TRAVELING ALONE AFTER 50 OR WITH FRIENDS? Safe vs Not Safe

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. Dreaming about traveling but find that your friends or your partner is not? Traveling alone after 50 is an option. I do it all the time for conferences, but it may give you pause for concern. How can we step up our our game and really get the adventure and the bucket list life that we want. If you haven't tried eating dinner out alone without having an intimate conversation with your phone, this is for you. I challenge you and me to take the trip we want. Traveling alone is not just a destination trip. It's very possibly a destination to yourself. How liberating would that be? Stay tuned to the end for this one because I've got a question for you. Let's wrap this up and challenge each other. And don't miss this because my guest today has an accent. You know what that means. My guest Peter Mangan is a visionary leader in the positive aging sphere, bringing a wealth of experience on fostering meaningful connections with older adults and igniting their passion for travel. Inspired by his father, Peter's journey highlights the transformative power of travel for individuals in their golden years. As the founder of Freebird Club, an emerging social and travel community for people over 50, He's created a vibrant platform where members can connect, share travel tips, arrange meetups, and book affordable homestays with other members. Peter is redefining the way older adults experience travel and community, making a significant impact on their lives. Okay, and here's a shameless plug he didn't ask me to do. You will hear at the end of this how you can get started in Freebird, but I will tell you right now, it is dirt cheap. It is your choice, and even if you choose the highest end of the range that you can do right now, it is still dirt cheap. I would get in right now if you're at all interested, and I'll see you inside. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. And it's not just about you, but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology and industry subject matter expert expert and an international speaker to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve. Peter, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks a million, Debra. It's a great opportunity and I'm delighted to talk to you today.

And all my listeners know me well enough to know I should also thank you for having an accent because I'm a sucker. So you had me at hello. This is actually a true thing with me. The thing we really have to know first and foremost is we like to know the dirt behind the scenes here. Share a little bit about yourself, your personal journey, how you landed here, you know, with travel and creating travel communities for, for people over 50. You know, I would assume that if, if in Ireland they do career days when you were in elementary school, this may not have been what you signed up for.

Yeah, that's a fair point. I guess it was a bit of a circuitous journey to get to the point of Freebird Club, but I'll try and be brief. So my own background, I did business in college and I started my career in the banking world for a little while. I realized pretty quickly I didn't really want to be a banker. And then I flipped over to the music sector, but music development. So kind of working with the National Music Development Organization in Ireland. It's like music in education, music in healthcare, the more developmental side of it and resourcing manager there for a few years and loved it because I 'cause I come from a musical background myself. And after a few years in that, I actually worked, got a job, a very interesting job in my old university. There was a new biomedical research institute that was just announced and funding was announced for it. And I feel like it was a startup within the university. And I was business and finance manager there for a few years, which was very interesting. Obviously, anything to do with medical research and advancing therapeutics, et cetera, for the benefit of mankind, I suppose, is going to grab your attention and hold your interest, even if I was on the kind of more management side. And over the course of the next almost 15 years, I actually had a few jobs in the university and finished up in the area of research and innovation, was senior manager for research and innovation at the university. So I was kind of familiar with the spin-out world, you know, academic spin-outs and startups on the campus and that kind of thing. And I didn't really have any particular yearning to be a startup founder. But I was intrigued by the entrepreneurial possibilities. Somewhere deep down, I probably knew that if the right idea came along, I might take a leap into the entrepreneurial world myself. And so it did, in a nutshell. And this brings me back to, I suppose, the genesis of Freebird Club. I built a house in the southwest of Ireland in County Kerry, where I grew up. And while I was away working in Dublin, this was on a bit of land my dad gave me. The family roots are very much down there. And so I started renting out the house on Airbnb and some other sites. And so I discovered that world. And as I say, I was in Dublin most of the time, but my dad, who was mostly retired at this stage after a busy life as a veterinary surgeon and a widower and living alone, he was the person who was actually doing most of the meeting and greeting of guests while I was away. And he liked this generally, you know, meeting new people in this way. But over the course of a number of months, that first year, a number of older adult guests came to stay, people of a similar vintage to himself, perhaps. He was in his early 70s, but people maybe in their 60s, retirees. And all of a sudden, the social interaction just went to a whole other level. He was taking them out on local sightseeing trips, bringing them to the local pub for trad music sessions and dinners and games of golf. And this stuff was happening organically, and he was loving it. He was getting a great— it was a great new social outlet for him. He was meeting new people, making friends, and it put a spring in his step because he was maybe not exactly thriving in his early 70s. He'd, I might put it as he was kind of losing his mojo a little bit, you know, cuz he had been very connected through his work and through the local community. And it just, I suppose his world got a little bit smaller when he was at this stage in his life. And so this was really positive for him. He was loving it. And on the other side, I was getting amazing reviews from these older adult guests who are highlighting this interaction with my dad as a local as the best part of their trips. And I thought, you know what? Here that isn't, it's not the Airbnb model. Yes, it's kind of hidden within the Airbnb kind of model, but it struck me that if you could focus in on this niche and build something bespoke for older adults where you're taking a bit of Airbnb and you're taking a bit of a, maybe an online companionship site and you're matching people with similar interests around homestays, travel and homestays, you could do something really amazing in the positive aging space because the problem at the background, I suppose we're ideally hoping to address is loneliness and isolation. A lot of older people do find themselves alone. Could be through bereavement or divorce or whatever it might be, or just retiring. The world does shrink for you. And yet we know that travel is in fact the leading aspiration of older adults in retirement. But for many, it's maybe beyond reach because they don't have anyone to go with, or they may lack the confidence to go on their own. A lot of us travel on our own. I've done a lot. But when you're a bit older, the idea of, you know, going out eating on your own and maybe finding yourself a little bit isolated on your travels is not exactly something that, you know, that many people— might be something that would put them off. We know that. And so what Freebird Club was designed to do was create this social travel club where members could travel and stay with each other through the homestay model. And they could be guests or they could be hosts. And but the whole point of it was not really the accommodation. It's about the social interaction that would happen. And that brought me to, yeah, leaving my university job in late 2016 and setting out to launch Freebird Club as a startup and undertake all the challenges that came with that, which were many, by the way. I can bring you up to date. There was a few years there pre-pandemic, and then the pandemic, which made us the worst idea overnight. Older people traveling and staying in each other's homes for the purposes of social interaction was anathema once the pandemic came along. So that was something we had to we had to address. And there was a lot of resilience required to carry through and get to the other side of the pandemic, which we have done. And with a slightly different model of Freebird Club as well, which I'm happy to talk about, but that's basically the background story to me and Freebird Club and how it came to be.

Very cool. Okay. So now explain to me if I were someone who, who wanted to join Freebird, Am I understanding correctly that I would then be traveling with other people who had maybe a common denominator for where we wanted to go? Or am I seeing it differently, maybe through the wrong lens?

The latter, but you're partially right because what you just described is something we want to add into the model of Freebird Club. So Freebird Club right now We'd call it version 2.0, which is the version post-pandemic where we went beyond the pure homestay model. It basically allows members to interact in a variety of ways beyond just booking homestays with each other. And essentially there's 3 main ways, and it's fundamentally about connecting travelers with locals. So the idea being that, you know, we have this community of like-minded, travel-minded over-50s and Anyone who's interested in taking a trip can reach out to another member located in that destination they might be interested in visiting for, in the early stages, local tips, advice, and insights when they're planning a trip. The kind of information that empowers you to maybe get up off the couch and book the trip or take the trip. But that might be quite local. It doesn't have to be an international trip.

Yeah.

So that kind of engagement happening online first, I suppose. But most of what Freebird's trying to do is, is in real life, you know, people actually taking trips and meeting up in real life. And so the second kind of use case is for the traveler to connect with locals and arrange meetups if and when they take the trip. And that could be meeting somebody for coffee. It could be based on shared interests because every Freebird has a profile describing themselves and their interests. And they might meet up to do something local in that area. Together, or indeed that the local in that equation may be willing to take them around as a de facto tour guide. But it, you know, so anywhere in that spectrum, but the idea of in-person meetups, travelers connecting with locals, because again, it's that idea of, well, I can leave my home alone, solo. If, if there are local members in this destination, I can arrange meetups because the idea of the club, the ethos of the club is, you know, it's about giving as well as receiving. It's not just getting information and getting people to show you around or spend time with you. You know, the, the, the average Freebird is expected and is voluntarily open to being the local if anybody's interested in visiting their area. And then the third bit is the homestay element. That's still in the model where members can open their homes and receive others or book a stay in the host home as well. So the accommodation bit is covered, but it's no longer the epicenter of Freebird Club. And if I would say in a nutshell, it's the variety of ways in which travelers can connect with locals. But what you described initially is another element that we're looking to bring in where travelers can connect with other potential travelers and find travel buddies and maybe go and take that adventure together.

Very cool.

That's only something we're beginning to open up the feature within the model.

Okay. So talk to me about how widespread you are, how many countries, or how would you quantify what, what you've got? And, and if there was one one place I wanted to go. I mean, what are the chances that on a beach in the Bahamas, you've got somebody who can tell me where to stay, where not to stay?

Yeah. Well, first of all, just to say, although there is a history to Freebird Club, we did post-pandemic kind of rebuild from first principles with this kind of new expanded model. And so we're only live about a year as having gone through the renewed start over. Phase of being a startup. And so we have now, we have about 16,000 people who have created accounts on Freebird Club. There's an element of becoming a freebird where you go through the process of setting up, of creating a profile about yourself, adding your ID because we need to verify IDs as part of the trust and security measures and, you know, going all the way through such that you can, you're then a verified member and you can connect with others one-to-one, engage in homestays and all of that. So we've about 15,000, 16,000 people who have created accounts. About 1,200 at the moment are fully approved and are engaging in the kind of one-to-one connections. And so right now they are in 35 countries. We have full approved members in 35 countries. I guess it's growing. It's growing. We're beginning to see a nice momentum now in terms of the number of new members joining every month, but it's very early days. I don't know what the magic number is, but we need a certain density in probably those 35 countries such that you can start thinking, you know, about aspirational places you'd like to visit and have a selection of people to choose from. We're pretty confident we'll get there. Right now, it's kind of certain, certain countries like the UK, Ireland, Portugal, certain states in the US, we have fairly good representation. So the seeds are sown. But, you know, we're hoping for Freebird Club to get to a stage in a few years where, you know, there's a million-plus freebirds out there, you know, connecting, traveling, meeting up, hosting each other around the world. That's the idea with the club ultimately.

So question on, are people also not just sharing insider tips on areas where they live and reside and know, but are they also sharing experiences about their travel and places they've been and pros and cons or good, bad?

Yes, absolutely. And in fact, the latest thing we've done with the website what I described to you there, you know, travelers connecting with locals for the 3 use cases, we'll say tips, advice, recommendations, meetups, and homestays. That's kind of the Route 1, if you like, of Freebird Club. But we have now built in a community, collective community space within the platform, which is like a social network. And within, within that, people are actually sharing their travel photos. There is a travel tips and advice section in there where people are asking the group, if you like, for tips and advice about places they're interested in visiting. So it may not even be the locals, might be people who have been been there already will pitch in and give their thoughts or advice on the destination. So we are, yeah, it's kind of expanding in that way in terms of getting the group discussions going. And so there's a collective exchange beyond just the one-to-one that I described earlier of a traveler, you know, connecting with a like-minded local, which we think is, you know, is like, we want to get these one-to-one connections going because that's what probably results in, you know, actual meetings taking place and obviously homestay bookings happening, which is where somebody stays with somebody else. That's a, there's a, there's a real social interaction obviously built into that. And we think that's, you know, that, that's really important. But the idea of people maybe sharing collectively is a nice opener to getting to know the community, getting comfortable, really getting to feel like this is their, you know, this is their tribe, if you like. These are like-minded people and getting comfortable in then maybe taking the next step, which is you start planning that trip and then reach out and find the individuals who may be in that particular area who can empower you and inform you in various ways.

So are there, do you have any specific stories that come to mind just maybe from the early days or it's just something very heartwarming that came out of it?

Yeah. So there was one older gentleman that came from London. He was an Irish man living in London for many, many years. And he came to my part of the world, County Kerry, and he stayed with a local man there. Both now were, well, I know the man from London was 80, if not 81 at the time, and his host and his wife. So it was a couple who were hosting him. And, you know, it turns out that they knew the same people going back like 60 years to this town that the man who was in London, we call him the man who had left his hometown and spent most of his life in London. They ended up knowing the same people and had stories that were, you know, 60, 70 years old and retreading old ground that was just coincidental. But it's, you know, just really, they hit it off so well and it just brought up some fantastic anecdotes and stories from a very youthful time in their lives that they didn't know each other, but they knew the same people. And it was, it was lovely to see that. And you know, another, there's another story. We get feedback from, from guests, particularly those who are partaking in homestays. And there was a lady from the UK again who stayed with another lady in the Midlands in Ireland. And you know, they went off, they had similar taste in music. And so they went off to, to see local concerts and they just engaged in local activities together in a way that went well beyond, you know, your standard homestay guest. They became friends and by virtue of their similar interests were really able to enjoy the local area in a way that, that that was very immersive. And, you know, as I say, going to local events together, which is really, you know, what Freebird is all about. It's about people doing things together. It's not just the accommodation side. So yeah, and I suppose the other side of it, we do know that people are getting some really good local insights when they're planning trips and exchanging kind of the information that you don't get in guidebooks, which is great and to be expected really, because the people who have the best knowledge and the best insight about a local area are probably the people who've lived there the longest, which tend to be the older people. So not that 50 is old, by the way, I keep saying older adults, but let's just say in the 50+ bracket, I would say that the predominant, predominant age or the average age of freebirds is probably in the 60s at the moment. So it's people probably just pre or post retirement. We have people certainly in the early 50s and we have people up as, you know, in their early 80s, but The 60s seems to be where we're attracting most of the early birds anyway at the moment.

Love that. Hey, it's Debra. Can you think of one person who would benefit from this episode? Will you pause right now and share it? Send it directly to an individual or share it to your social media. This is how we you and I get a movement going and surround ourselves with women who are doing and thinking exactly what we want to do and think. The greatest work we have to do is in believing that it's possible, believing what it can look like now, in 10 years, in 20 years, and beyond. We are the first generation that collectively will strength train our entire lives, and that can change the way we all age. When you surround yourself with other women who are creating strong futures, we all win. What tips do you have for somebody who is, in particular, a female? So I think maybe women might feel a little bit more vulnerable, and yet I don't want to be stereotypical, but in my experience through growing up, my adulthood, it always seems to be for me, the woman who has the wanderlust, who really has a, you know, a travel bug. And sometimes her partner is more, he's easily happy at home and less likely to want to travel. And I think this comes up frequently among friends and among relatives. That when you're in that moment where you have the ability, the physical ability and the desire to travel, you don't always have the willing partner. And maybe sometimes the partner is gone, but suggestions or tips for a woman who wonders, is it safe to travel and to travel alone, or what would make it so?

Yeah, well, I think you, you're absolutely right what you described there. And we've seen already that 75% plus of the Freebird members right now are women. In fact, I'd say it's closer to 80%, in fact. And it is that, I don't know, is it that women are more open to, I don't know what it is, it's just desire to travel or they're more open to just new life experiences when they retire, when they reach a certain age. But, you know, seeing the profiles of the women who are joining particularly, they're Yeah, they're just very open and they're not, they're looking for new travel experiences, meeting new people and just embracing, I suppose, later life in a way that certainly what we've seen, uh, men are less likely to do. Now, maybe this is just the early stage of Freebird Club, but definitely the main persona of a freebird that we're seeing is a woman in her 60s, most likely, maybe divorced, maybe a widow. Or maybe just, you know, on her own one way or another, and is looking for like-minded people, mostly women, to help them in that. So there's power in the peer group. And that's what we're seeing there. Really, they're trying, they're looking for a little bit of support and encouragement from others who have done it, perhaps who have taken the solo trips. And a lot of women have done that. There's been a lot of articles I've read lately that kind of suggest there's a bit of a boom in over-50s solo traveling women. And a lot of them, I suppose, are, they're not really entirely solo because they're meeting up either through Facebook groups or they're meeting up through the likes of Freebird Club and finding each other on the road. I think, you know, that's, and that's what makes it so much easier. I think when you know that there's other people doing this, you can get encouragement from them. You can get support. You can get kind of advice that makes it possible, but you're absolutely right as well. There is a cohort of women that we have seen join quite recently. Who are joining as part of a couple, but they're, and they're identifying themselves as the traveler within the couple and that their husband or their partner doesn't really want to travel as much as they do, but they don't want that to hold them back. And this is an important part as well, actually. We have, from feedback from women in, in the club, put in place the ability to limit who contacts you. So some women, for example, who would remember now this traveler connecting with a local, but everybody's a local in their own home. Town, if you know what I mean.

Right.

So by being contactable as a local in your home area, you have the capacity to say, I only want to be contacted by women only. Or most people say either or, you know, they're gender neutral on it. But if some women feel uncomfortable with that, they can actually indicate very clearly on their profile, only want to be contacted by women. And so that's just something that I don't think it's, it's probably representative of a little bit of nervousness or sure. Whatever, about the prospect of traveling as a solo woman or even being open to meeting other travelers in your own local area as a solo woman. But I think, you know, there's definitely a real willingness and a real enthusiasm, I think, towards travel among women in that demographic that I think the men have yet to catch up on, if I'm honest. I'm hoping Freebird Club will be a call to action for many men, but My dad, for example, now he was a good traveler in his earlier years, but in more recent years, it was the local side of it he loved. He loved to show people around his local area and, you know, the cultural exchange. He loved all of that, but the travel part, less so when he hit a certain age, you know. So anyway, I don't know. I don't know if there's a gender breakdown there, but definitely there's a lot of demand on the travel side from women.

Do you, and I'm putting you on the spot here, are there any statistics statistics about, you know, what travel does as far as, you know, taking adventure, taking, taking— it's a little bit of a risk, you know, it's a little bit of going out of your comfort zone. But what does that do to, to an aging brain? You know, how much stimulus actually comes in and, and the positivity of doing something that is, you know, I'm, I'm not 20, but this is a stretch for me and I'm really doing new things. I'm not just staying in Yeah, absolutely.

I can't give you exact statistics or study results, but there has indeed been studies on that. And I mean, the upshot is that travel and tourism in later life promotes good health. We know that it's mobilizing, you're socializing, you're trying new things, you're keeping your brain active, but you're also physically active just by traveling. And it has proven to be very good for you. And the upshot of a study that I included in a recent funding application was that people over 65 who partake in travel and tourism report and report better wellbeing and feelings of what's self-perception of their health, but also actually do better in terms of their health outcomes. You know, and it's, you know, if you look at loneliness, particularly loneliness is a factor in early stage dementia, in heart disease and stroke and a number of other kind of age-related ailments, but we know that social connections, and particularly those through travel and tourism, which by their nature involve new types of interactions, new cultural engagement, et cetera, is very, very health-promoting and definitely keeps people just, I suppose, more on their toes in every sense. And yeah, it's certainly something to be promoted. And we've, you know, we've won some awards in relation to the healthy aging aspect of what Freebird Club promises. It's early days for us yet. We can't fall back on any, you know, internal studies that we've done, but the general area of travel and tourism and the kind of cultural interaction is definitely something that is considered to be health promoting.

Yeah, I love that. And I love the idea that, so we base our Flipping 50 retreats on, you know, it is such a better and more motivating way to exercise and get your exercise in by having the bucket list thing on your calendar that you are getting ready for. I'm going to enjoy it more. I'm going to, I'm going to build up my stamina so that I can walk around a new city all day. I mean, all of those things, just, you know, the reason for lifting the weights is not so you can take a selfie and send it to me so I can see your biceps, but it is so that you can lift your own luggage and you can put that thing in the overhead compartment or wherever you need to do it. I love that. I also am struck by something just came to mind that Dr. Ellen Langer shared. She's called the mother of mindfulness. She's in Harvard, and she is like from the beginning of mindfulness, but not in a way of meditation. She was sharing something about one of her recommendations is to notice things, because as humans we get so into a routine and we go through them. And we all know this, there's a sign up on the door and we ignore it. I was sitting in the back of the plane or in the middle of the plane just recently, right next to the bathroom. And I thought, oh, this is great. Cause it was very long flight. And then it was closed, like it was out of order and there was a sign on it, but the entire 5-hour flight, our little cluster right there was having to tell people it's not functioning, it doesn't work. The sign was right there, but nobody was willing to look. They wouldn't look at it, read it. They would. And we, we don't notice the things we see regularly. But when you travel in this way, you're forced to, you're forced to, you'll notice everything new. And so, you know, one way of keeping your brain alive by getting out of your own environment getting out of your own routine. I definitely, so much to be said for how are you keeping people young by doing this? So reverse aging.

Yeah, absolutely. And I feel it myself when I, when I travel to, you know, particularly destinations that are quite different, you know, culturally and different parts of the world, you know, you, you do feel just way more alive, you know, you're more alert, you're paying attention, you're, you know, even if you're introverted, do you, especially when you travel, I've often found, you know, when you travel on your own, it forces you to be a bit more extroverted. It forces you to come out of yourself a bit. And that's, it's rare in life that you can, an introvert can find the extrovert within themselves, but travel, travel, particularly traveling on your own where you know you're not going to have a great time if you're on your own all the time, you know, connecting with other people and particularly people from different parts of the world or different cultures, it just, it really does activate, I think, activate you cognitively and psychologically, I think, in a way that is, it's just very positive, you know, then you can't travel well in this world if you're, you know, if you're not open and if you're not, if you don't tap into a natural empathy, you know, you, so it, I think it brings out, it does bring out very positive characteristics that I'd like to think are in everybody. Because when you're outside your comfort zone, you know, survival really requires you to adapt and to connect with what's around you, whether that's nature or whether it's other people. So, I mean, yeah, the positivity in travel is, you know, undeniable really. And I hope that's an element of what we're bringing to Freebird Club as well. We like to say it's more about people than places, but they are kind of intertwined, I think.

Yeah, so very much. Okay, so tell me this, how would a listener who wants to get involved in Freebird, what would they do? Where can they find out more? Is there a cost or a fee?

Yeah. So freebirdclub.com is our website and we like to think we've done a good job explaining it all there, but it's probably still a work in progress. It's definitely something that we're looking to enhance over time. And basically there's, you know, it's laid out what the club is about, how it works, et cetera. There's a join button, you click on that and then you sign up and you provide some basic information. Your basic contact details, confirming you're over 50. And then that brings you into your profile area where you write a little bit about yourself, a little bit of a bio, a description of your interests, what your passions or hobbies might be, what some of your favorite things are. You know, if you want to say a little bit about your taste in music or books or films or sport or whatever, we try and draw that out in the profile a little bit. And a one-liner, what's your philosophy of life? And we get some wonderful gems of wisdom in that particular section. But filling out the profile and then to be a full member in order to engage in one-to-one connections and homestays, et cetera, you need to upload a photo ID, a copy of your photo ID, and that all gets verified on the backend by one of the team, manually verified. There is a fee to join. Right now today, it's a pay-as-you-wish model because we're acknowledging we're early days. We don't have a huge breadth or scope of members just yet, but improving all the time on that front. So people can basically pay whatever they feel it's worth or is fair for a full year's membership, the first year's membership between $1 and $100, basically a sliding scale. And so, you know, if people are not yet convinced, they can be on the lower end of the spectrum, or if they love what we're doing, they can go higher. So it's flexible at the moment. We will probably go to a fixed price sooner rather than later, but we'll keep it modest. You know, the idea here is it's a club. We don't want price to be a barrier for people. And so it's, yeah, it's a social model and we want to keep it that way. So we are a business. We do need to pay the overheads and everything else that go with that. But we do want to keep it very affordable for people because it's a social, it's a social club and we want to be inclusive as much as possible on that front.

So good. So good. I've enjoyed this so much. Okay. So your last chance, your last opportunity. Any last parting words of encouragement that you would offer to adults over 50 who might be hesitant about traveling or joining a community even like Freebird, but yet very intrigued?

Yeah, well, first of all, I'd say, you know, there are so many people like you out there, people of a certain age with whether it's over 50s or over 60s, whatever, who are, you know, maybe a little bit nervous, would love to travel. Who wouldn't love to travel, you know, but might have certain reservations and might feel like it's, for whatever reason, it's a bit out of reach or it's a bit beyond them. There are so many people like you that can encourage you, that can support you, that can maybe travel with you or meet you on the other side to make it possible. And I would say, you know, find your people. And Freebird Club is an attempt to do that, to create this platform where people can gently test the waters, connect with people online first and see if they get that sense of encouragement and empowerment that makes that aspirational trip. It might be, as I say, it might be quite local to the next state or it might be the other side of the world, but that can make it feasible. And maybe the bucket list is all there to be explored in your 50s, 60s, and 70s. We'd like to think it is. We're all living longer and the world is a big place. And all other things being equal, if you have your, if you have reasonable health, you're probably freer in your later life than you've ever been. Might be free of the kids, free of the job, free of the mortgage, hopefully. It's all there to do. And there's so many people out there who are interested in doing it too. And, you know, let's share the experience.

So good. And one more time, just let everybody know, where can they find you?

So freebirdclub.com. Is the website. That's Route 1. We're also on Facebook and Instagram and a few other things like that. But the socials, as I say, but freebirdclub.com is where you'll really find, where you'll find the substantive stuff. And that's where you can join.

Fantastic. And everybody, we have all the links to the Instagram, the YouTube, and the Facebook so that you can interact with Peter and Freebird Club right there. That'll be in the show notes and that'll be at flipping50.com/travelingaloneafter50. Thank you for listening. To listen to a decade of episodes and to get the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all the previous episodes. And I made it super easy to make the most of your listening time and get exactly what you want to listen to as top priority by getting the top 10 episodes in the areas you most care about, like how much protein do you need, weight loss, and other 3 ultra important topics we've identified as our community's top 5. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife women. So go and listen right now. Okay, listener, now there's homework. Yes, at the end of an episode, there's homework. How rude. But I want you to take some action. And selfishly, I'm intrigued. So we have a special Facebook group for those of you who are not already in a program. And if you are, feel free to share it in your existing program if you're a customer. But otherwise, go to the Facebook group Flipping 50 Insiders. That's Flipping 50 Insiders. It is where we have the conversations with our podcast listeners and gather questions for future podcasts. But here is me asking you a question. What is the trip you'd like to take that would feel exciting, exhilarating, which I think is a combination of a little excited, maybe a little anxious, just a little about it, be such an adventure that you're compelled to do it. You can see yourself in your dreams doing it, but don't really have the ideal partner or companion to do it. And you simply would like to. Where would you go? And how would it be? What do you envision yourself doing while you're there? I've got some ideas. And the more I ask this question, the more I realize I've actually been thinking about this for quite some time. And I think it might be time to do something about it. So I'll see you inside the Facebook group, Flipping 5-0 Insiders. With your juicy travel story. Do you have a question for a podcast? A question you'd love to ask, or maybe a story you want to tell? Did you know we have a special group just for podcast question roundups and the answers? My community coaches and I provide answers daily inside of this group. But it's also where I go when I occasionally say, okay, open call for podcast questions, or tell your story, would you like to be a guest? So if you're looking for a community of women who are also interested in optimizing their health, strengthening their mindset, and looking forward to every new year, join the Flipping 50 Insiders group. That's Flipping 5-0 Insiders on Facebook.