Sacred Business Stories: The Audience-Building Mistake Almost Everyone Makes

So yeah, we're live. So, yeah, welcome, welcome to Sacred Business Stories. This is our weekly Substack Live where really we just have an honest conversation about what it looks like to build a business that aligns with your deepest truth. And today we are honored to be joined by Jo Barnes, who I think has a fascinating story. We're going to let her tell you more about it, but kind of the highlights, she took her daughter and a laptop ultimately across 45 countries. In that time, she built multiple successful businesses, and now she's here helping midlife entrepreneurs who really want to create income through her 50+ Nomad Club. And so I love her motto. It's adventure never retires. So welcome, Jo. It's great to have you.

Thank you so much. It's great to be here. I'm very excited. I just want to say this is my first live on Substack, and I'm really excited about it. This whole thing, this is going to change everything. You're going to start seeing me live all over the place after this. I love that.

I love that it's inspiring you. And I just like to begin like those calls, um, actually like reminding ourselves and reminding our, uh, people here listening to us, like why we created Sacred Business Stories. And it's purely for inspiration. Like when we see people creating like cool stuff around the world that we can see that, you know, their business is a combination of all of who they are, their challenges, their experiences, their certifications, their diplomas, and then You know, they found a way to, to serve the world from that space. We like to bring here and see like, what was the path? Like, what was the behind the scenes? And I invited Jo and I was very excited just seeing her all over the world. I think the first picture I saw, you were like in Morocco somewhere, Marrakech, like at that big plaza. And I'm like, oh, I love that. And then I see like, you know, helping 50+ women or I don't know if it's just women, sorry. But just helping 50+ people like to follow that passion because it's never too late. I resonated like deeply with you. So, you know, I know you have a lot of stories. Can you, can you guide us through more or less like when you decided to create what you, what you currently have today? Like how, how was your, your path behind the scenes?

Sure. Well, my, I've actually got a pre-50 history in all of this because I actually started all of this 15, nearly 16 years ago. When some friends of mine were living in Cyprus and they, we went over to visit them and they had this fantastic apartment right on the sea caves in near Paphos in Cyprus and it was just beautiful. And myself and my partner at the time and my 4-year-old daughter, we were living in dreary UK and we were a bit disheartened and disillusioned with the, it was just post the 2008 crash and you know, everybody was a bit low and it was all a bit, depressy and yucky. Anyway, so we went over to Cyprus, saw our friends, and they were doing this thing called internet marketing, um, where they were basically making all their money from their computer. And I was like, wow, that's really fascinating. And I was like, what, you can literally just make money on your computer without leaving your lounge, without leaving your front room? And they were like, yeah, it's really cool. So, um, they told me to read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, and on the plane on the way home, I literally inhaled that look and thought, this is it, this is our life. Um, and then later on that year, I actually went to see same friends speaking at a conference in London, and they said that they were going to be going traveling and that they needed somebody to go and house sit their apartment in Cyprus. And I phoned my partner and said, we've got to go, we've got to dump everything, let's just go. And we sold everything we owned. We both had like little businesses on the side at the time, but we basically dumped everything, we sold everything we owned, we scooped up my 4-year-old, we jumped on a plane to Cyprus, and we haven't really looked back since. And that was 2010. And I started online, this internet marketing thing. And back in the day I was, oh gosh, I was doing the whole shebang. If, I don't know if anybody on this call remember people like Frank Kern and Ryan Dice and Jeff Walker and all the OGs. And I was following all of these guys and doing all this stuff, JV swaps, and I was on Warrior Forum and you know, all this sort of stuff. And I had my first 6-figure launch within the first year of being online. Um, and then it just grew from there and I've done sort of everything, every online business model that you can think of, I've pretty much done over the years and I've had some great successes and I've had some great failures. Um, and then we sold a business in 2020, just given a real brief thing here and you can, we can delve into it, but we sold our, an e-commerce, a very successful e-commerce business in 2020. Had a little bit of a wobble. What am I gonna do now? Sort of thing. Um, And then I turned 50, and my daughter was still at school, and I knew that I really, really wanted to travel. We were living in Thailand at the time, so we raised— we ended up raising my daughter in Thailand, and we were doing, you know, sort of intermittent, almost semi-nomadic travel. And I knew I wanted to full-time travel, and so I decided as soon as my daughter got to college age, we would do full-time nomadism. That was it. And then Talking about going from the heart, I realised as I sort of got into 50, 51, 52, I just thought, you know what, life is for living. Life is absolutely for living. And that the way the world kind of sees, I think particularly women, I don't know guys, you may tell me I'm wrong here, but certainly we just start to become a bit more invisible as we get older. And you know, we go through the menopause and our brain gets foggy and other things happen and we start to lose a bit of confidence and all that sort of stuff. And I just thought, no, I need to get out there there. I, I want to be a full-time nomad. I don't want to shrink into retirement. I'm going to spend the next 30, 40 years of my life writing books and traveling and inspiring people and building more businesses and all that sort of stuff. And, um, hence the 50+ Nomad Club on Substack. That's kind of how that was born.

That's really awesome. Where are you right now?

I'm currently in London. So we came back to London to, uh, see my daughter over Christmas, um, because she's now in college here in London. So I'm currently house sitting. That is not my guitar. Um, we're currently house sitting a beautiful little Shih Tzu called Nala, uh, here in London. And, uh, I'm here for another just under 2 weeks, and then I've got my, my backpack behind me that I'm trying to get down to 9 kilos because I don't want to travel with more than 9 kilos on my back. And, um, literally the week after next I leave for Rio, um, in Brazil, and my sister and I are going to the carnival there. And then she will, uh, fly home. My husband will join me later in February, and then we are basically backpacking through, um, Brazil and we're gonna go up to the Amazon, a place called Manaus, and then we're gonna fly into Bogotá and then we're gonna travel up through Colombia and then we're gonna go and do a bit of Central America into Mexico and then we're gonna go up to Canada and we're basically not coming home.

I love it. Uh, I don't know if you know, but we are actually based in Brazil and I just went to your Substack and then I saw that you created your ChatGPT image, uh, in the Carnival reel. I'm like, that's So cool. Like, we are like close to São Paulo, but I'm like, I didn't know you were coming here. So that's awesome.

Oh, fantastic. Well, I might be meeting my husband in São Paulo, Carolina. So we might have to, we'll stay in touch and see if we can meet up when I'm there. That would be amazing.

I would love it.

Yeah.

Let's talk. Yes.

Yeah.

You basically named all of our favorite places from going to the Amazon to Colombia and yeah, that whole, that whole route, uh, is, is all, those are all places that are dear to my heart. And yeah, so much in common. That book, The 4-Hour Workweek, that's absolutely the book that changed my life as well in terms of the direction. And I remember, yeah, I remember still being at my corporate job and reading that book, and it took a few years, you know, of having planted that seed. But yeah, I think there's so many people that—

Inspired by that. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Oh, I can't wait to pick your guys' brains about South America.

Yeah. One thing that I, like, I love about your energy and I've, I've been following on Substack is this sense of like aliveness and passion towards life. And like, you know, like it's not that I'm like, I'm getting older and things are like going down the hill. Like I feel that you live this life that the older you get, like more exciting life becomes. Um, and how do you feed yourself with that? Like I have a mentor for myself that I, I keep changing, but it's like the older I get, Uh, the wiser I become, like the more abundant, you know, so, and I keep feeding myself that like I'm not going down the hill and it's just keeping getting better and better. But how do you feed your energy? Because I feel sometimes like a lot of people, like when they're like reaching 50, 60, 70, like it's almost like, oh, now it's done. Now it's too late. Or I don't have time. Like, what is your mindset to keep that energy so alive in you?

I, I, do you know what, I'll be honest with you, I think traveling keeps you really young. I really do. I think going to new places, experiencing new things, um, moving out of your comfort zone, uh, literally talking about Morocco, um, I haven't done a lot of solo travel. I, you know, I have a husband and we do a lot of travel together. I do a lot of travel with my sister as well, um, so I haven't done a massive amount of solo travel. And so Morocco was a step out of my comfort zone because I went and did Morocco on my own. I let— I went, um, 3 weeks through Italy with my sister. We went and did Southern Italy, and then I, I went up to Rome on my own. But I'm very comfortable in Rome. It's one of my favorite cities in the world. So Morocco was a bit of a step out of my comfort zone. Hadn't been there before, and I was going on my own, um, and I was a bit nervous. And, um, so what I actually did is I booked a tour. I booked like an 8-day group tour, uh, which was the best thing I could have done. I, I loved it. I loved the tour guide. I loved the tour of Morocco. I got to see so much without having to worry worry about anything, you know. They organised everything. I didn't have to worry about my safety or anything like that. Everything was organised. So what a wonderful way to be able to dip your toe into experiencing a new country. By the way, any solo travellers watching, just do a little tour, um, you know. It doesn't, it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean that you're not brave or anything like that. It's just a great way for you to dip your toe in and get comfortable, because by the end of that tour, I'm wandering around Marrakech on my own for 5 days, and I'm feeling great because Morocco is a fantastic country. But I found that I was so energised by that whole experience. I mean, really massively energised. I was stood one morning overlooking, I was in a place called the Bulman, I don't, there's no way I'm gonna pronounce this right, by the way, but, and somebody's gonna go, that's terrible. But it was called the Bulman Dadis or something like that. It was en route to the Sahara. And I'd stayed in this little cave room overnight and I woke up really early in the morning 'cause they said, watch the sunrise, it's spectacular. And I'm walking around this place and I can see the sun sunrise, and I'm thinking, I don't know what they're talking about, it's spectacular. It's kind of over there, you can hardly see it. And I walk back to where my room is, and all of a sudden I realize it's the reflection of the sunrise on the mountains and everything, and they're orange and pink and yellow. And I'm stood there, it's like, I don't know, 6 o'clock, 6:30 in the morning, and I'm thinking, I am the luckiest, most alive person on this planet right now, you know. And it was that It's that experiencing new things and just pushing yourself out your comfort zone and seeing new stuff and life. And this is gonna sound a bit woo-woo, but that connection, it really is getting off the phone and that connection with the world, the planet, nature, whatever you wanna call it. And it just lifts you, you know? It just gives you energy. And I think, I feel my daughter is 19 and she's now gone to college in London and I'm now 53. And I love my daughter, we're very, very close, but it feels like I've now got this newfound freedom, you know. She's now forging her own path in life. I've been a mother for 20 years, and now I can go— I'm still going to be a mother, obviously, forever, she's my baby— but I can now go and pursue my dreams with, you know, full energy, full force of traveling the world. And I really do think that travel keeps you young because you're moving your body, so you're having to stay reasonably fit and healthy. You're using your mind because you're figuring out where are we going and where's this place and all that sort of stuff. You're connecting with people, which I think is just the, the biggest thing that we can be doing at any age, uh, is connecting with people. I think that's one of the biggest issues we have in our world today is that we are so caught up behind our screens that we're not connecting with people. And I bet— I, I challenge anybody to say where they've gone somewhere and connected with a group of people to not then come out and say, wow, I'm really energized by that because that's what connection is all about, right? You meet people, you chat, you talk. I will come off this call feeling super energized sitting here chatting with you guys, you know, because we're connecting and we're talking. And I know we're behind a screen, but that connection with people I think is, is really big. So yeah, that long— sorry, that was a very long answer, but that's what keeps me energized and young. I think that traveling and meeting people and moving out your comfort zone.

Yeah, thank you for sharing all that. Again, I'll echo that these conversations are literally our favorite thing to do every week. It's so fun to get out and just connect and hear other people's stories. And so, yeah, I'm excited to see what you do if you continue to play with this format. But one of the things I wanted to ask you about is, and I'd be curious to the perspective not only for yourself but also for your clients and the people that you serve. Like, one of the things that we want to convey to our audience is that it's it's perfectly normal to have fear and resistance come up, and especially so when you're moving forward with something that's particularly meaningful or it's close to your heart. And, you know, I'd love to hear from you, um, yeah, in your personal experience, maybe— I don't know how it was for you early on in your process, but where is an area that that's kind of come up in your entrepreneurial journey? And, you know, how have you worked with that or continue to work with it? I feel like we all have moments where it comes up, you to keep yourself moving forward in a positive way?

I think that's a great question. Thanks for asking it because I think it's really important. Everybody always looks at you, especially somebody like me who's an extrovert and just seems completely confident all the time, and they think, wow, if I had that amount of confidence, then I'd probably be able to do what she does too. But actually fear shows up on a daily basis. I mean, it really does. And more recently it's shown up with me in my ego. I was actually chatting to my husband about it the other day and I was saying to him, for somebody who is so self-deprecating, which I am a lot of the time. Oh God, why couldn't I get that right? Or, oh no, I hate what I look like on video. Or, you know, all those sort of things. I said to him, for somebody who's as self-deprecating as I am, I can't believe what an ego I've got. Because more recently, you know, I'm like, I can't look like a beginner again. You know, I've been doing this for 15 years and all of a sudden I'm learning some new tools. I'm on Substack. I haven't— I'm trying to get my head around Substack. You know, I'm trying to figure out How do you increase your paid subscribers or how do you sell products on Substack? It's a different world out there now. There's a lot more noise, there's a lot more rubbish on your feed, all that sort of stuff. And I feel over the last sort of year that I've been starting again. You know, I've got my e-commerce business as well that I've started. And again, Amazon has changed since we grew our Amazon business. So I kind of feel over the last few months I've been starting again and my ego is saying to me, you need to be the expert. You have to go out there and say that you're the expert because you've been doing this for 15 years. And it's been really holding me back just actually coming on to video or whatever and saying, do you know what, I don't know how to do that, and I'm learning, and I'm going to show you what I'm doing as I'm learning. And that's been a real— I suppose fear is that it— maybe fear is too strong, but it's been a real barrier for me to be completely transparent and honest. Does that make sense? You know, that I'm kind of starting Yeah.

It totally makes sense. And we see this so often, especially, and this is our experience with our clients as well, like people that have had some sort of expertise or, you know, they're at the top of their game and, you know, high performance people. And then when they shift, it's like they kind of have this expectation that, you know, everything's gonna transfer over. And then it turns out, like you said, whether it's learning a new platform, learning a new skill, you're kind of playing a new game. And yeah, and I love your awareness around that because there is this kind of need for humility and just to, and you know, Kelly actually wrote an essay about this, I guess it was last week around kind of building in public and just this idea of being the adventure and how it's okay just to be like, hey, here I am, I'm figuring this out and I'd love to invite you into my world, you know, to figure it out too. You know, do you want to kind of walk this path And I think that's such a beautiful way of showing up in places like Substack.

And how about you guys? I mean, starting Sacred Business Flow and doing these lives, I'm guessing you had to move through some fear as well in starting all of this.

Yeah, I mean, I'll speak for myself and then Carolina can definitely jump in. I've been doing some, like you, I've been doing some form of online business, online consulting for for over 10 years and it was about 2.5 years ago when we decided to start Sacred Business Flow and it was, it felt like a calling. It was something that was coming from a deeper place than just like, hey, I want to figure out how to make more money again. And at the time I was already doing quite well. I was working as like a fractional CMO and, but it was like this clear decision of like, hey, this is where we want to go and if we're going to do it right, We have to let these old identities die. We have to put these things aside and really go all in on this. And that was really scary. And there was a lot of other change happening in my life at that moment as well. But that was really, really scary. And then on top of that, you know, as someone who's been in marketing, I needed to like have the awareness to see my own kind of blind spots because I was like, I was, I remember when we were first starting with this message, I was kind of like, I should know how to do this. Like I help other people do this. I hear this all the time, but what is it that I can't see here? And so one of the first things we did was hire another person who I really respect in marketing to kind of help us work on our messaging. And it was a large investment and it was a time where we had literally just shut everything else down. And so yeah, it was definitely a moment, but I feel that connected to that, there was an element of faith and, you know, Carolina can maybe speak more about that. That. But also just, I think for myself, and I don't know how this relates for you, I think I built enough confidence with myself around reinvention over the years that I just had this sense of like, you know what, if I've done this once, I can do it again. And that really helped me at least, and still helps me keep going. You know, not every day is perfect. And, you know, I think any entrepreneurs that's been doing this for any period of time, you know, experiences those ups and downs. And so, yeah, that's my perspective.

Yeah, I resonate with this topic a lot and I, and I, and I love what you share about like, here I am, like beginning again, but it's like a beginning fresh, not from zero because you have like, you know, a lot of baggage, a lot of things that you're bringing with you. And then what's the balance of like, I am the expert, but at the same time, I don't know everything. Right. And I think it requires like for certain business, like life, like, I don't know for the corporate world, for my, my experience, like you are in that position, like, I know what I'm doing and I've got this. And then you try to bring this here and yes, you, I know a lot of things and I know how I can help people in many ways, but also like tapping into the vulnerability and just like, we are walking this together and I'm not better because I have this. I might be like a couple of steps ahead of you in this context. I think it's like my, like my learning here on Substack and the space that I try to share from, like, Yes, I've had many experiences that I can help you with, and I'm also learning a lot of things here that I don't need to hide. And that's what I think it brings power to the business itself. If we can actually like bring all of this together, but it is like scary and like, should I share this? Should I not? So I, it's, yeah, it's a fascinating topic.

But I don't think people necessarily want to learn from absolute experts anyway. I think people want to learn from people who are like them. They want to relate and they want to feel that you're going to trip up. I remember somebody saying to me years ago, Jo, I learned just as much from the things you get wrong as I do from the things you get right. 'Cause I'd always share all the things I got wrong as well. I'd always say, oh bloody hell, I cocked up on that. Like I remember one of my very first webinars, I was on a balcony in Cyprus and I'd, you know, learned how to do webinars and I'm on this webinar and oh gosh, it was such a great success. I think like, you know, 70 people had turned up and I was like, wow, you know, I've made it, I'm doing it, I'm doing this webinar. And then we got to the end of the webinar. It was a platform called GoToWebinar, which I think is still out there. But of course, you don't need stuff like that anymore. But anyway, I got to the end of the webinar and I couldn't turn it off. I literally could not figure out how to turn this webinar off. And I'm there and people are there and I'm starting to shake and I'm like, and I just had to say, I'm ever so sorry, guys, but I can't figure out how to turn this webinar off. And this guy came on live on the webinar and he helped me, what I thought he did, he helped me turn this webinar off. and I'm like, oh, thank God. And I turned around to my husband and I said, oh, well, that's a beep beep disaster, right? Because I was like, oh God, that was a complete— and all of a sudden I got all these comments going, we're still here, Jo. And I still hadn't been able to turn the darn thing off. So I think I've always been over the years quite open to sharing all the things that have gone wrong as well as the things that have gone right. And I think people really appreciate that because they're like, oh God, well, if she can do it, I can. It's a backhanded compliment, but people think think if she can do it, I can do it. And I think people like to learn from people who they relate to and, you know, that are going to get things wrong than people always, always the expert. And can I just touch on— sorry, Phil, you asked about fear— can I just touch on, um, people who are scared of getting on video? Because I think that's a really, really big fear that a lot of people have, particularly us girls, because we always feel like we need to have our hair done and our makeup done and we're looking really good and all the rest of it. And I do really feel that there's a fear about that. And I did some research the other day and there are something like, I can't remember the exact numbers, but there are something like 935,436 videos loaded onto TikTok every hour, something like that. Or it might be every day, but it's, it's like a massive number. And then there are something like 20,000 hours of videos loaded onto YouTube every hour and something like tens of thousands and pieces of content on Instagram. And I just wanted to say that for anybody who is a bit nervous about going on video, I can promise you nobody's watching because there is just so much content being loaded every day. I was watching my daughter the other day just scrolling, you know, and it's literally that. It's 2 seconds, 2 seconds, 2 seconds. And, you know, I realise that there's some people on this now watching us and you may think, well, hold on a second, Jo, I'm watching you right now and I've been on here for at least 5 minutes. And I get that. But you know, most of the time when you get on a video, especially when you start, nobody's watching. They're gonna see you, you might be interesting, you might not, and then they're gonna flick, you know? And then gradually as you get better, as you get better at it, you are gonna get better with your hooks and better with your content. And so a few more people are gonna come and watch you, but by then you're gonna have a little bit of confidence and then you're gonna get even better. And that's when you're gonna get more people and you're gonna be even more content. And it goes like that. So those first those first videos you do, nobody's watching, nobody cares, it doesn't matter, you know, just, just do it. And that's a little note to self as well, because as I've got older, I used to be on video all the time, but as I've got older, I'm like, oh God, I'm old and I've got, you know, I've got wrinkles and I've got jowls. I don't want anybody to really know how old I am. And, but it doesn't matter because nobody really cares.

Yeah, like maybe Phil can share, like, because I think for us, like, we actually decided to do the Sacred Business Stories as well for the inspiration and all of that, because I truly believe that when you see people doing cool things and then you see like, oh yes, they had to walk the path. It's not like an overnight success. They've been doing this for years. Um, but one of the reasons why I was actually like, we need to move through resistance. Like I was never like a social media person. I'm never like, oh yeah, I love being on camera. Like that's, I don't have a huge resistance or fear, but I, it was never like my desire. Some people like to do, it's not me. Like I'm more like an introvert, leave me on my cave and I'm happy here. Here, and maybe Phil can share his story because he has a lot more resistance. But then as we like, we come here, we start inviting people, it's like, it becomes fun. And then you ended up doing for yourself. And then like, now we have people commenting and, you know, and, and I just love that and really like watching it. But at the beginning, it's just an exercise for yourself to let your ego go that like, it doesn't matter. Just go. Yep.

Yep.

Yeah.

And Steven Pressfield talks about it. Sorry, Phil. Steven Pressfield talks about it in The Art of War, the book, The Art of War. He talks about resistance and says that you're gonna get resistance whenever you're about to do something important. Sorry, Phil, didn't mean to cut you off.

Yeah. And then I, that's, uh, it's funny, I'm not, not in the place I'm usually sitting when we're doing these interviews, but that's literally one of my favorite books that I keep right next to my desk. And, um, yeah, just to kind of touch on what Carolina said, like, yeah, for me, my entire life, I've had a very large fear of public, uh, public speaking. And I'm also the introvert. Like, this is not, well, I shouldn't say that because now, like, like Karen said, I love this. We do these like 1 or 2 times a week and I can literally just hop on with 2 seconds notice, like not even really knowing what we're going to talk about and it's all good to go. But, you know, the first time I did this, like, you know, it was like, yeah, it was, it was like I could feel that, you know, that fire coming up in my chest and in, you know, in my heart space here. And it was extremely, extremely uncomfortable. And, and I say this sometimes on these interviews, I still, sometimes I still feel that it's just that my relationship with it has changed and kind of related to that book. It's now that when I feel that, there's kind of like this leaning in. I'm like, oh, there's that feeling again. Here we go. This is where we need to take it. And, you know, that's translated into so many aspects of how I feel we run our business and encourage others to do the same. So yeah, we're definitely on the same page there.

Yeah, it's great. I love it. You know, the other day, actually, I was doing a deep dive. There's a guy called Simon Squibb. Have you heard of Simon Squibb? Okay, I just came across him, he's an English fella, and I came across him on Facebook. I'm not sure what I was looking for. And he walks around, my husband suggested, 'cause I got these new travel challenge cards that I've just launched on Amazon, and my husband suggested, let's go onto the streets of London and let's take these cards out and let's go and ask people to scratch off and do a challenge, right? And like, that's so far out of my comfort zone, it's not even true. I said to him, I'm not gonna walk around the streets of London and just ask random strangers to scratch off a card and do these travel challenges. I was like, I'm not going to do that. And I happened to— it's almost like the universe speaks to you. I happen to come across this guy who's walking around the streets of England, and I'm not sure where he is, and he's asking people, do they want his book? And he's launched this new book called What Is Your Dream or something, and I haven't read it, um, but he's so confident and he's out there and he's saying to people, do you want my book? Do you want to read my book? And he's like, would you rather my book or would you rather £10,000, you know, to help you with your business or whatever? And most people choose the book and blah blah blah. Anyway, go and check him out, he's pretty good. And now I see his book advertised under all the tube stations here and everything. So he's obviously massively promoting his book. But interestingly, I decided to do a bit of a deep dive into who this guy was, and I found his videos from when he started, and they were terrible. And I mean absolutely terrible. I found them from maybe 4 or 5 years ago, and he was doing these 2-minute videos in the morning on his way to work, and he was falling over his words, and he was talking about really boring stuff. And, you know, they— it was just, it was just— but he did them consistently. He did these 2-minute videos every single day for 2 years, 3 years. And now, now people are finding out who he is. And nobody saw those first videos. Nobody saw him practicing. They can go back and look now, but nobody saw all that early stuff because they were terrible and nobody was interested. But they're seeing him now, and now he's great. He's confident and he's brilliant and he's out there and now everybody is going to go and find him and see who he is. So yeah, just wanted to end that conversation with that little example there as well.

So, and it's perfect to illustrate because I almost feel that like, because you shared this about this guy, I want to go and see who he is because like someone that you're like, that's the path like behind the scenes, right? Like you have to start somewhere. And somewhere is always now because there's always an excuse to like, I need more this, I need more that. And at one point you're like, you know, I got to start with what I have. And if it's awful, it's awful. But, you know, as I do, I'm sure it's going to get better. Um, yeah.

Who said about, uh, one, one of my favorite quotes and I always forget her name. Maybe somebody in the comments can tell us, but she says, oh God, I'm so sorry. I forget her name. But she says, "If you are willing to be a bad artist, one day you will be a good artist, perhaps even an ex— you know, a brilliant artist." I can't remember the exact quote. I'm sorry, it's my, my, my old brain, my addled brain. But it's, it's just such a fantastic quote.

Julie Cameron from The Artist's Way? No, no, because I read this somewhere and I'm really interested. Like, if you want to be a good artist, you You start being a bad one.

Yeah, exactly. I don't think it is Julia Cameron, but it's somebody like that. And she, but that's basically what she's saying. You know, you have to be willing to be bad. And then, you know, by being bad, you're going to get good.

Yes. Yeah. Frances is just sharing here with us. I've literally been avoiding to do a video for my product with plenty of excuses.

Yeah. We all have them, Frances. Yeah. I challenge you to make a video today. I challenge you just to get up and do a 2-minute video today. Yeah, do it and then share it with us. That's my challenge.

Yeah. And Substack's so friendly too. And that's one of the things I love about this platform. The vibe is so different here than any of the— we had talked to so many people who are burned out on TikTok or Instagram or any of those things. And yeah, I just feel like the support that you get from the broader community on Substack, if you're going to go for it, Frances, there's no better place to do it than here. But Phil, I wanted to ask you kind of shifting, and it'd be an interesting perspective because you've built this over years. You've built a very nice kind of audience and community online, but then you've also shared how you're kind of constantly moving around the world and just describing the adventure you have coming. And so I'm curious, like, you know, something I feel that oftentimes people struggle with is how to build these meaningful, authentic connections as they're sharing their message powerfully. And yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you approach connection and what advice you might give to someone who's trying to share what they have to offer more consistently.

Sure. I think it's been interesting because I've been having some strategy calls over the last couple of days actually with some people who are hoping to build various micro hustles and little online projects this year. And what's really interesting is how much talent people have. It's blown me away of how much creativity and talent people have and how hard it is for us to see how creative and brilliant we are ourselves. I've been having these conversations with people and they're telling me about this stuff and they're saying things like, "Oh yeah, I've got 20 books published on Amazon, but they're not really selling and I just don't feel that I'm connecting." And I'm like, sorry, you've got 20 books published on the creativity, the effort, the tenacity that's going to have gone into that. Um, and I, and then I go and have a look on Amazon and I see, and they're great, they're not just a load of rubbish that's been thrown up, they're solid creative, um, endeavors. And that's not just one person, I've been speaking to two or three, a few people that have got different projects and stuff, and the talent and creativity that we have just astounds me. Um, but the sticking point I find is that when I go to the, okay, so who's your audience? You know, if you're not selling these, why not? Who's your audience? And that seems to be the sticking point is that I've got this creativity and this talent to build stuff, create stuff, launch products, but I stop when I have to go and actually build an audience. And it's like there's this real barrier of self-belief in that if I go and package something up up as a product and then just put it out there, that's one thing. But when I then have to actually go and tell people about it and build an audience and share my, what you said, Carolina, earlier about vulnerability, 'cause that's kind of what it is when you start putting yourself out there, that's where people kind of stop. They say, well, I've made this thing, but to actually tell people that it exists and go and build an audience around that topic, theme, etc. That's where a lot of fear, I think, comes in. And I think that's because people maybe feel that they have to reveal themselves in some way in order to do that. And you don't need a really big audience to have a really successful business. You don't need tens of thousands of people. That's not what you need. People think, I think people think that, I think they think that they need to become a content machine, they need to get online and they need you need to be building tens of thousands of people in order to be able to make any meaningful income. Where actually, if you focus on getting out there, sharing your message, kind of moving beyond that comfort zone and telling people who you are and telling people what you've created and talking about that topic, and then with each person that comes and talks to you, engage with them. Platforms like Substack make it so easy. When I started on Facebook in 2010, it was like Substack is now. And I was able to actually talk to people. People were able to come to my Facebook page, comment on my videos, talk to me, and I could go back and talk to them, and we could actually engage with each other and create a relationship. And that's what Substack is now. And I think one of the challenges over the last few years is we've been conditioned to not engage. We've been conditioned to just simply project and, and grow and, and throw out content and try and get as much attention as possible. Gary Vee's talked it for years. Attention, attention, attention. Even James Clear, who I really respect, and he's got a great book and everything, he talks about if you're gonna do anything, just get attention, because attention is currency. But actually, you could have 10,000 people on your list, 20,000, 30,000 people on your email list, and if you don't— if you haven't engaged with them, if you are not connected with them, it's 30,000 people who are just maybe reading your stuff every now and again. So 100, 200, 300 people that you've actually talked to, engaged with, responded to, connected with is so much more valuable than 10,000 people who you never speak to and who just occasionally watch a video. And it's so easy, exactly right here now, jumping on the comments and chatting with the people who've been kind enough to comment with us, just having a chat with them saying, hi, thank you for joining, or, you know, responding to their questions, just, just being human, but online, right? That's all it is. It's just being human and talking to people, but online. And the difficulty I think is that platforms like Instagram and TikTok and everything have made that more difficult because they, you know, they just seem to be these content farms. But actually, I've been looking at TikTok recently for my e-commerce brand, and I've noticed that some of the best brands on there, some of the, some of the ones that have got the best engagement levels, are, they're in their comments, they're talking to people, they're responding to people, and people are asking them questions. And on TikTok now, you can do these things where you can put somebody's question on your screen and then you can answer it. So it's another way of engaging. So that's, that's all it is really, is just— yes, Rebecca just said it— quality over quantity. That is so, it's so important. Relationships, that's all it is, is being human, but on, but you know, online on your computer.

Yeah, there's, there's two things there. One, and I always like to tell this to people to kind of to help them connect. Like my first online business that did generate multiple six figures, the most I ever had on my email list was like always less than 1,000. I never broke over 1,000 and it was multiple six figures of income consistently for years. And so to your point, it doesn't need to be a big list. It was just about the relationship I had with those people was very strong and it was very clear why we were in that relationship. And then the other thing you touched on there, which I love, which is the being human, you know, so often I'll hear or I'll talk with folks who are kind of struggling with kind of getting traction with their audience and they're putting stuff out there. And one of the things I'll say to them is like, I'll notice that like they're putting stuff out there and they're like, well, why is it not coming back to me? And then I'll see that they're not responding to their comments. And I'm like, you know, this is a relationship. Like this is almost like rule number one. If someone takes the time to kind of, it's kind of like, like if we were standing like, and I waved at you from across the street and you just kind of like turned your head and kept moving or started talking to someone else. And I think this kind of goes past people sometimes that, you know, that's all this really is. And just a very, very simple acknowledgement goes a really, really long way and can really get the process moving in terms of starting to build those relationships. And then yeah, Substack makes it so easy because it just works differently. With the algorithms compared to some of those other platforms. Yeah.

You know, all the people that are currently out there thinking, oh gosh, what amazing note should I post today? What incredible insightful advice can I give that's gonna make people wanna come and subscribe and love my stuff? If you just spend the next 30 days going out, finding other people that you really resonate with, commenting on their notes, restacking notes you find really interesting, sharing posts that you find interesting, commenting on posts that you find interesting, and not even posting your own insightful note, just for 30 days, I challenge you to go and try that and see how many subscribers you start to get then. See how many people want to come and find you and talk to you. And don't you, whatever you do, please, I mean, I'm a massive AI fan. I'm just going to put that out there. I think it shortens so many tasks. I think it really helps brainstorm. I think it's, I'm loving it, but whatever you do, do, don't use it to respond to comments. Don't feed in somebody's thing, because I get that sometimes and you can tell it a mile off, right? You can see it a mile off. Don't do it. But, you know, just go for 30 days rather than thinking, what advice can I give? Or what, what, you know, amazing insights can I post on my notes? Just go and engage, go and find other people, go and comment on other people's stuff, go and share their things, go and, and restack with no go and find some really cool stuff, restack with a note and add your comment to it. Say why it connected with you, why it resonated, why it's important. And I'm telling you, if you did that, you know, a couple of times a day for the next 30 days, you would start to increase that engagement and that relationship building, you know, without a shadow of a doubt.

Yeah, that's great advice. And, um, and you've already given, honestly, you've given a lot of great tactical advice in a sense already. Ready. But the last question I had for you was, yeah, I'm just curious and I don't know if you're doing things and it sounds like you're in other platforms other than Substack. We've talked a lot about Substack because here we are, but we love to leave people with like, what's something you've been doing lately in your business, kind of tactical, practical that maybe you're not hearing a whole lot of people talk about or, you know, but that's really kind of getting a good result for you. Maybe since the start of the year or in the last couple months?

Sure. Gosh, that's a good question. So I've been really drowning in my own brand new e-commerce launch, to be honest with you, for the last month because I launched an extremely giftable product in January because I missed Black Friday and then I missed Christmas with my suppliers. So I've kind of been knee-deep in that. But something that, um, I've always done— I, I've always been a Facebook girl. I mean, you know, I started on Facebook, it, it built my business for me back in 2010. Um, and I was actually chatting with a lady as well who loves Facebook, and between the two of us, we have both agreed that sharing your Substack posts on Facebook actually does increase the traffic over to your Substack post. So when you— if you have a Facebook page, I mean, I wouldn't advise going and setting up a Facebook page just for all this, but I see a lot of people in the notes saying, that's it, I've abandoned social media, I'm only on Substack, I'm not doing anything else. And that's absolutely fine, but if you actually already have an audience somewhere else, you don't have to go and create new content for that thing anymore if you really want to go all in on Substack. But there's no reason that you can't share what you're doing on Substack on that platform. And Substack gives you some really cool tools to do that as well. It gives you images that you can take, it does little videos of your posts, all that sort of stuff. I mean, this live, doing a little live like this. You can take this and you can go and stick it on Facebook or Instagram or wherever you are, and it's just another channel to kind of bring people over to your Substack. But I would just advise, have one goal, only have one goal. So my goal isn't to grow my Facebook page, yeah, my goal is to increase my Substack subscribers, to increase my Substack audience, to grow my relationship with people on Substack. That's my goal. Goal. So Facebook for me feeds that goal. Yes, I do some travel posts and stuff on there as well because, you know, I want to share my travels as my brand, The 50+ Nomad. But my, but my goal is how many people can I bring over to my ecosphere inside of Substack. That's my goal, and that's what I'm using it for. So pick your goal, um, and then see how— I think one of the challenges is people have multiple goals. They're like, right, I need to grow my followers on Instagram, I need to grow my subscribers on Substack, I need to build my YouTube channel, and all sudden you're diversifying so much that you really don't get anywhere, you know, and you become overwhelmed. I get really overwhelmed. So there's nothing wrong with having another platform, but I would have just one goal. Pick one goal and make sure everything else feeds into that one goal, and then you're going to stay aligned and know that your end result is that one goal, and you're not going to get overwhelmed then with trying to do too many things at once. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally.

Great advice. Like, I think it's back to that energy of like, you're not beginning again from zero, right? Like you're beginning here with a fresh energy, but why not use like your old assets, like bring your baggage with you and then your power here becomes even like stronger because you're actually like using those are like tools. I love that.

Can I just, sorry, before we go, can I just make another point as well to people watching? If you are building any kind of business online. So if you, if you're here for a hobby, if you're here to have fun, if you're here just to chill out and, you know, improve your writing skills and stuff like that, there are no rules. But if you are actually, if you want to eventually monetize this platform or sell products or services or offers, please, please, please build your subscriber database. It's so important that you build your email list. Let me tell you why. Because when I started online back in 2010, I just spent my whole life building my email subscriber database and It didn't matter what I did, what products I offered, what pivots I made, my audience came with me. They're on my email list so I can email them. I can tell them what's going on. You know, I can, I can build such great relationships with them because I'm constantly talking to them and asking them to come back to me and all that sort of stuff. Great, fantastic engagement and relationships we were talking about earlier. Then after we sold our business, I decided to try my hand at blogging. I thought, I'm gonna give blogging a go. And I did 4 years where I was just knee-deep in SEO and growing my blog, and all the rest of it. Bored building an email list. Didn't bother, didn't care. I was gonna do the whole SEO thing and I was gonna build this fantastic niche blog. And I got really, it grew. I was over 100,000 hits a month. I was doing 5 figures a month. It was going well. I was happy. And then the Google Helpful Content update hit at the end of 2023, wiped me and thousands, tens of thousands of blogs off the face of the planet. And all of a sudden I had no audience. I'd done all this work for 4 years and I'd forgotten my own golden rule, by the way, and I had zero audience. So when I then came on Substack last year, I was starting all over again, building my audience. So build your audience. It's so important. I don't mean followers and likes. I mean people who actually subscribe to you. And this is why Substack is such a great platform because it does it all for you. It's all inbuilt. That whole engagement and social media and, and email database building, it's just so important because Substack, like Facebook, like all the other platforms, one day won't be as wonderful as it currently is because it's just the way things go. And all the marketers are going to descend upon it and it's gonna— and they already are— and it's going to change and it's just not going to be as wonderful as it is. And it doesn't matter what you do over the next 10 years, if you have your email subscriber database who you talk to on a regular basis and you engage with and, you know, all that sort of stuff, they will come with you when you pivot or move or whatever you have to do. So please, whatever you do, if your goal is to monetize your business, your goal is to build a business and monetize, please build that email database. It's so important.

Yeah, that's like what's so beautiful about Substack is that you have that built in and, you know, every other platform you try to post a link to a piece of content and they ding you for it. And on Substack, it's all integrated, right? And it's beautiful. The only thing I tell people is, you know, and I'm with you, like, I've been through enough of these cycles, enough to know that, you know, Substack hopefully will be with us for quite some time, but things do change. And so I do always encourage folks to back up their email list. So that's something I do every month. It's like, you know, who knows, they're at the whims of, you know, economic economic needs and things like this. So yeah, backing up your email list. And then the last thing I wanted to touch on related to your Facebook comment, which I love by the way, is that connecting that to the other piece around the human connection piece. One of the things I see people get in trouble with is they kind of start to do what you were describing there, but they get into that overwhelmed state where they're not clear on what their goal is and they leave people hanging, right? So I always say like, and that's why I always say like build one platform, platform, like get it right, you know, get it to where you can manage it before you kind of start to do more. Because if you're going to, for example, start publishing on Facebook as well and someone comments there and you leave them hanging, in my mind at least, that's worse than you not publishing them at all. Sure. Because the likelihood that that person's going to, if you're in some sort of a service-based business, the likelihood that they're going to become your client probably just plummeted, you know, if you don't respond. So that's the only thing I see there. But I, yeah, I totally agree and I see that. I've actually been, it's funny you said that 'cause I have some old Facebook groups and things like this from over the years and I've kind of been rethinking that and being like, how can I leverage this for bringing more people to Substack? So yeah, well, thank you so much for all your generosity, all of your tips, all of your practical advice. You know, we love to just kind of close, you know, obviously this is another thing, Substack makes it real easy. So anyone that's listening can easily find you, but for anyone who's listening listening maybe on the replay and they've been curious about anything that you've shared with us today, what would you suggest? Is there something you'd suggest they start with checking out with your work? Just curious where you might direct folks.

Oh, just come over to my Substack. Come over to club.thefiftyplusnomad.com or just search for The 50+ Nomad on Substack and you'll see. I actually want to, can I say this? Can I stroke myself on the back? Pat myself on the back? I actually just recently did a post post, um, and I, again, the title escapes me, but it's something like how to make $2,600, um, a month, uh, in your first year on Substack. And I'm, I really love the post 'cause what I did is I, I made up this fictional character called Jane and I gave her a gardening, um, niche and I went through and I made it so real. Like, you know, it, by month 3 she had 47 followers and by months here. She had 89, and then she launched a $9 PDF. And then, and I literally went through what one year in the life of Jane might look like on Substack, just very real. Not, here's how you're gonna go and make billions, but here's how if you launch, if you just grow a few subscribers here and launch a PDF here, and then maybe do a workshop and then layer it on and then start to engage and da da da da. And it kind of follows a year in the life. So come and read that most recent post. It's one of my favourites actually that I've and I'm really proud of it. And I think it really gives people inspiration for how to grow their Substack over the next year. So yeah, come and find me at the 50+ Nomad. I'd love to see you guys.

Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again. And we, we do publish this as a recap. So we will, um, we'll share that link with you as well. Um, when it's done, probably later today. And thank you all for those of you who were able to be with us here live. And, um, yeah, it was a great honor to have you.

Thank you, Joe. It was very nice to meet you. I'll send you a message and maybe we'll see each other in person in some form. Brazil.

Woohoo! That would be amazing, wouldn't it? Can you imagine all on Substack together going, hello! Thank you guys. Thank you for inviting me. It's been great. It's been so nice to meet you. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Bye.

Have a good night.

Bye. Bye everyone.

Bye guys.

Bye.