replace doing the work, but it might shorten the curve a bit.

Let’s go.

1. There Is No Magic Button

I spent thousands in my first year on courses and programmes that promised quick results.

Webinars where someone told me that something worth $25,000 was mine for $97, today only, payment plan available. (Remember them?)

Magic-button systems where you just followed the formula and magically the money appeared. 💸

None of them worked. (Of course not!!!)

And it wasn’t because the people teaching them were inherently dishonest (though some were), but because there is no formula that bypasses rolling your sleeves up and doing the actual work.

What became my biggest money making secret was in fact a repeatable, boring system.

• Building my own audience.

• Showing up.

• Writing, recording, posting, replying, being visible.

It took time, focus, and repeatedly doing things outside my comfort zone.

There’s no shortcut around that, unless you have huge ad budgets. Even then you still have to put the work in to grow the trust.

Anyone selling you a shortcut, is usually teaching a course about shortcuts.

The work is the work and nothing replaces it.

(Incidently, it’s exactly the same today. Show up, write, publish, help people, grow your audience. That’s still the closest thing I’ve found to a magic formula.)

2. Let People Get To Know You

When I first got going, my main platform was Facebook. I did webinars, posted videos, chatted on forums, and was pretty much in people’s faces daily.

But I was also 16 years younger, had masses of energy & had no fear of jumping on camera.

These days I don’t want to be on social media 24/7, and I don’t have the same energy for video that I had 16 years ago.

But the good news is, nowadays you can record podcasts, or do faceless reels, or connect through writing.

The medium is less important than the message.

Tell stories, and let readers see who you are. Mention the dog, the husband, the bad day, your dodgy knees. People don’t subscribe to ideas, they subscribe to people.

Whatever format you choose, the principle is the same: trust builds when people feel like they actually know you.

Find the way that works for you, and lean into it.

3. Collaboration Compounds Faster Than Going It Alone

In my early Facebook days I ran an interview series called Money and Marketing, where I sat down with other creators and entrepreneurs and chatted all things online business.

The series itself did fine. But what it really did was open doors.

I started doing joint ventures. Other people promoted me to their audiences. I promoted them to mine. My list grew faster in the months I was actively collaborating than in any of the months I was working alone.

One day, a fellow business owner (love you Steve), mentioned me from the stage at an event I wasn’t at. The audience apparently gave a round of applause for me, even though I wasn’t in the room. The collaboration had carried me there in my absence.

It’s impossible for us to reach every opportunity on our own. But the people we've helped and connected with can open doors long before we arrive.

Here’s how to ‘build the well before you’re thirsty’ (as Jordan Harbinger says):

• Restack or share other people’s work.

• Reply thoughtfully to their notes.

• Send the email that says I loved this.

• Suggest joint posts, lives or interviews.

• Offer to be useful before you ask for anything.

• Build real relationships, not transactional ones.

To be honest, this is something I’ve just started to do more consciously myself. It’s so easy to slip into doing everything alone, but it’s lonely and you won’t grow as fast.

Plus collabs can lead to the best friendships!

4. You Don’t Have To Build It Yourself

About a year into my first business, I made an extremely expensive mistake.

I’d built a simple piece of software for Facebook fan pages which I’d paid about $100 to a developer to create.

I gave it away free, (anyone remember ‘Free Fan Page Templates - you know who you are oldie! 😂) and it helped me grow a huge email list. Brilliant first move.

Then I decided I should turn it into a paid product. I spent thousands working with developers across multiple time zones. The result was buggy, slow, and not as good as what bigger competitors were already making with bigger budgets.

Meanwhile, one clever bloke had taken someone else’s superior software (that did what I was trying to build), put his branding on it, and was outselling everyone without writing a line of code.

He’d worked out something I hadn’t.

You don’t have to build everything from scratch.

If someone else has already created something brilliant, you can often partner with them, license their software, recommend their work, or sell it as their affiliate and earn a commission.

You can run a course around someone else’s tool, teach a method built around an existing product, and be the person who explains, recommends, or pairs with what already exists.

I was so focused on making my own thing that I missed the option to collaborate on something that already worked. That mistake cost me a lot of time and a lot of money I didn’t need to spend.

5. Don’t Keep Restarting

This has cost me more years, more money & more stress than I care to admit.

For 16 years, my underlying message has been roughly the same: build a business you can run from anywhere in the world.

Travel & Business. Pretty clear.

That’s what I was teaching in 2010 from a balcony in Cyprus, and it’s what I’m writing about now from a cafe in Vancouver.

The thread hasn’t changed. What I kept changing was the wrapper.

I started with Free Fan Page Templates. Then I became the Social Networking Academy. Then Sell With A Smile, Online Marketing Addicts, Your Lifestyle Business, The Working Traveller & then I looked up recently and realised I was doing exactly the same thing with The 50+ Nomad.

My newsletter is The 50+ Nomad, so surely my socials, my branding, everything must be The 50+ Nomad too?

And that’s when it dawned on me that for years I’ve been making the model I’ve been running at the time, my whole brand.

I was building an app, so I called it Free Fan Page Templates. I built a membership site, so I became the Social Networking Academy. I started blogs, so I was Your Lifestyle Business, then The Working Traveller. I launched a Substack, so I became The 50+ Nomad. Every time the model changed, the brand had to change with it.

No wonder I felt like each one boxed me into a corner.

If I could go back, I’d call myself Jo Barnes from day one, build everything under that name, and let the projects come and go underneath the same umbrella.

The lesson: if you’re building a personal brand, brand the products and keep the umbrella as you.

Your name is broad enough to carry every model you’ll ever run and everything you’ll still be doing in 20 years.

If you’re building a company around a product, that’s a different discussion. Virgin Atlantic was never going to be called Richard Branson.

But if the plan is you at the top, with digital products, a newsletter, books and whatever else underneath, then the umbrella is better off being broad, and there’s nothing more flexible than just naming it you!

6. Your Audience Is Your Greatest Asset

Luckily, this is one lesson I learned early.

When I started online in 2010 I joined a forum of people all on a similar journey of building a business online.

As I was deep in learning mode I naturally showed up, asked questions, learned new things, shared what I was learning, built a lead magnet and started growing my audience.

I was posting on Facebook every day, running webinars, interviewing other entrepreneurs and helping anyone who came my way.

That audience became the foundation of my first six-figure launch and the businesses that followed.

Here’s why that model still works today:

• Platforms come and go.

• Business models evolve.

• Markets change.

But an audience of people who know, like and trust you is an asset you can build on for years.

As a creator you need to spend less time worrying about logos, websites and finding the perfect niche, and more time consistently creating content that helps people.

Whether you eventually sell books, guides, courses, coaching, physical products or something you haven’t even thought of yet, your audience is what gives every new idea its best chance of succeeding.

If there’s one thread running through almost everything I’ve written in this article, it’s this:

Build your audience.

Everything else becomes easier when you’ve got people waiting to hear what you create next.

7. Outsource Where You’re The Bottleneck (But Only When You Can Afford To)

Don’t mistake the word solopreneur for having to do everything solo.

The beauty of building a business today is that you don’t need employees to get help. No payroll, no holiday pay, no pension contributions, no long-term commitment.

You can hire contractors from Upwork, Fiverr or OnlineJobs for a single project, a few hours a week, or a short stint while you get something over the line.

So when should you? When you’re the bottleneck.

Where you personally are holding up the work: because the task takes you longer, drains your energy, you don’t know how to do the thing, or stops you focusing on what you should be doing.

Maybe you’ve spent three weeks trying to design your own book cover, format your guide in Canva, build your website, edit your YouTube videos, or figure out why your email signup isn’t working.

If your business has stalled and you know exactly which job is causing it, do yourself a favour and hire someone to do that job.

For me in the early years, it was tech. Right now, with my ecom brand - This Big World - it’s creator outreach & Amazon PPC. It’s such a new business I can’t really afford to outsource, but I also realised I couldn’t afford not to, I was the bottleneck and the business was growing too slowly.

And yes, when you’re bootstrapping, money is tight. But do the maths: what could you achieve if someone came in and finished the project you’ve been stalling on for three months, versus the cost of it staying stalled?

Every month a project sits unfinished is another month it isn't earning you money. That has a cost too.

Just Start

Looking back over these lessons, there are dozens more I could have added.

Some I’ve forgotten. Some I’m probably still learning. And there are lessons waiting for me around corners I haven’t reached yet.

That’s the funny thing about building a business. You never really finish learning.

You can read posts like this one, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos and take courses, and I genuinely hope you do because they can save you years of frustration. But they can never replace experience.

At some point you have to press publish, launch the product, make the offer, spend the money, get it wrong, adjust, and do it again.

That’s how every business is built.

So don’t wait until you think you know enough, because you never will. (I still don’t after 16 years!)

Start before you feel ready, learn the lessons as they arrive, and keep moving forward.

If this article helps you avoid one or two of the mistakes that cost me years and thousands of pounds, then it’s done its job.

The rest of the lessons are waiting for you to discover for yourself.

Have fun!

Jo 😎